CommentPress: New (Social) Structures for New (Networked) Texts

Promoting and Nurturing Interactions with Open Access Books: Strategies for Publishers and Authors

“…CommentPress, was set up to channel the social and participatory strengths of the blog format into a (book) publication platform. Fitzpatrick asked specifically whether we could refashion the blog form to "enable social interaction around long-form texts" (Fitzpatrick 2007). The digital text in this sense is very well suited to, as Fitzpatrick states "produces the greatest possible readerly and writerly engagement, that enables both the intensive development of an idea within the bounds of the electronic text and the extensive situation of that idea within a network of other such ideas and texts" (Fitzpatrick 2007).…”

“…Fitzpatrick asked specifically whether we could refashion the blog form to "enable social interaction around long-form texts" (Fitzpatrick 2007). The digital text in this sense is very well suited to, as Fitzpatrick states "produces the greatest possible readerly and writerly engagement, that enables both the intensive development of an idea within the bounds of the electronic text and the extensive situation of that idea within a network of other such ideas and texts" (Fitzpatrick 2007). Hypertext, as a networked data structure, has been crucial in creating this interaction, for example by delinearising text, and by promoting readerly interaction and interconnections between texts via hyperlinks.…”

“…Hypertext, as a networked data structure, has been crucial in creating this interaction, for example by delinearising text, and by promoting readerly interaction and interconnections between texts via hyperlinks. Hypertext, as Fitzpatrick argues was thus seen as "a means of creating a new, more active relationship between the reader and the text", where CommentPress was set up to fulfill this need of situating long-form text "within a social network, within the community of readers who wish to interact with that text, and with one another through and around that text" (Fitzpatrick 2007). In a way what we want to recreate with our social and networked text, she argues, is the digital equivalent of a "coffeehouse" or even of a scholarly conference.…”

“…As Maxwell argues in this respect, how can we "re-inscribe the relation between works, publications, and discourse more broadly" (Maxwell 2015). Fitzpatrick makes clear here that "the issue of engagement, moreover, is not simply about locating the text within the technological network, but also, and primarily, about locating it within the social network" and from there "making those conversations as accessible and inviting as possible should be the goal in imagining the textual communications circuit of the future" (Fitzpatrick 2007).…”

Mesotext : Digitised Emblems, Modelled Annotations and Humanities Scholarship

“…The comments to Samuel Pepys' diaries (Gyford s.a.) are by and large more serious. The Pepys diaries are embedded within a larger site that houses an encyclopaedia and a section of in-depth articles on Pepys and his age, which users can contribute to.2 4 F 25 A weblog plugin created especially to facilitate paragraph-by-paragraph signed comments is CommentPress (Fitzpatrick 2007). CommentPress is a 'theme' for the popular blog tool WordPress.…”