Mission and Rules Discussion

As promised, here's what people were saying about a Mission Statement and Rules of Engagement earlier:

Gughunter said...

My suggestions:

For a mission statement, something along the lines of: 'about the possibility that pop culture phenomena like "Terminator" and comic books are where the human need for heroism, mythology, plot, and intense drama hide, or are preserved, when the official culture defaults its responsibilities to address these needs in the form of high art.' I read that earlier today and thought it was pretty good.

Rules of engagement: I'd suggest "obscenities and pornications" should only be used if they serve a purpose -- if they serve as something more than a profane version of "um" or "uh" or "smurf."

Another rule of engagement: the blog's definition of "science fiction" should be as broad as possible, both in terms of genre (e.g., horror, psycho-thriller, mystery, fantasy -- all of which my high school sci-fi teacher classified as subgenres of science fiction, and he was a good teacher, so there) and in terms of medium (movie, book, video game, multimedia experience, etc.).

roller74 said...

This is Eduardo, btw.

Question: is this going to be just about sci-fi or other elements of entertainment and pop culture? Not celebrity gossip, but things like music, other genres of books & film, general culture commentary, etc.

hiroantagonist said...

Post if worth posting...

Mission statement: To start at sci-fi, but to end at the rest of the Universe. Modern culture is worth thinking about and analyzing, but to think, we must talk -- there must be an exchange of ideas to create synthesis. This doesn't happen enough in Instapunk's comment rolls because of the intimidation factor, the desire to stop continually say 'yeah, me too', and the relative difficulty of keeping a conversation alive as current events push the daily posts down. Perhaps a new incarnation of the forum is what we need after all...

Rules? I'm with Gug -- let's keep it as broad as possible (as if we could help it).

Bear in mind that there is now another site where clearly non-sci-fi topics can be addressed. But that doesn't mean we can't talk about anything and everything here through the lens of sc-fi.

Let's hear your thoughts.