From the Editor:
Hitting Reload
This journal is (or, more accurately at this point, aims to be) a resource for discovering and discussing the issues that face teachers of writing in hypertextual environments. Are we searching, like those Expository Writing students, for a "compromise"? My personal answer would be "yes." Any hypertext which claims to end with a finished product - like "Issue 1.1" - is obviously compromising some of the possibilities afforded by interactive electronic media. But like those students, we find demands at various levels.
There are demands from the traditional academy and its grizzled tenure-promotion process. What counts? Has it been peer-reviewed? Where was "it" (the final text) "published" (where it can be viewed)? Archiving hypertexts and maintaining "version control" is a bow to the fact that scholars in hypertextual studies still need something to "show" on their vitae.
There are demands from our own peers and the many sociopolitical and personal stances we bring to the pedagogical table. Collaboration does not necessarily demand compromise; but perhaps compromise can, at times, foster collaboration. An interactive non-blind peer review like we are trying to "invent" is our nod to this demand.
Finally, and most exciting, there are demands born of the creative instincts of the many, many people involved in "collaborating" on "publishing" this journal. Authors - though some have rejected that label - of hypertexts have startlingly (and refreshingly) disparate ideas about what should matter to teachers of writing.
Our conversation, our dialogue, our collaboration will result, three times a year, in a "product" - a nod to the demands of tradition. But along the way our hypertextual process of learning, of communication, and of publication is the fun part. We plan to hit "reload" a lot. Let us know what you think.
Finally, this would not be a true "Editor's Note" if I did not spend a paragraph or two of bandwidth acknowledging the many people who have made this first issue possible.
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vol. 1 Iss. 1 Spring 1996