Yet another collaborative worldbuilding project. Mistakes to avoid?
Yet another collaborative worldbuilding project. Mistakes to avoid?
I'm making a github organization that uses GitConsensus to manage a collaborative markdown worldbuilding wiki. Basically, you'd vote on pull requests using thumbs up and down emojis.
I don't want this to be a thing where I point at an empty text document and say "worldbuild." What's some work I could do beforehand that could get people interested in contributing?
EDIT:
For those who don't use git, a pull request is when a contributor sends a change to a repo for it to be approved and merged into the repo.
I don't use git but that sounds like it could be interesting. I think as far as what you could do beforehand depends on how much influence you want others to have. You could start with a blank page, and then maybe present some multiple choices for what kind of basis for the world you'd want. What genre? Fantasy? Sci-fi? Both? Modern? Post-Apoc? Etc. etc. Is it a single world/planet? Is it an entire universe/cosmology you're building? Then continue to break that down depending on the choices made. So if it's just a single planet/world you could then ask what kind of world/planet? A spherical globe? A large space station? A Dyson Sphere? A cube planet? A disc shaped world? A ring shaped world? etc. etc.
If you already have an idea for what genre, world, cosmology, etc you want and don't want others influencing that aspect as much then I'd suggest getting those base elements down first and then opening it up for others. If not, you could always start with that blank page (I would just suggest multiple choice if you go that route, blank canvases can be intimidating).