Are you a poet? Are you a critic of poetry? Are you competitive or just looking for some fun? Or perhaps you’d rather sit back and watch everyone else battle it out? Either way, we have room for you in Protagonize’s original Poetry Tournament. I will be telling you why you should join momentarily.

Hello, it’s Moonwalker and ElzuWolfe of Protagonize’s Poetry Workshop group and we’re running the seasonal Poetry Tournament for this Summer.

Everything has a beginning. Every story, every poem, every life. We all start somewhere. One year ago FogCat and ElzuWolfe began the poetical landslide that is the Poetry Tournament. Who would believe that this small, fun competition could grow into something that many would come to enjoy and talk about? I certainly didn’t.

It started with 8 poets and 3 judges. A humble gathering of people joining together with a familiar interest, yet our last tournament saw 30 poets and an equal number of judges. This Tournament has reached new proportions with the help of Rac7hel, Archi_Teuthis, smac972 and most of all: You.

The poets that come and join our Tournament every season are what make it so much fun. We have seen some amazing poetry, and undoubtedly everyone has had the chance to learn a thing or two about poetry and about life.

So why should you join the Poetry Tournament on the 8th of August, 2010? You should join if you have a poem in your heart, yearning for a place to shine.  It’s the perfect place to use your muse.  This is also a great place to go if you want to assist others’ abilities by giving them useful feedback and critique. Who knows, you might even learn something yourself, and make some new friends.

The Poetry Tournament is a brilliantly fun, learning experience with plenty of opportunity to share your work as a poet or a place to read some of protagonize’s phenomenal creativity. Interested? Apply as a judge now, or as a poet on the 8th August. The Tournament will commence on the 22nd. Make this your beginning.

Interested? You can find all you need to know about the tournament here, see you soon!

— Elzu & Moon

If so, Protagonize wants you!

I’m putting together an informal focus group targeted strictly at those in the business of education. What I’m trying to do is collect information directly from those who I expect will be interested in some collaborative teaching-oriented features that I’m in the process of designing for Protagonize. These education-oriented features are very important to the future of Protagonize, so I’d really like to get input straight from the horse’s mouth, so-to-speak.

If you’ve ever thought to yourself (and I know many of you have!), “Protagonize would be an amazing learning tool for my students, if only…“, then this is your chance to provide me with direct feedback, gripes, enhancement requests, and suggestions, as well as to discuss potential educational avenues on the site with others in your métier.

So, if you’re involved in some way with the teaching process, particularly with language skills or creative writing, and you’re interested in participating in a group discussion regarding the future of Protagonize’s educational direction, please contact me (or post a comment below) and let me know! I’ll be in touch soon.

P.S. Please feel free to share this post with colleagues or friends you know of who might be interested in participating, as well!

All of our authors should now be able to select a default license by editing their profiles. The site default remains a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license, but you can now select an alternative default (or no license) if you so choose. If you’d like more information about the standard Creative Commons license Protagonize uses for all work, please check out our related FAQ entry.

In addition, you may have noticed that I’ve added a new section at the bottom of our writing form for all new works on the site where you can select a Creative Commons. If you’ve set a default in your author profile, that license will be the automatic selection you see there. If you haven’t set anything up, you don’t need to change anything, and the default site license will be used unless you select something else.

The only gotcha here is relating to solo stories; the option to select “No license” only applies to solo, individual works. That was something I decided on immediately because it doesn’t really make sense to have no license set on collaborative works. With that in mind, the option to select “No license” is only enabled when you are writing a solo story.

If you’d like to go back and change the license on a work you’ve previously written, you simply have to edit the first chapter or branch, by clicking the Edit this work button. The option to select an alternate license for your work will be present at the bottom of the writing form, even for existing works. You can change this license at any time, and it will be displayed on the right-hand side under “The Goods” while you’re reading.

From all of the positive feedback I’ve already gotten about these licensing changes, it seems like folks are much happier now that they have fuller control over the licensing of their own content. I’m glad to see that this change hasn’t done any harm, but if you have any questions, please feel free to ask me here, or contact me directly. Thanks for your support!

Today, I’ve made an important change to the site to update the current Creative Commons license used for all content published on Protagonize to a slightly more restrictive license. You may or may not have noticed when using the site that all content was previously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 license. What I’ve done, after consulting with our moderators and trading emails with the (super helpful!) folks over at Creative Commons, is to switch the license that we currently use for all content on the site to the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

What does this mean to our authors? Well, I’ve updated the FAQ to explain the new license in layman’s terms (the full legalese is available here), but here it is again, with the new section highlighted:

• Licensees may copy, distribute, display and perform the work and make derivative works based on it only if they give the author or licensor the credits in the manner specified by these.
• Licensees may copy, distribute, display, and perform the work and make derivative works based on it only for noncommercial purposes.
• Licensees may distribute derivative works only under a license identical to the license that governs the original work.

As you can see, I’ve added a non-commercial use clause to the license we use. Why have I made this change, you ask? Well, this is entirely to protect our authors from what I consider potentially unscrupulous use of their works on other sites. If it doesn’t go against our prior license directly, it definitely goes against it in spirit. I won’t go into detail regarding the specific reasons behind the change (feel free to contact me if you’re really curious), but suffice it to say that the moderators are aware of why I’m doing this, and it’s definitely in the best interest of our members.

Note: If you’re looking to learn more about Creative Commons licensing when it comes to self-publishing and writing online, I’d encourage you to read this article. It’s quite helpful in explaining the basic concepts: Creative Commons: What Every Self-Publisher Ought to Know

To complement this change, I’ve had to make a few modifications / enhancements to the Protagonize Terms of Use. Please be sure to take a look through the updated portions, particularly sections 7 and 8. The terminology is pretty standard, effectively giving Protagonize.com and related services (hosted on Protagonize) the right to display and/or excerpt your published works on the site, no matter what the license. What this does is provide Protagonize with an exception to the global non-commercial license and allows the site to display content you may have flagged as non-commercially licensed, and still continue to operate as a business. Since the site displays advertising, has subscriptions, etc., I felt it was necessary to clarify this fact in a way that would both protect our members and still allow the site to operate commercially. As I mentioned, this is quite standard with any site that utilizes Creative Commons licensing yet still hosts content (be it images, text, video, etc.)

On top of the global licensing change, there are a couple of other additions coming to the site that will allow for our authors to directly set licenses on their work. I’ll be implementing these changes on the site this week and will post another entry on our blog once they’re in place. To give you an idea of what they’re all about, they’ll allow our authors to select an explicit license for all of their works on the site, as well as a default license on their profile that will apply to all new works. Existing works will inherit the new global license, but can be changed to anything you want once the option to set licenses explicitly is enable. I’m hoping this will allow the site to appeal to a wider range of authors while giving you all a little more peace of mind over how your content is being used.

If you have any questions or concerns about these changes, please comment here, or feel free to contact me directly. I’m confident that these license modifications will be to the benefit of all Protagonize authors, but I’m happy to answer any questions you may have about the changes.

MediaBistro’s eBookNewser blog launched in late 2009 and dicusses news and trends in digital publishing. They plan to feature hand-picked authors selected by the leaders of writing communities around the ‘net, promoting new and upcoming writers who’ve gained a following on a variety of online writing sites.

When Jason got in touch with me a few days ago and asked if I’d be able to select a few featured authors for their new undertaking, I willingly (and happily) complied. As luck would have it, our first Digital Writers Spotlight is is none other than our very own Tricia Heighway, a.k.a. Tasha_Noble here on Protagonize. Congratulations to Trish on her selection — and on her upcoming first novel, Paddytum — and keep your eyes peeled for our next featured author on eBookNewser!