ADVENTURE in DHQ

So, I'm involved with a very interesting new journal called Digital Humanities Quarterly. http://www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/ , an

open-access, peer-reviewed, digital journal covering all aspects of digital media in the humanities. Published by the Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations (ADHO), DHQ is also a community experiment in journal publication.

So, an interesting thing just happened in the blogosphere. The thing with DHQ is, we're trying to get stuff up there fast, online, and rolling the content out, whilst determining whats in an issue at the cut off point in time every 3 months (or so). But we still have to test the material, and so we mount it up on a test site for proofreading, before making it proper.

One article,

Somewhere Nearby is Colossal Cave: Examining Will Crowther's Original “Adventure” in Code and in Kentucky, by Daniel G. Jerz

just went up on the test site. But an editor posted to it from his blog (Matt Kirschenbaum) and the Gaming community just got hold of it -http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.int-fiction/browse_frm/thread/607acaf1a279d4dd/bd53b672a185d177#
and there's all sort on interesting comments (including "HOLY MOLY!") and

It is clear on a single reading that this is the most important single
paper ever written on the history of interactive fiction.

before its even been published.

The test article is here, but it will eventually move to the real address, here.

Which raises all sorts of interesting points:

• the relevancy of DHQ, and digital humanities, to all sorts of communities we didnt reach before;
• the speed of dissemination of such articles on the 'net
• perhaps the need to revise the architecture behind DHQ, or at least forward things from test to the finished (ie proofed and published) version.

But it also shows... we must be doing something right. Keep sending on interesting stuff to DHQ... and keep reading it.... (please).

Update: this article made it onto Boing Boing. wow.