The Gallery of Nonexistent Art

This page describes my (tentative) plans for the Gallery of Nonexistent Art.

Current Status: The community is online here!

What Is It?

A livejournal community devoted to reviews, excerpts, and discussion of works in various media that have the sole drawback of being totally made-up. So it's the perfect place to talk about the new and curiously-Japannified manga series based on Firefly, or that exhibition of the little-known Belgian found-object surrealist Henri Rendon, or maybe Metallica's recent Christmas album. 1?

What Are the Rules?

The rules would be fairly simple:

The thing you are writing about must be nonexistent.
If you put up a review of Rubber Soul, your post will be ridiculed and most likely deleted.
No, really, it has to be something that doesn't exist.
If you put up a review of a short story, and you've written the whole short story yourself, results are similar to transgressions of rule #1. (Short excerpts are fine for illustrative purposes.)
Nobody 'owns' nonexistent art.
If I post a short excerpt from the pilot episode of Cartoon Network's "Behind the Toons" (with its dramatic 'Where are they now?' footage of Scrappy-Doo), other people can define other aspects of the show. I don't get to say "No fair!" just because I introduced the concept. (In improv terms, this would be "no blocking.")

Possible Problems

Nobody shows up.
So far, every collaborative-writing based community I've been in has died almost immediately from lack of interest.
People show up, but nobody writes anything.
This would especially be a problem if the community just provided one quick joke -- "Ha, ha, we're talking all seriously about things that don't exist." -- and nothing more.
People show up and write, but nobody writes anything good.
We only see bad slashfic 2?, advertisements, and garden-variety bad writing. 3?

Ways to Deal with the Possible Problems

Ensure that I myself contribute content on a regular basis.
This means that passers-by have a reason to check on the community regularly, and other contributors don't feel like they're shouldering the whole weight of production. Provided I can come up with fifty possible topics, I think promising one 500-word review per week for one year would only be slightly outlandish. As I fancy myself a good writer, this would also ensure at least a little quality content on the site.
Ease up on the moderation.
At least at first, making it as easy as possible to contribute is more important than winnowing out the crap that crap authors might contribute. So: free to join, free to post, unless it becomes really popular (unlikely) and needs to be battened down a bit.
Advertise.
The best advertisement is having interesting, well-written articles that anyone would want to read. The second-best advertisement is having other people write articles and then direct their friends to the site to check it out. Beyond that, there's cheesy stuff that is just too much work to be worthwhile.

Mainly, I need to remember that my goal to create a small, self-sustaining community for a small group of writers. If it grows beyond that later, fine. But I'm planning my efforts based on the former model.

Where Do We Go from Here?

At this point, I'd like to kick back for a month or so and write up a list of fifty topics for Nonexistent-Art articles. (N. B.: That page is chock full'o'spoilers!)

At the same time, I need to research how one creates an LJ community, write up the "About" community description, and draw up an appropriate icon. (I'm thinking a 'Parthenon in the Clouds' image might work.)

Useful Links

Footnotes

1? On that last work, the wise reviewer would do well to compare and contrast the album with A Very Mötorhead Christmas.

2? The pejorative might be redundant; as far as I can tell, writing:slash as acting:pr0n.

3? The 'Bart's Garden Supply' problem: A malicious writer could tear through and add advertisements for Bart's Garden Supply to every discussion, and (owing to the 'no blocking' rule) people abiding by the rules would have to go along with it. Other things a malicious writer could do are left as an exercise for the reader.