User:Systemdweller/sandbox

Bookzek.com is an independant, non-profit writing community. Its main aims are to foster the development of the writing skills of its community and to provide a platform for writers to launch their literary careers.

History
Bookzek was created on 17th September 2008 by the sites first member, founder and administrator gorzek. The site was originally populated by members of Webook another, much larger writing community, who had become disillusioned with the service and nature of that site. Those early days demostrated the most explosive growth of the sites membership relative to the later registration numbers. The group who populate the site now are the latest evolution of what was once known as the "Webook regulars" (Not to be confused with the current Webook regualars, which contains many users who are not affiliated witth Bookzek) who were the most common posters on the Webook forums.

The first nine months of Bookzeks existance demostrated a steady growth in user uploaded content,and a slowly increasing community size. Towards the end of this period however, user traffic declined, and the levels of activity dropped to low levels. Coming up to Bookzek's first birthday, traffic picked up, with new users migrating to Bookzek from Webook and elsewhere, in search of a less crowded environment to publish their work, thus recieving and giving more feedback.

A Tipjoy service was active on the site since is't creation, but since the collapse of Tipjoy this service has been discontinued.

Recently Bookzek has begun using AdBrite, an internet advertising service, to generate revenue, mainly to support the cost of maintaining the site.

Site Format, Membership and Points
Registration for membership allows the user to post comments on existing forum threads and give feedback on exisiting book pages, blog pages, character bios, universes, glossary terms and other user created nodes. Each post on a book page gains the user between one and five points, depending on how useful the review is. Once a user attains fifty points they become a full user, and can create their own nodes.

Each node costs an amount of points.
 * Book pages - 10 points
 * Forum topics -10 points
 * Universes - 50 points
 * Blog pages, glossary terms, character bios and all other nodes are free.

The purpose of this system is to eliminate the threat of spammers, crackers, bots and other malignant agents within the site. So far the system has proved highly sucessful.

Administrators
The site's founder, gorzek, is not only the site's most active member but also the main administrator of the site. He is well known for his witty quips and his infamous avatar, "bouncing boobs girl". He is the person who answers most of the technical questions about the site, and can be found on the site quite often. He is often referred to as "Jimmy" or occasionally "Jimmy Dean Sausage".

The sites other administrator is Pythia. Pythia is less visible on the site, but is also one of the main contributers of user created content.

The Regulars

 * gorzek - site admin
 * Pythia - site admin
 * Leland_Jansen - Disgruntled voice of working class England
 * NavarCrow - Atheist about town
 * Senoritaburitto - Dreadlocked hobo lady
 * Joe Styles - Canadian mystic
 * Naivette - Undercover artist
 * Liljinx - Superchic
 * themouth - Leprechaun/gorzek's cyber-son
 * Copperdragon - The one who I should never have forgotton but did, so am sorry. Trust me, it isn't easy to forget a massive fire-breathing dragon, but I totally did, and that stands as a testament to how fucked over my brain is. I blame society. Fuck you society!

Features
Bookzek is powered by Drupal which suppiles most of the active modules on the site. Some of the modules on the site may have been created by the site's administrators, but this is unclear.

Members have the peripheral options of using the forum and blog capabilities of the site for recreational and also writing related discussion.

Related Links
The Bookzek main page gorzek's personal website