This article was published as a work-in-progress on MediaCommons in March 2007, a version of a talk I've given several times about the genesis and development of the MediaCommons project. This document was originally published in a prototype of CommentPress, and has now been updated to the release version.
Comments remain open to registered members of MediaCommons.
-- Kathleen Fitzpatrick
UPDATE, 10.15.07: Please also see CommentPress: New (Social) Structures for New (Networked) Texts, a paper exploring CommentPress itself.