That's a good question; and is really the heart of my question... What do we need to put together to create something good for this... I would invision is as akin to a meetup group only virtual. Here's a quick list of things you might want (With no claims about whether or not they already exist):
1) Real time communication along with some async comm.
-Real time comm needs to be archived in a readable form
2) Method for an instructor(leader) to create 'outlines' and have those bullet points contain conversations.
3) The ability to "sign up" for a book / experience.
-When we get enough signups and a leader we schedule a start date.
4) A method for people who want to participate at a later date to feel involved and "step though" the old forum / chats at the speed they happened.
-A way for slow people or later people to use the site without spoilers
-A way for two groups doing the same book at different speeds to work together.
5) [random idea] Make users anonymous to each other... Except for the moderator.
6) Track books participated in.
7) [random idea] Does this idea make more sense as a specialized learning system for literature courses?
Many of these things are great ways to improve forums in general (hence google wave, perhaps).
For example, integrating async and real time is an interesting problem. I've also thought about this with respect to my gmail account. Some emails are one-off questions, but others are an ongoing dialogue which start to blend with chat. There is a continuum there.
Something else I've wanted is the ability to easily, within the site, branch off a discussion with a specific person on subgroup. Sometimes you want outside input, but it can be easier to get into a deep discussion if you are both reading responses carefully and following up. However, in that way, anonymous wouldn't work.
Considering 2 and 7 - I'd love to have such a system used in any course. Blackboard tries to be this, but is clunky, and others I'm sure exist. I imagine, rather than an outline, a real-time web/map (in fact, a sort of hierarchical tag cloud representing importance and relationship) that grows as ideas are added, with more detailed discussions under different headings.
For the most part, I wouldn't worry about spoilers. The most valuable discussions I've had regarding literature have been: read the book first, then read it a second time, together in pieces, and discuss along the way.
Shoot, Google Wave probably solves/solved half of those. I always considered the platform being good for a pen-and-paper RPG, but a virtual book club would probably work too!
I thought about google wave when I was typing that. I actually use google wave pretty regularly with friends. We're setting up a server to house our personal apache Wave deployment now that google is shutting it down.
1) Real time communication along with some async comm.
2) Method for an instructor(leader) to create 'outlines' and have those bullet points contain conversations.3) The ability to "sign up" for a book / experience.
4) A method for people who want to participate at a later date to feel involved and "step though" the old forum / chats at the speed they happened. 5) [random idea] Make users anonymous to each other... Except for the moderator.6) Track books participated in.
7) [random idea] Does this idea make more sense as a specialized learning system for literature courses?
All the ideas I have right now.