Well, I was going to take a whack at setting up a temporary home for OWIe on wordpress.com, but it looks like somebody else nabbed the address (owie.wordpress.com) first. Hmmm. Couldn't have done much more than create a new blog, anyway, so I'll wait to try again.
This is how I see OWIe working for now. Sorry, no diagram yet.
Everybody has his or her own website, blog and forum system (as desired). Everybody links to the OWIe website, blog and forum system. Everything but text is stored in member systems, to avoid overburdening OWIe with memory-consuming content like graphics.
The OWIe blog uses Elgg. Elgg features an easily accessible View all posts page on which are displayed a large number of recent posts with links to individual accounts within Elgg. Meanwhile, Elgg users can create any number of communities, and both communities and posts can be restricted to any of several categories of viewers. It's simultaneously more sociable and more private than I've found WordPress to be.
The OWIe website features categorized links to member sites. Member sites all feature links to the OWIe website. Member sites feature links to other member sites at the discretion of their owners.
OWIe supports forums, hopefully nested ones.
OWIe offers a collaborative tool such as wikimedia or PBwiki which members can use to work together on textual or graphic projects. Once again, though, only text is stored on the home server. Everything else is stored by the members.
OWIe also features a wikipedia-style encyclopedia called OWIepedia which can be used for self-promotion. Members and their fans can contribute articles on writers, illustrators and elements of their work, such as the nature of various species on a distant imaginary world or the tenets of a certain school of writing or illustration.
If anybody is versed in any of the software I've mentioned (or acceptable substitutes), I'd be glad to hear from them.
