maxfenton/gist:4559685

## gistfile1.txt
Trying to find a way to explain Git to a writer
==============================================

Git is a system of distributed version control.

At its simplest, it keeps track of all the versions and modifications to a file and lets you roll back in time through them. At its best, it lets multiple authors contribute to a body of work without overwriting each other.

Git begain as a way of maintaining source code, and Github is a commercial site for securely storing and accessing your projects. Github is almost like a giant social network of open and closed source projects. Everyone stores their code there.

For example, I have all of believermag.com stored there. I make changes on my local machine, push them up to GitHub (which keeps a history of changes on every single file) and then upload them to the Believer site. If anything happens to the Believer, I can get the whole code back. In addition, if I started working with a co-editor, they would pull their code from GitHub, make changes, push them back. I'd pull them from GitHub and we'd stay in sync.  If my code were public, other people could edit and then make "pull requests" which I could approve or reject.

What non-destructive editing did for film, this does for text. There are a couple "github for writers" tools being build — EditShark, Poetica,

I'm not the best at it, and I work on very small projects, but... I would say it's one of the most radical alterations to text and how we'll think about it, which is why you will flip out.
	Trying to find a way to explain Git to a writer
	==============================================

	Git is a system of distributed version control.

	At its simplest, it keeps track of all the versions and modifications to a file and lets you roll back in time through them. At its best, it lets multiple authors contribute to a body of work without overwriting each other.

	Git begain as a way of maintaining source code, and Github is a commercial site for securely storing and accessing your projects. Github is almost like a giant social network of open and closed source projects. Everyone stores their code there.

	For example, I have all of believermag.com stored there. I make changes on my local machine, push them up to GitHub (which keeps a history of changes on every single file) and then upload them to the Believer site. If anything happens to the Believer, I can get the whole code back. In addition, if I started working with a co-editor, they would pull their code from GitHub, make changes, push them back. I'd pull them from GitHub and we'd stay in sync. If my code were public, other people could edit and then make "pull requests" which I could approve or reject.

	What non-destructive editing did for film, this does for text. There are a couple "github for writers" tools being build — EditShark, Poetica,

	I'm not the best at it, and I work on very small projects, but... I would say it's one of the most radical alterations to text and how we'll think about it, which is why you will flip out.