Ru'Sian Rulette

What "cybernetic" means at Sydney Dramaturgical

Kybernetes — the steersman. The one with a hand on the tiller.

The study of systems that steer themselves by feedback.

1940s vocabulary, come out of thinkers who wanted one set of tools to describe a thermostat, a nervous system, a beehive and a jazz band all at once. Same rudder, different water.

How AI and automation feature at Sydney Dramaturgical

Sydney Dramaturgical exists to publish criticism, essays and interviews — not to pass whole evenings copying text out of one database and into another, sending the same email three hundred times, or hand-formatting a paragraph until it finally sits right.

Mais, we don't run on unpaid intern labour, cher. Anybody who has worked in editorial knows how common that is.

As the publication has grown, we've put real work into machine-assisted workflows, so the hours go to writing, editing, commissioning and thinking, and not to bureaucracy.

Some of it involves AI. Plenty of it doesn't.

Most of what we call our "cybernetic" infrastructure is really a pot of automations, scripts, field mappings and app integrations simmering away in the back of the house — repetitive admin, handled quiet.

Standard practice in digital publishing, and a good deal less gris-gris than the word "AI" tends to suggest.

For instance: when an approved writer submits an article, an automation logs the submission, sorts the photographs, updates the editorial database and tracks payment status.

Before that workflow existed, every single article meant downloading files à la main, chasing missing photos, updating spreadsheets, copying text from platform to platform, then typing the same information into the CMS all over again. Kazi bure, work for nothing — the roux stirred all afternoon and nobody eats.

Mais we do edit by hand, and hand-work means error. So: pole pole, slow and steady, and speak kindly when you find one.

Aubrey has a shoddy grasp of English or French — take your pick — and would much rather a writer push back respectfully than sit quiet on a bad edit.

AI records the changes an editor makes between the first draft and the final copy. It also suggests outlines for social media captions.

That's about the size of it.

Contributors deserve to know exactly where AI sits in the work, and where it doesn't.

What AI does at SDC

• Drafts routine SEO listings published under the Ru'Sian Rulette byline — weekly What's On round-ups, festival guides.
• Records the changes made by the editor between the original draft and the final copy.
• Where it writes CTA marketing copy (to send people toward a human-made work), it is instructed to centre the writer's own words, or the press release, verbatim.
• Gives a coup de main with the technical preparation of contributor biographies for publication — punctuation, paragraph structure, HTML formatting.
• Backs up the operational kazi: flagging errors in first drafts, assisting with database design (never database handling), drafting social captions, time management, SEO copy.

What AI does not do

• Write reviews, essays, interviews or criticism.
• Rewrite or edit the language, style or argument of a human-written article. If you notice a semantic or stylistic change in a published piece, that was a human editor's hand, not a machine's.
• Decide what Sydney Dramaturgical covers or commissions.
• Accept or reject writer applications.
• Correspond with writers, artists or publicists on Sydney Dramaturgical's behalf.
• Store or process sensitive contributor information.

Every human byline is written by a human. Every editorial decision is made by a human. Point final.

Reasonable people disagree about the role of AI in publishing — we know it, and we respect it.

This is the editorial policy we have chosen. If it doesn't sit right alongside your own practice, that's fair, and we won't hold it against you.

We would rather be plain about how we work than pretty about it.

Technology should take the weight off administrative labour, not artistic labour.

Every hour saved on bureaucracy is an hour for reading another play, having another conversation, paying another compliment, writing another piece of criticism. That hour is the lagniappe — the little extra — and we intend to keep it.

Communication and working hours

Sydney Dramaturgical is run almost entirely by people holding down full-time jobs, university study, an artistic practice, or all three at once.

For most of us, the editing and the publishing and the corresponding happen at night, on weekends, between rehearsals, across time zones.

So you may get an email from us at an odd hour. That reflects when our editors were free — it isn't an expectation that you be free then too.

If your boundary is reading and answering only inside your own working hours — nine to five, or whatever shape it takes — we support that entirely.

We don't expect anybody to be watching an inbox outside the hours that keep them well.

And we ask the same grace in return. We aim to answer promptly, mais there will be stretches where an editor is juggling full-time work, study, a season, or travel.

If a reply runs slow, it is almost certainly because another part of life took the front seat for a while — not because your work has been forgotten. Haraka haraka haina baraka: hurry-hurry carries no blessing.

We would far rather build a publication that respects people's rhythms than one that depends on everybody pretending to be awake all day and all night.

Go get your fais do-do, chère. Harambee — we pull together, or we don't pull at all.

A boucherie only works when everybody lends a hand, and then everybody eats.

Mais, if you have questions about our AI and automations policy, come see — rusian@sydneydramaturgical.com.