= idea: website for microfiction = - this is not a microblog. These should be stories. We need to ensure this to be the case. I can go into my conversation vs. document rant if you want, but to me, a story is a document, a blog is a conversation (or maybe a monologue, but a communication nonetheless) - authors should be able to submit stories via the web or email. Since we don't want spam, authors will need to register first, sadly. I really hate the paradigm, but don't know a good way around it - workflow.....do we want it? If so, I agree with your proposal: a "review" state and a "published" state. In review stories should still be viewable (that is, authors should be comfortable enough in what they upload to share). Published stories are disseminated however (RSS, on the front page, etc). - Every page should have a story on it (at least one, probably only one). Its microfiction, so its not like we need a lot of room to present it. - Do we have a word cap? Probably. Looking at my figments, the largest is about 900 words. So maybe we say 1000 words? Admittedly, 900 is not really that micro. You could convince me of 500, though two of my figments wouldn't make the cut-off. Maybe that is okay. - publishing a story should require author approval and review approval. All published stories are equal. - What is a reviewer? Well, we would be, since its our site. However, I think much like OSS, a reviewer is anyone that we trust to review. They should have submitted a few stories. They should then ask to be a reviewer. After that, they have the same reviewing privileges as us. We can also cut them off if they behave badly Leaving a space because the next bullet point is a big idea: - Ideally, I would like a site that hosts and serves content -AND- is an aggregator of other microfiction (via RSS, screenscraper, whatever). This makes me nervous because software and websites that do more than one thing often don't do anything well. This should do precisely two things, which isn't so bad, but still. I do think this is important, however. Without getting into my long spiel on how the web should work (and in fact does), we're not (or at least I'm not and I'm guessing you either) really interested in branding or ownership or having people go to our site in competition with other microfiction sites. Our site should serve the microfiction world. If an author wants to sign on but keep his stuff on his own website, then we should let him. Likewise, just looking at your research, there are many microfiction websites around and I would want to encourage people to both visit them and read their stories. So we republish them. Again, without going too much into my spiel, if all microfiction websites were aggressively linked like this, I would think it would be explosively good for the microfiction world. This being said, I think the first goal is to get the "local" site up, just keeping in mind the aggregator idea. I think we shouldn't wait too long before starting on aggregation though, as IMHO its about half the site. Okay, getting back into smaller stuff. - commenting: everyone, or maybe only registered users should be allowed to comment on stories. The author has the discretion whether these comments are public or only they can see them or maybe turn off commenting entirely (the last one doesn't make me entirely comfortable). Authors can opt-in to getting notified via email when comments are posted. Commenting can/should be micro too. While we probably allow comments on the whole story, I would really like something where you could highlight a section of text and comment on that. Upon editing this text, the comment is probably removed - tagging: yes. And not just on stories that we host, but on all stories we process. I would also like to turn tagging into a form of microfiction itself. It is on the tip of my brain how to do this....not 100% sure. A simple way is to allow rearranging of tags like those little word magnets that people have such fun with. I would like a better name than 'tag' too, but can't think of one right now. Maybe we allow different types of tags too? ::shrug:: We also allow critical things, like aggregating tags, etc. Authors may delete tags from their stories. related tags? - likes: you can "like" a story, which is stored for you. In addition, the author is notified that you like their story. Maybe a better verb...collect? Eh, don't like that one either. - stories can be text or html. If HTML, we allow images and CSS as well, but obviously not JS. In fact, we'll still control the HTML displayed, but want to allow for layout. So how is all of this organized? - Home page: Links to authors, tags, about, and links. There will be a random(?) story included on the page and the RSS feed for the whole site. The story may be from our site, or it may be from one of the sites we aggregate. Maybe links to the newest stories is displayed - Authors page: lists the authors and links to their pages. Again, a random story will be displayed from one of the authors. Maybe newest authors is displayed, or newest authors with stories, anyway. Maybe each author should have their newest work linked to and possibly the number of stories they've wrote, etc. Whatever we find interesting. When we have to start paginating, that's when we're a success :) Again, RSS. We probably allow a photo too, but don't force one. Reviewers should probably have photos, but again not enforced except when we want to. - Author page (public facing): the page of an individual author. Should allow a brief bio, optional display of email address(es) and URLs. A random story from this author is featured top left and the stories of the author are linked to maybe below this. Again, RSS. You should also be allowed to contact the author, probably. We want to encourage participation! - Tags page: Each tag must link to at least one story. On the front page is all of the tags and a random story with a tag (and "see other stories tagged with foo"). On the page of each tag, a random story with that tag and links to all stories with that tag. - The writing desk: the author's private workbench. Of course, a raven is displayed on this page, for obvious reasons. The author can change their info, notification settings, etc. Their stories in their various statuses are displayed. If they are a reviewer, they can review works, contact the author, or give it to another reviewer. Of course, you can't review your own work. You can submit a story and request a reviewer from the list (who if they don't want it, can pass it along). Probably other things I can't think of right now either. See/remove comments on stories. Notification front-end. - Links page: links to other sites with microfiction. RSS for each site is displayed. A random story is featured from one of the sites. A little about each site. You can email a reviewer and request a site to be added. Again, probably could do a whole lot more here. - About: basically static about page. What this site is, how does it work, link to the reviewers page, links to other sites on microfiction (about-type sites). - Reviewers page. These are the reviewers and a little about them. Maybe explain the reviewing process in more detail. - story page: the presentation of a story. Should have a way of tagging and commenting/viewing comments. And, of course, the story, link to author, all that sorta thing. I would probably use pylons for this, maybe. Grok might be easier but the learning curve is higher.