[theforum] rethink w.e.o.

[Luther, Ron]

>>... in a way that doesn't simply replicate an existing social networking site


Okay.  Here is a kind of (surprise!) half-baked idea that may end up with more of a /. vibe than we really want, I dunno.  Here goes.

Consider several components:

[1] A thelist-style world-wide collaborative help desk as we have today.

[2] A changed-up evolt homepage that (cuz I dunno Jack about proper 'Design' and all) has a bunch of tabs; (articles and other stuff we may want to keep), (special topics of interest - I would prefer more general 'Design', 'Database', 'i18n', etc ... but if we want to call out PHP, MySQL, Drupal, or whatever I guess I'm okay with that too - multi-level anyone?), and [my fav] a bigass "RANDOM" tab that would select items (at random) from threads *not* in your profile.  {This lets us actually use article/comment 'tags' to actually do something other than make searches easier, eh?}

[3] Each evolterooni sets up a 'profile' to subscribe or display only the topics close to their pancreas.

[4] The "people with enough positive karma points" would have the power/authority/responsibility to pull interesting ideas from thelist (or anywhere else that doesn't require a flashlight for access) and offer them up /. style for more general discussion under the tab at hand.  Kind of like a meta-discussion-topic/article/link/watusii/moo/hamstah_dance.

[x] I'd like a 'wall of fame' to highlight things like Bri being on the top 25 list Erika found the other day, Matt's new book, Joel's old book (I finally finished it!), and other junk.

[y] more cool stuff goes here ...


Downers:
- We don't really have the volume to support splitting hairs too terribly finely ... So maybe we start with two categories 'make pretty' and 'make work' and let natural selection (and theforum) create separate 'CSS' tabs or whatever when the volume grows "too big" for one category.  Oooo!  Another possibility would be to create a hierarchy table for the 'tags' and use the higher level categories for the tabs and/or grabbing recent things from the db to show in the tabs.  [Yeah - what could go wrong?  some things could multi-appear ... So?]


Obviously this cookie is in desparate need of more chocolate chips!

Pâtisserie-ily,
RonL.