Wikipedia

An obvious one. Not a 'story' site so to speak, but the concept is interesting. Moderation is in the form of "notice it, correct it". I don't think it has too much concept that would apply well to Everything2, I'm just putting it here to keep the picture complete.

Everything²

The site structure is that of 'nodes'. Nodes can be things like 'paper' or things like 'Why I hate Golf'. Anyone can then write a writeup into this node. For every writeup someone has, they automatically have one experience point. If a writeup is deleted, they lose this point. People can vote for and against writeups which affects the author's experience. People can also 'cool' a node to promote it to the frontpage. People get a limited number of 'cool' points a day, limiting the number of writeups they can cool. The site is not specifically news oriented, more like Wikipedia, but with articles written with an element of opinion, which, IMO, makes them easier to read and relate to.

Writeups can link to other nodes (which display all writeups in the node). If a user moves from one node to another, it automatically creates a 'soft link' from the previous node to the next. This creates a sort of 'thought pattern'.

Drupal

This is more (kuro5hin|slashdot) style PHP-powered community system. It seems to work similarly to Kuro5hin from first glance.

Try <a href="http://www.drupal.org/">Drupal</a> for example, which was modified for DeanSpace (now CivicSpace) to be more campaign oriented. The code is quite clean and modular.

-------- Empty the Cities --------

you just caught a glimpse of the future of web based communities. savor it.

----

i ♥ legitimate users.

1. The stories dumped should be able to be found on the author's page.  Comments need not be attached, but it would be helpful if they were.
2. A limited edit on comments. Maybe they can be edited within 10-15 mins of original post time. Then after that they can be read-only.

Just make sure that you have the ability to block PM's from peeps in your killfile as well.

I'm a busy person, I enjoy /.'s discussions because I can set it to only show comments rated 3 or higher, and to collapse comments rated 1 and 2, and to hide comments rated 0. Likewise, I would like to be able to collapse comments (and threads) rated less than 2 on K5, I don't have so much time to waste that I want to read every troll.

I like the Slashdot-style friends / foes list, and wish that was more integrated into postings.  If a lot of reputable people consider you a friend, your reputation should go up as well.  if a lot of reputable people consider you an enemy, your reputation (and posts) should go down.  clevernickname would probably post at 3, for example... not through the strength of his posts individually but because people recognize and want to hear more from him.

What is needed is some form of individual accountability over a given area... If you can find a way to keep one person to four accounts painlessly, then you will have solved one of the greatest problems with all of the public BBS systems.  

Perhaps the first signup on a given IP address (per year) could be free, with each additional signup requiring some form of Kuro5hin-like sponsorship system?  

Each user could go through and read a bunch of comments, and rate each comment on some scale--say, 1 to 5. You could set up each user account so when that user was logged in, it would rank the comments according to that filtering system.

I guess it wouldn't exactly be a filtering system, but some sort of natural language processing ranking system.

It would take a bit of programming, but would be really interesting and potentially helpful if actually implemented. It would be sort of a ranking system individualized for each user's preferences, whatever those might be.

To get back to the point, I think the main problem with K5 is a lack of good documentation. In particular, there have been a number of complaints against Scoop (in the replies to this article) that could be resolved if people checked their preferences. In my mind, it's a case of shitty documentation, bad interface in terms of setting options, and bad default settings.

I am willing to visit this new site, but I don't think it'll generate some sort of revised interest in "good story posting" - let's be honest, HuSi is pretty much a "K5 community fork", and that isn't exactly a mine of good articles - just a load of random (mostly shit) blogs mixed into one. When I read Slashdot, it just looks like a load of MLP. (the front page reads like one of my literature reviews - a list of other websites) So if you can do better than that...

2. Ability to install on a virtual host by a non root user. From what I've seen this s much more easily achived by using PHP instead of Perl.

3. From what I've seen of scoops theme (or whatever you want to cal it) system, it seems pretty complex. User selected themes would be nice too.

4. Most important - an ability to port your database from other systems (eg scoop, slash, nuke). I think earlier versions of scoop could port the slash database, not sure if this is still the case. Ability to use add ons from other systems would be nice too (especially nuke, since it has shitloads of add ons and is written in PHP).

Shame really. Also the principle should apply that free speech implies that the majority should not censor, even though it can de-emphasise.

So I'd suggest a "not on front page" vote (== section only + vote against) to weaken the anti vote, plus a "rejects" section the topics of which aren't shown on the front page, but needs to be indexed directly. Make it policy to remove nasty stuff, though, although you might be able to detect that through the voting (five trolls vote for; fifty vote outright against means it's bad).

Quite possibly keep the voting perpetually on. Maybe people consume their last of votes (propotional to sqrt(posts), or something) when they cast a new vote, so that items not revoted for drop off the front page.

Have a "heaven" (FP), "purgatory" (Section), "limbo" (where posts start), and "hell" (only visible if sought). Or have the user define what make FP for them, somehow.

• Admins like scoop because they can completly customize the look & feel of the site.  WHatever gets made will have to have a way to edit the look and feel of the site in a manner much like scoop (blocks/boxes though I want to call them templates / scripts).  In a survey I took, most everybody said this was one of the main reasons they choose scoop.
• LESS OPTIONS!!!  IMHO one of the biggest mistakes made in scoop was the ease of adding new site vars, blocks, etc.  The site vars pages on a scoop site is a horrid mess of crap full of randomly categorized varabiles that probably get changed by three people in the whole world.  Whatever the new site is, it needs to have a simple, non-flexible preferences page with as few options as possible.  Never fall into the "i can't decide what my software should do, so I'll just make it another option" trap.
• LESS OPTIONS!!!  Whatever the new site is, it will not allow users to customize the sort order or comments.  All users will view all comments and all stories the same way, using the same view (i.e. dynamic threaded or what have you).
• Some kind of plugin system.
• Make the comment system and story system a plugin of sorts.  That way a site admin can choose the threading model (flat or threaded, flat + ratings, etc), and the story model (intro & body, or just one block of text, story queues, whatever...).
• Keep the presentation layer (the HTML) out of the code.  Tons of people bitched about how crazy it was they needed to edit the perl code to change the look/verbage of something.
• Some kind of theme support that is set on an admin level, not a user level (that is, users cannot change the theme)
• More focus on the user, less on the archetecure of the system.  I've read diaries of people thinking about rewriting scoop just to improve the scalability.  Rewrite scoop to improve the interface first - desiging a system around the CPU & memory of a system is not a good idea...  If people can't use what you've done your project has failed.  You can have the most effecient comment sort algorithm in the world but that doesn't mean dick if people cant sign up and post to your site.
• BSD or proprietary only.  GPL sucks.  This is my opinion and is the largest reason I will probably do my own thing.  I dont like the GPL and dont like the freedom it takes away from my code.
• Ratings?  I think ratings are a geeky failure.  If I was forced into implementing ratings though, I'd do it as a binary system only.  Many people in  my survey responded that they liked that they didn't have to babysit their sites because the site policed itself.
• Also, in the survey most everybody felt they were not happy with the amount of comments each story got.  I think this issue is absolutly critical for a redesign.  Comment posting must be easy for everybody.  My solution is this model which is flat and has the comments drop down below the story, which keeps the story, the comments and the ability to post all in the same window, unlike scoop which is 3 clicks from a section page.  When I switched from the scoop model to mine the number of posts per story doubled (probably has tripled by now..).  If I did it threaded, I'd make the reply/post "fold" down below the comment you are replying to rather then go into a seperate window.  PS:  I could care less about people who whine about "OMG IT USES EV!L JAVA1111111!!!!".  The only issue I see is search engines.

This is a bit of a "rough-draft" comment, sorry if it's confusing!

1. accounts: Don't you hate it when you forget your password, and the email address you used to create it was that third-rate ISP you were working for one summer that went out of business but still insists on holding onto their domain name so no one else can have it? I'd like to do away with accounts altogether, just have a "name" block on the post comment page, and let you put in whatever you want. Or maybe the honor system.
2. front page: there shouldn't be a front page, just links to sections and maybe latest posts, or sorted alphabetically or something (keyword of the day?)
3. votes: voting just makes things complicated, just assume everything is great.
4. crappy posts: nothing says slashdot like another "OH MY GOD, BILL GATES FARTED, WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!!!" post. there should be a way to make these peoples computers blow up.
5. moderation: no.
6. sections: there should be four sections; "Crap," "Not-so-Crap," "Shitty," and "Pictures-of-Hot-Naked-Asian-Girls." Yea.
7. threads: I hate threads, it should just be one long list of posts, and if anyone wants more specific info, they can write their own webpage!
8. trolls: this is intolerable. I mean, the way trolls are treated around here, you'd think they were mocking the whole institution or something. not funny. expunge. ish. ly. er.
9. html: can't stand it, the whole thing should be in text documents, and force people to use cut and paste.
10. keyboard layout: we should kick all the people who use qwerty keyboard layout, dvorak only!
11. computers: the site should be inaccessible to any computer produced in the past 10 years; let's face it, folks, weren't you alot happier when nobody knew what you were talking about when you spoke of the internet? the good old days shall return!
12. southpaws: the site should be off-limits to left-handed people (the word sinister means left-handed; gauche, too).
13. elves: no elves! nor anyone who knows any elves, or played an elf in everquest. or anyone who knows anyone who played an elf in everquest.
14. women: shouldn't even know how to read. barefoot and pregnant, but not on k5!
15. turks: they're OK.

Since I added an RSS 2.0 feed to a kind of wiki I'm writing, I discovered there are a number of entities out there who love RSS and import it happily.

We'd really love to see your code running, even if it's not finished yet.

That is terribly arrogant.

I would have a binary ratings system. By default, every post is displayed. If abusive posts show up, appropriately privileged users can moderate the post as hidden. They can also rescue comments that were unjustly hidden. After a certain amount of time (weeks, days, whatever) the hidden posts are deleted.

I've been on the net for a long time (too long), and I can tell you that comment ratings systems don't work. Look at the hell of Slashdot, where mediocre, obvious comments (the same ones for every topic, over and over) get the top scores and the interesting comments are rated low. The result is that people are turned off of the whole site.

In these politically divisive times, you have to have an open discussion system. Otherwise, one side is going to "win," the other side is going to leave, and soon the site will go stale, just like K5 has.

Some programmers today do not have an education in the arts and humanities. This is a shame. As a result, we get some CS people running around, small in number but noteworthy for their hard to use programs, furiously writing software that tries to assign every human being a numerical value, with which to measure their "worth," and meanwhile virtual communities rot and die rather than grow and prosper.

Second, I like the general direction you're taking, but would go further and say that many features of Scoop would need to be excluded. Why? Because many features on Scoop require interactivity. That means more overhead, more things to go wrong, more things to overwork the machine you're running the site on. Don't even think of implementing anything close to what Scoop does, because even the front page needs to be at least a little interactive.

Having yet another slew of blog/CMS/fora/bbs code out there doesn't improve the software model.

Code reuse is important. Are you going to start from scratch and re-invent/integrate the 15-20 years of safe coding & security techniques? Are you going to spend man months coding & tuning yet another user account database schema?

Why not propose a fork? Why can't you just integrate your ideas/changes to an existing project?

Now, I've advocated this many times, but... instead of killfiles, I'd be in favor of a more flexible approach where you'd be able to rate all the users on the site, and adjust things accordingly. For instance, I could rate you 0.5 (on a scale of 0..2, say, where 1 is average) and then as far as I'm concerned whatever you do would count half as much as what the average user on the site does, be it moderation, voting, or what have you. At the extremes it could be similar to a killfile, but in between it's all based on how much you value that person's opinion.

Watch your language!

It will be written in PHP.

For the love of all that is holy and sacred, elegant and beautiful, and well-designed and non-crapacious, please use a real language and not that disgusting hack of wretchedness known as PHP. It sucks. Hard. Like an industrial vacuum cleaner. Or, if you do, please make it proprietary so nobody else need look at the source and technicolour yawn over their fine carpets and so profit the carpet-cleaning mafia.

As to what you should use - pick pretty much anything else. Perl. Python. Pike. Or even a language that doesn't start with P. Ruby. Heck, even C++ would be less disgusting, or C with a few good libraries.

Thank you.