05. May 2005 · Comments Off on MilNews Idea · Categories: Site News, Technology

Okay, here’s the idea and tell me what you think.

I think it would be cool to have a website affiliated with this one and DW that deals purely with military news. I was kinda gonna do that with DW, but I found that it wasn’t fun to continually scope the web looking for that stuff.

Here’s how it could work:

-The stories could be manually entered or automatically pulled from several RSS feeds (or a combination of both) and displayed on the front page in a manner that puts the most stories “above the fold” but doesn’t look too cluttered or busy. It also has to look cool and have some color.

-The site will have different sections or categories, but will be pure news– not links to people commenting on news or mere opinion, but actual news. I don’t see it as a blog, but rather a news/information resource. Since it will already be tied to this site, an opinion resource will already exist.

-It should be integrated somehow with this one and/or DW. That’s one thing I could never figure out how to do effectively. How do you integrate two things without having them wash each other out and confuse the user or have one become ignored on the displayed page? If I could figure out a good way to appropriately display both and not have it look like ass, that would be really cool.

-Anyone should be able to contribute to the news site, but that brings up a problem: trolls. Should the software incorporate a mod feature, meaning that the whole of the registered users would have the power to vote or “mod” a story to the front page (like digg) or should certain people have the mod function (like Slashdot)? Or should it be a free for all and let the dice fall where they may?

-It should have a cool name that’s not already registered. It should be short, catchy, and easily remembered.

Anyway, it’s just an idea. And no talk of bulletin boards. I already tried that and it didn’t work.

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