Hi all, John Allen brought out some points (below) on the 1000th Diary thread this week – about the site's direction. I had seen some news about Soapblox going down a while back, which was about the time I discovered The Moose. Over at MyDD, some threads started by Shai Sachs about a creating a Drupal solution for collaborative blogging:
- Soapbox Meltdown and Drupal
- A Drupal-based DailyKos
- Roadmap for a Drupal-based progressive community blog platform
- First release of Drupal progressive blogging platform
- Blog-based project groups and Drupal
From John Allen's contribution in Millenium Moose: a Message to all Moose and Lurkers
We are getting pretty good traffic and have reached a couple of milestones. Our 1000 diary and almost 6 months since launch. I'd say it's time to start a diary for a discussion about where we go from here. I've got a few ideas and I imagine the rest of you have some too.
Here are some questions I'd like to see answered.
What do we want out of the Moose? (The charter members discussed this before building the site)
Should we go on just like we have been and let nature take its course?
Do we want to make any changes to the way the Moose works? (Somewhat limited due to technology)
Do we want the Moose to grow to the point where 10,000 visitors for a diary is an everyday occurrence?
If so, how do we get there?
During the planning stage for the Moose several people noted our geographical spread. Should we encourage members to start doing regular regional diaries?
Are there any subjects we should cover more than others?
Is there a way to make our voice more effective? Would more diaries rebutting the Right's talking points be helpful to the cause? Or, should we spend more time getting the progressive viewpoint out there?
Whatever happened to the idea of an editorial group to keep a list of suggested subjects? Should we have a static page with a list of suggested subjects and use the comment list as a current subject list?
Shall we start a diary to talk about this stuff?
John – aka MS01 Indie
I am not part of the management here at this site and I do nott want to inject myself into your actual operations. I am hoping to participate in the conversations about the pros & cons of different blogging platform.
I have been playing with the idea of starting my own collaborative blogging site. That site will not be focused on politics as are The Moose, DKos or MyDD. However, I really like the collaborative functions of those sites:
– A box with scrolling diaries
– A recommended list for diaries
– The featured diaries and stories area
– Ratings for comments and diaries
To this end, I have looked at Scoop and the Drupal offering that Shai emailed me to try out. So far, I am halfway through mounting them both on my linux box to see what I think about the platforms. These are both solutions for a self-hosted community blog.
I would love to hear what features the members of this site are interested in. I would also like to hear how those features are addressed by the planners and admins here. What new features or ideas are you considering here? Is the Moose staying on a hosted solution or considering moving to self-hosted? Why & why not?
Jerome over at MyDD announced that he has got a new Ruby on Rails website being tested for imminent release.
Will the Moose be adding new features? Chat? Twitter? Video / audio feeds, programming or embedding improvements? Message composition improvements like better WYSIWYG?
Will there be a discussion of site ideas that failed and why?
I have started this diary as an offering for an open thread for the community about what we want from The Motley Moose. I will participate as both a fellow Moose, looking to participate in the herd and as a noob in the collaborative blogging trade looking to learn from a group that I admire and want to emulate in my community.
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