OK, here's the first of probably what will be a few threads soliciting discussion on what the next version of Daily Kos should look like.
What we don't want, at least not yet, are particular technology or interface ideas. Coming up with interface fixes first and an overarching philosophy second is putting the cart before the horse, and leads to the danger of thinking of "progress" as nothing more than a patchwork of design and interface fixes.
Instead, we'd like to hear from folks what general, overarching problems they'd like to see solved, or concepts they'd like to see given more attention, from the standpoint of being a better news site, a better community site, whatever. It doesn't matter what the exact solutions might be -- I just want to hear from you what you think needs solving. We'll figure out how to actually do it later.
I can tell you a few things, right off the bat. One of the principle design goals of DK4.0 will be to better reward users who put up outstanding content. If they do good work, we want to make sure they get an audience -- that's square one of the design. In addition, we want to think about ways to better facilitate conversations in comments and build even more of a sense of community.
As Markos mentioned, this next version will not be built on Scoop. That doesn't mean there's anything wrong with Scoop, but some of the features we think we want for Daily Kos diverge very widely from what Scoop was designed to do, and would be difficult if not impossible to patch back in. So we're not limited by Scoop, on this release -- the site is going to be rebuilt from the ground up.
So have at it. What particular things would you like Daily Kos 4.0 to do better, from a content standpoint? A news standpoint? A community standpoint? Something else?
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