J is right - we need a separate press arm/think-tank sending out press releases and papers.

The front page is more or less irrelevant as far as journalists are concerned. I don't see a problem with that, because reachable journalists need to be reached actively. We can't assume they'll come here just because we want them to, and I don't think we should retool a page that's doing a different job to try to attract them.

The work-in-progress Wiki idea doesn't solve the problems we need to have solved. Wikis are fine for subject-specific knowledge bases, but PR and journalist outreach has to be done differently - you can't just say 'Look at our excellent Wiki!' and expect anyone to be interested.

So the front page is not the place for sound bites. If it's there for anything it's to demonstrate the ET brand, and the rather chaotic nature of the front page is fine for that. It's no more or less coherent than a newspaper, and I think that's how it should be.

The narratives should be distilled into regular dated op-eds and formal papers and placed into a repository. When we have an interesting point to make, we turn them into a press release with one or two soundbites, attach a PDF of slightly more detailed key points, and include links to one or more papers with background information.

Papers can be Wikified, but more as a collaborative tool than as a developing database. Wikis aren't ideal for position papers or op-eds, but they're good for evolving background histories and glossaries.

Finished papers should probably be stored in fixed form as a historical record of points made and not considered a work in progress. That way we can always point to them and say 'We told you so' - which is rather harder with a straight Wiki.

There should be a single site with shared logins, because asking people to maintain separate accounts and log on to the separate sites would totally defeat the purpose. Also, the community lives on the community blog in our case.

Ideally, the "static" content would be another "section" of the ET site.

It is already possible to organise the same information in more than one way. For instance, look at

http://www.eurotrib.com/section/Diary

and

http://www.eurotrib-com/user/Migeru/Diary

As I said before, we don't need a more complicated database except possibly for revision history and multiple authorship of content. The way the database is displayed is up to our imagination (as illustrated by the "general" vs. "personal" diary views above).

See also

http://www.eurotrib.com/section/News

http://www.eurotrib.com/section/Debates

http://www.eurotrib.com/section/Indices

We have met the enemy, and he is us — Pogo