Welcome to European Tribune. It's gone a bit quiet around here these days, but it's still going.
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I'm in favor of a forum type layout. The top level shows the major categories that stories get posted to. Opening up one of these links shows the most recent stories by title and has some other useful data such as number of replies, viewers and date of last (and first) comment.

Here's a site that seems to do a good job, although access to forums is duplicated and the color scheme leaves much to be desired. The comments interface also allows for the use of a gui to embed HTML which I think would help those who aren't experts.

http://www.rangefinderforum.com/

(click on the "forums" link at the left to see the full list.)

FIFO is not good for discussions which may span an expanded period of time and the "Debates" item on ET is not an adequate substitute.

Policies not Politics
---- Daily Landscape

by rdf (robert.feinman@gmail.com) on Wed Jan 2nd, 2008 at 12:42:18 PM EST
What is the default numbers of Diaries showing in the recent diaries box ? I set it to 99, which is plenty enought for the discussions to die down before they scroll out... Indeed, discussions lasting longer are perhaps better restarted in new diaries, if only because of pageload times...

Un roi sans divertissement est un homme plein de misères
by linca (antonin POINT lucas AROBASE gmail.com) on Wed Jan 2nd, 2008 at 01:39:08 PM EST
[ Parent ]
mine started at 20 - I upped it to 50

Index of Frank's Diaries
by Frank Schnittger (mail Frankschnittger at hot male dotty communists) on Wed Jan 2nd, 2008 at 01:49:19 PM EST
[ Parent ]
my problem with forum software is, that it is based around comments or questions, not a discussion initiator (Diaries, Stories, etc - in Eurotrib code) and its subsequent discussion.

On this site (and what makes it so superior to forum software - in my opinion) it is the initial story that is the centre of the focus.

Our problem might be, that the comments sometimes provide equally good, if not better, content. But surely the focus is on the "discussion initiators"? We only have to find a way to extract the better content from the comments. This however, does happen as well in the writing of new, subsequent diaries.

Forums also tend (in my limited experience) to be less focussed. Older threads are being refreshed more often and huge gaps between communications can appear, making continuous communication more difficult.

Only advantage is they usually have a superior serach algorithm...

by PeWi on Mon Jan 7th, 2008 at 05:48:35 AM EST
[ Parent ]

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