[IMC-NYC-Editorial] Re: mir: category displays?

[Chris Anderson]

Hi all,

Last message from me for the night. Probably :)

I would like to hear some good arguments in favor of
the SF display. Most of the ones I've heard have been
along the lines of "its different." I have also heard
some wariness of the SF layout.

I remember that the SF decision to change the display
was accompanied by an editorial which made some pretty
explicit pronouncements about the purpose of
Indymedia. Not to say that's a reason to think thats
not to change the display, but I DO think that the way
that the SF site is currently laid out that it is
difficult for a newbie to tell that its open
publishing. If we did go to the SF display I'd really
like to highlight the open publishing nature of our
site, somehow, at least more than it is on the SF
site.

Anyway, I'm not dead set against the SF layout. I just
want to be convinced. Convince me.

chris
--- patrick <patrick at indymedia.org> wrote:

> Hey,
> 
> Please see my responses below:
> 
> > > If this could be used to replicate what sf.indy
> and indybay.org
> > > have on their homepages, that'd be great.  That
> is, to display
> > > n number of the latest posts in a particular
> category; and sort
> > > the newswire by category.
> >
> > mir will do category homepages, with distinct
> newswires, pretty
> > easily...  what i was going to work on was some
> sort of front-page
> > category highlights box
> ...
> > what these boxes would actually represent..i.e.
> last posts,
> > separate "topic-feature" highlights, how the
> categories to be
> > displayed would be chosen(manually? automatically?
>  if the latter,
> > how?)
> 
> Well, what do you think about replicating
> sf/indbay's method?  Ana and 
> others were excited by this in nyc.  Here's my
> thoughts, and what I think 
> other imc's would be interested in:
> 
> ----
> 
> The homepage has 2 parts of the center-column that
> display the latest 
> posts by category, either from the open publishing
> newswire only, or by a 
> blend of the open newswire and all the rss feeds, if
> that's trivial to 
> implement.  These displays are randomized every n
> hours.  Here's a 
> template example:
> 
> http://nyc.phillyimc.org
>
http://sarai.indymedia.org/~patrick/mir.nyc/index.02.php
> 
> 1) The first category display has n category items,
> but only 1 headline 
> per category, accompanied by an icon for that
> category (e.g., palestinian 
> flag for palestine category.  The icon can grab
> attention and breaks up 
> the text-only headlines, and gives a visual cue for
> categories.
> 
> This first category display could also be
> editorially controlled, where 
> site editors pick the headlines. This might be too
> much work for editors. 
> But maybe the topic-special code could be
> re-purposed this display.
> 
> 2) The second category display would not be
> editorially controlled, it 
> would just be fed from the newswire, as some other
> imc sites do.  It would 
> display n headlines per category item.  If it's
> trivial to implement, 
> maybe some of the category items could be set to
> permanently display 
> (e.g., the 'local' category), and others are
> randomized (e.g., 'gender').
> 
> For both displays, it would be great to have a
> script that truncates the 
> headlines if they get too long, with an ellipsis
> (e.g., "Bush Names New 
> Cabinet Post, Just Yesterday Morning, Close to Noon
> Actually, And I Really 
> Disagree With It Becau...").
> 
> ----
> 
> Apart from these 2 pieces -- wondering if the
> icon/headline randomizing 
> code could be re-used for the 2 image displays on
> that page above.  There 
> would be a pool of editorially controlled images
> with captions, 
> randomized.  Editors could choose to fill the pool
> with only only 
> pictures/captions related to the center column
> stories (big headlines), or 
> maybe put in images linked to yet other stories.
> 
> I think sf.indy's idea of using less images and one
> large one is more 
> engaging, and better displays pictures compared to
> the small thumbnails 
> required by our current blog-style design in dada. 
> But randomizing them 
> would keep the page fresh, instead the intensive
> task of trying to update 
> it daily or so.
> 
> ----
> 
> > > My idea, not sure if this is done elsewhere, is
> to have subsection 
> > > homepages for some categories.  And to offer
> shared editorial
> > > control over these to respective groups.
> >
> > subsections are possible, but limited editorial
> access is off the
> > agenda, at least for the forseeable future...
> 
> Understood.  Well, perhaps we can set up an adhoc
> solution, maybe a local 
> list for groups to request their category center
> column content, or 
> perhaps through that user suggestion queue you
> mentioned, where users 
> suggest articles for the newswire.
> 
> Or maybe a group can create an rss feed where they
> only post center column 
> features for their subsection, and this gets fed to
> the category homepage 
> center column.  So, bypassing the mir admin
> permissions issues.
> 
> That is, at least for now a subsection is just a
> category homepage, and 
> not as full-fledged as uk's subsections (based on
> locale). But, I also 
> want to expand the editorial role, so trusted folks
> from other groups can 
> get access to the mir admin to control their
> sections, but aren't required 
> to get involved in wider imc process.  As part of
> the editorial team, 
> there also wouldn't be the same mir admin permission
> issues.
> 
> 
> Thanks,
> Patrick
> 
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> imc-nyc-editorial mailing list
> imc-nyc-editorial at lists.indymedia.org
>
http://lists.indymedia.org/mailman/listinfo/imc-nyc-editorial
> 



		
__________________________________ 
Do you Yahoo!? 
Yahoo! Small Business - Try our new resources site!
http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/resources/