[mir-coders] Re: mir: category displays?

[patrick]

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