[MKDoc-dev] Future of the MKDoc Discussion component?

[Bruno Postle]

We currently have a discussion board in MKDoc-1.6 that uses an IMAP 
backend to store the data.  This has been removed in MKDoc-1.8 for 
various reasons, mainly because it doesn't get much usage - Before 
we recreate it, we should figure-out why.

The existing design comes from our experience of various internet 
discussion forums; basically, we make a lot of use of usenet, 
mailing-lists and irc.  

We hardly ever use web-boards because they are so inefficient as a 
means of *discussion*.  So the MKDoc discussion board was designed 
as if it was a threaded newsgroup, with all the features of a decent 
mail/news client.

This article by Joel Spolsky has some interesting ideas:

  http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/BuildingCommunitieswithSo.html

I propose that we accept what we always knew: that the web is a 
terrible medium for discussion, but a good medium for comment.

A replacement for the discussion board might look like this:

We do away with the Discussion component and its IMAP backend and 
create a new Comment component.

The Comment component inherits from the Text component, but it has 
two extra pieces of metadata:  Author and Date.

Any authenticated user can add a Comment component to the bottom of 
any document, however not all document templates will display 
Comment components - Editors will have to select 'Blog' or 'Comment' 
templates to make them visible.

(Allowing comments on any document will allow a future bonus feature 
where users can create a comment that only Editors can see)

The interface for non-editor users will be a simple 'Add a comment' 
text box at the bottom of the page, with a single 'Submit' button 
and no 'preview' functionality - There will be no automatic quoting 
of previous text.

Editors can add, move, edit or delete Comment components just like 
any other component - Editors should be encouraged to prune 
duplicated and off-topic bloat from pages.

New comments are always added at the bottom of a page, so the page 
reads in rough cronological order - There should be no threading.

That's it, this ought to be pretty easy to implement.

-- 
Bruno