I sat down last night to design the database schema for the liberal lab application and realized I hadn’t really decided on a logical relationship between articles, users and forums. So that’s what I’m going to has out here.
Firstly we have to decide who has permission to view what content. My initial instinct is to close the forums off to only members while leaving policy drafts open for viewing (but not editing) by the general public. This would allow anyone to view the outcomes of the discussion without being aghast by the nitty gritty of the process. It would also make it trivial to see which policy processes are being productive and are on schedule. It would also encourage each of the discussion groups to produce as the wiki is the only externally accessible result of their efforts.
Authorial authority is another issue to grapple with, who can edit the wiki? Obviously random surfers shouldn’t be able to meddle with it, nor is it a good idea to allow any Liberal Lab member to edit any document. So, only members of the corresponding policy discussion should be allowed to edit a policy draft. Should this be narrower? Considering the initial requirement of parity between forum topics and articles in the wiki it might be wise to limit authorship even further.
This speaks to another relationship to be considered - the parity. Should it be a bi-directional parity or a one-sided push? Meaning, should there always be as many forum topics as document sections? Should I have it push, so when a section is added to a policy document the system starts a new topic, but a new forum topic creation doesn’t necessarily prompt a section generation?
How granular should the parity get? Should each revision generate a new message in the appropriate forum topic?
Moreover, some of the larger issues are how to decide which policy issues to tackle? Should there be a submission period, a sort and then a vote? Should a committee draft up six or seven to choose from and hold a vote? Or should we just allow anyone who wants to moderate a policy discussion to petition to generate a process. These are important problems but aren’t immediately relevant to the database quandry.
I shall have to think about this, but any input from my reader(s) would be appreciated.