Running Weblogs with Slash

The Slash Publishing Cycle

Like living organisms, political movements, and dot-com startups, Slash Stories have a well-defined life cycle (see Figure 1-11). They are born (usually as user submissions), they mature (when published by an Author), they live productively for a while (as users add comments and moderate those comments), and, after a full life, they go to heaven (are archived, where no more comments can be added).

Figure 1-11. The life cycle of a Slash Story and comments

Most Slash sites operate somewhat like community newspapers. The people in a small town have a number of shared concerns that arise from living in the same legal jurisdiction, in the same school district, and so on. A small-town newspaper serves as both a mirror held up to that community and a speakers’ platform for the people to conduct public business and make their voices heard. Readers can write letters to the editor or opinion essays for the editorial page, or just call the attention of the newspaper staff to issues they feel deserve coverage. In the case of a Slash site, the common unifying factor of its audience is less likely to be geographic proximity than a social or technical topic of common interest, but Slash sites (and other kinds of public weblogs) provide the same mechanisms of reportage and discussion that a good small-town newspaper provides for its community.

A Story usually starts off ...