I'm looking for an off-the-shelf CMS for a writing community that has outgrown the homemade CMS w/ phpBB integration that we started on.

We have a somewhat complicated procedure at the moment which goes like this:

  1. If desired, user can present ideas for his story in 'Workshop' (a forum)
  2. First drafts go into a forum entitled 'Auditorium' for critique and advice
  3. The story iterates within the Auditorium until it is suitably polished
  4. The user submits his story to a moderation queue, after which it hopefully...
  5. ... enters the 'Core' - a custom CMS which presents stories by genre/subject/author/reads/rating/etc...
  6. Users may review the story with a score out of 10 and a short comment.

I can sort of see how this would translate to Drupal:

  1. The user creates a story node with his first draft.
  2. People comment and the story is revised until it is satisfactory
  3. Subject to moderation, the content of the story (not the comments) is copied into a new story node within the "Core" taxonomy (the original thread will become an archive in the 'work in progress' section)
  4. Users can now post short comments with a review score.

I have two main questions: can Drupal support the somewhat complex transition between #2 and #3 above, and is there some mechanism for users to rate content rather than just comment on it?

Thanks for your time.

Comments

Rick Cogley’s picture

I think it is possible with a bit of process tweaking. You might use the "moderation votes" feature http://www.mydrupal.dom/admin/comment/configure/votes and I think you have seen the moderation queue system.

Also, there has been discussion about site karma as well, which might be interesting to mix into your idea: http://drupal.org/node/14175

In terms of taxonomy vocabularies, I'm just getting set up myself, but I spent a good week looking into that subject. Very interesting stuff - google for PMEST or BC2 for some ideas, but in my case, the articles I'd like contributors to post are categorized like this:

Subject
-- the topics we discuss, organized how I think is best suitable
Format
-- the form of the node - manual, faq etc
Attributes
-- tone - is the article analytical, political, ironic?
-- audience - is it for experienced people or beginners etc?

What I hear is that people don't often like to categorize their own content, so I put [Miscellaneous] categories to capture that, and, I imagine an editor in your case would need to go through and make sure the category is right.

Rick Cogley :: rick.cogley@esolia.co.jp
Tokyo, Japan

Rick Cogley’s picture

Also the custom module node moderation may be of interest:
http://drupal.org/node/11170

Rick Cogley :: rick.cogley@esolia.co.jp
Tokyo, Japan