initial requirement specs

[Roger Dingledine <arma@mit.edu>]

Please look these over, and send any questions or comments
that come to mind. This is intended to be a wishlist -- anything
we might want to have in the system we come up with. Not everything
might be feasible, but you should list it anyway. We want the end
result to be beneficial to everybody who uses it. That way people
will want to use it...

Btw, I've gotten no response from Liz (LWN) or Rob (slashdot).
Anybody have closer connections to them and think it would be a
good idea to bug them further?

--Roger

Initial Requirement specs:

User's perspective:

I would like to be able to connect to a well-known address, and
get a fast and reliable connection to it. It can't lag very much,
and it must *always* be up. News should come out in a timely
fashion. I must be able to submit news easily, and have it
appear on all the relevant news sites in a reasonable amount of
time.

I would like there to be a comprehensive archive site that contains
all the news of every category, and I can search it in a powerful way.

Admin's perspective:

I would like to choose which categories of news I present to the
public, and I would like to get as much news from those categories
as possible.

It would be nice if I didn't have to approve every piece of news, but
it's crucial that somebody competent approve articles so we can avoid
spam.

I would like to get news articles pre-formatted, so I don't have to
write up a description of each of them.

I would like to get news articles pre-sorted, so I don't have to read
through them and decide what category they're in.

I want to be able to present information in a unique way on my site,
so people will want to use my site.

I want the option of providing the information in multiple formats, like
a web page, mailing list, or digest.

I want to be able to automate much of this process, but I also want to be
able to do things manually.