Archive

OTW-Archive Roadmap

This roadmap is not meant to be set in stone -- it will evolve as we go. It's meant to lay out a general game plan for the development of the archive software, give all of us a sense what we're aiming for, and guide the process. Many things will change, especially once we have testers start banging on the process! Also, please be aware the version numbers are purely for our internal use, as checkpoints where we pause and make sure everything is working well before we move on. The first version released to the public will be version 1.0.

Feedback and suggestions are welcome to adt@transformativeworks.org -- we will read and consider all comments, although we ask that you please do not expect individual responses, as we are busy working on the project! If you are interested in getting involved either with archive development or testing, please contact volunteers@transformativeworks.org with some information about your background.

• Version 0.1: Archive Core
  

  Version 0.1 includes the basic core archive functionality for a single user: creating an account, upload/edit/delete a work, view a list of works in the archive, view an individual work.

  We're also creating separate admin accounts. Admin accounts will have a separate login entirely, will be logged more intensively, and will not be personalized; meaning, admins will not be able to subscribe to authors or bookmark stories, and the admin accounts will all be named something generic like "Archive Admin". The idea is that admin accounts will only be used for admin functions, and admins will have their own normal user accounts for actually using the archive.

  Version 0.1 also includes globalization features: the archive will be built using UTF-8 encoding and have features to allow interface translating through a web interface.

• Version 0.2: Archive Core 2
  

  Version 0.2 will allow you to preview the work before you post it, and to read a story either chapter by chapter or as a whole.

  Authors will be allowed to post under pseuds that are not their archive user ID -- that is, if someone else has beaten you to username spikeyluv, you can't have that as your user ID, but you can still use it as a pseud. We hope this will prevent most cases where people end up creating new userids, and be useful for those who want to preserve their original pseudonyms on older work, and for RP users (ie, you can be Captain Jack [uniqueuserwoohoo] instead of creating a separate login of CaptainJack1231).

  This is also the point at which privacy enters the picture -- you can restrict your story to be visible to registered users only, which will also block it from search engines, spiders, etc.

  We will also be starting to build in archive configuration options here (for cases where we may want to make it easy to change the archive behavior, or others may want to use the archive software and configure it differently).

• Version 0.3: Archive Core 3
  

  Comments, Bookmarks, and Readings are the next features on the list. Comments will be threaded. Bookmarks can be either public or private (recs are simply bookmarks made public). Bookmarks will be taggable and you can create bookmarks for works on other sites as well as within the archive.

  Readings represent the interaction of a user and a work: when you view a work (other than your own), a Reading is created behind the scenes. These track what you read and what version of a Work, so you can keep a history of the stories you read and be notified when an author updates a story in your history.

• Version 0.4: Administration
  

  Here we add features for managing problems in the archive. Users will be able to ban specific users from commenting and/or to ban unregistered users from commenting. Users also need to be able to send in complaints to the abuse team via a simple form. We will set up a system allowing admins to track their individual "cases".

• Version 0.5: Tags
  

  Tagging will allow you to put tags on your own stories and on your own bookmarks (making your bookmarks like del.icio.us). There will be some categories of fixed tags whose potential values are managed by archive administrators to create hierarchies for easier browsing: Fandom, Character, Pairing, Genre, etc. Freeform tags will also be available. Content warnings (decided on by the content policy team) will also be represented as tags.

  You control the tags on your own story. If you create a bookmark for a story, you can put tags on that bookmark to describe the story, which the author cannot control.

• Version 0.6: Searching and Browsing
  

  Pretty self-explanatory! Depending on the resource usage, we'd like to provide full-text searching and have hopes this should be feasible. You will also be able to search/browse by tags and combinations thereof.

• Version 0.7: Subscriptions
  

  You will be able to subscribe to:

  • a user's works or recs
  • a particular tag or set of tags
  • a user's works and/or recs with a particular set of tags

  We're imagining the subscriptions as generating a page of all the new stuff you want to read now, and as such a major way that people interact with the archive. We'd like also to build a recommendation engine here that will help new users quickly find authors/reccers to subscribe to as they come into the archive, although this may get tabled to post-version-1.0.

• Version 0.8: Community and Challenges
  

  The last major area of functionality that will get added is around community.

  Communities will likely be defined with a specific tag under the control of the community owner, who will also have control over a community front page of some kind. Stories posted with a community's tag will appear within that community. Subscriptions will be expanded so users can subscribe to a particular community. It will eventually be made possible to run a moderated community (ie, a moderator has to approve the addition of the community's tag to the story), although possibly deferred until after version 1.0.

  We will also make it possible to run challenges through the archive (regular-challenge communities like sgaflashfic, or annual challenges like Yuletide or Big Bang, or one-shot challenges). Tools for running challenges (managing prompts and assignments, matching tools for exchange challenges, anonymous-posting-and-reveal, etc) will be built on top of the Community infrastructure, although these may be deferred until after version 1.0.

  Crossposting control will already be built-in to subscriptions: you will only see a story appear once on your subscriptions list, even if it has been posted to five different communities you are subscribed to.

  In other community-type features, we will allow users to cite other stories as their inspirations and for authors to link to stories inspired by their work. We are also tentatively planning to allow people to display number of recs and number of reads on their public and/or private homepages as well as a feature by which you can cite your betas and link to them, and readers can click on the link and find other stories the same person has betaed -- it's a good way to find a community of like-minded authors.

  Users will need to be notified of connections other users make to them (eg, when they are cited as a beta, as an inspiration), and given the option (which they can refuse) of linking back.

• Version 0.9
  

  The final phase will be about refinement -- making the front end look better, allowing more markup/upload options, and customizing your homepage. We will also be doing performance testing here to identify areas of slowness in the code to optimize.