Recently, I've been thinking about the way most news is presented, especially the transitional nature of most news headlines.
Right now, it is really easy to follow current events, but it can often be difficult to keep track of the context of current news, and unless a story has a personal connection it is really easy for long term followups to get lost in the shuffle of new news.
What I'm picturing is something that is part wiki, part social bookmarking, but not entirely either that lets users keep a running timeline for major news stories that would provide an overarching timeline of the course of a story's life.
For example, a user could go and look to see what the top ten news stories were in May 2006, and click on one to see a timeline of major events having to do with that story.
Let's say that the user clicked selected a story about a high profile arrest. The site might show a timeline that provided links to stories about the outcome of the trial, the first reports of whatever crime was committed, news on appeals, etc.
The site would probably rely a lot on user interaction to build links up between different stories, filter out the most important stories, and to summarize major storylines. Of course, algorithms to help prompt users with related stories, followups, etc would probably be really helpful, but the core of the site would be user driven.
Does anyone know if something like this exists? If not, I'm seriously thinking of trying to make it.
Does this sound like a site that any of you would be interested in using if it did exist?
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
That sounds like an excellent idea. I think the key to it would be the user-driven presentation of information that is well sourced.
If you've ever tried "wikihopping" the same could be accomplished within a news aggregate website, where the information is from a source and not user-created content. In fact, if you wanted to you could have your site aggregate more than just news, and have it link up well sourced and reliable information on all kinds of topics.
Posted by Strider (Member # 1807) on :
ricree, that site idea sounds fantastic. I have no idea if something like that already exists, but if it has, I've never come across it.
I've wanted something exactly like that for a while now though. I'll come across stories regularly that I want to follow in the future or keep track of the progress and unless it stays as a major headline on CNN I'll usually lose track of it and forget to follow up.
This would also make it easier to catch up on stories that you've missed.
Good stuff.
Posted by scifibum (Member # 7625) on :
With RSS feed for updates to a storyline it's really appealing. You should try it if it's not been tried yet.