Thread to consolidate features of an online journal

[Eli]

I've started this new thread to be a place to consolidate the various
suggested features of an online journal. I think the ideas here could
be related to almost anything about the journal.

I'll start with the ideas I've already tossed out, and also add two
new one

1) new major project every month: I think a project a week is too much
for readers/participants to digest, even if it were doable by the
organizer. On the otherhand, strict measures should be taken not to
allow projects to exceed their scheduled period, no matter how
interesting or what still needs to be done on them, in order not to
lose readers out of boredom. If a lot needs to be done, then see item
#2 below.

2) forums for older projects: a place for folks to discuss and
continue work on old projects after the journal moves on to a new main
project. These project forums might be done separately, or as one big
"older projects" forum.

3) easy-to-use, good documentation: self explanatory

4) Something I've seen that I like a lot is the ability to comment or
discuss expository material at a relatively fine-grain level. For an
example, see the online version of the "Real World Haskell" book
( http://book.realworldhaskell.org/read/ ) where people comment and
discuss each paragraph using a bloggish format.

5) A weekly programming exercise- Has anyone ever found the ACM
programming contests to be fun? Or to do things like write programs
which produce themselves as output? I may be dating myself, but I
found those contest projects entertaining back when I used to program.
How about a small contest exercise to write a program in Erlang with
some constraints and some preset input data? For example, we might
start with writing an Erlang version of the meteor contest which is
missing from the programming language shootout (
http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/u32q/benchmark.php?test=meteor&lang=hipe
) or use any of the old ACM contest problems (
http://www.ntnu.edu.tw/acm/ProblemSetArchive.html ). Our various
efforts could all be posted shared and compared. This weekly
programming exercise would not be meant to derail people from the main
monthly project, but would be just a brain trainer, fun exercise, not
intended to take that much time.