I'm always looking for ways to make MetaFilter interesting. When you stop innovating, pushing the medium, or exploring new directions, a project stagnates. The site isn't always easy to keep up or keep track of, and when I don't get any enjoyment out of it, I start thinking of other things I could be doing with it. When the site gets to be too much for others, they stop visiting. I want to do something interesting with the MetaFilter space, get a little something different out of the MetaFilter universe, give readers something to look forward to seeing, and make the site fun again.

For the most part, the site relies on short, timely contributions from the userbase. Often times someone has a lot to say about an issue, and the thread space at MetaFilter tends to discourage such things. Despite such design limitations, there are some long, thought provoking contributions made on a daily basis, somewhere on the site. I find the most interesting things on the site are the posts that challenge me. The posts made by people from a different viewpoint than mine, explaining their take on an issue or event, that forces me to rethink mine. It's not always a left/right, liberal/conservative situation, many times the subject could be design or technology issues, or issues that have nothing to do with politics.

For the last several months, I've been thinking about ways to highlight the best content on MetaFilter. Part of it is that I'd love to have a place where I can point to and say: "This is why I like doing the site. This is the cream of the crop, and when you make judgments on the value of the site, consider these." Another motivation for doing this is giving credit where credit is due. Experts in writing, debate, and technology frequent MetaFilter, and they're the ones that make the site worth visiting. It's a community of thousands, but much of the praise is given to me directly, for running the site. All I did was create a container for ideas, and a few rules about how to act in such a container. The people inside of it are the ones worthy of acclaim, and I'd like to have an easier way to point that out and reward their contributions.

So what I'd like to do is fairly simple. Ask a handful of people noted for strong, well-written opinions to write at some length about a thread covered sometime in the previous month. In these pieces, authors will be able to further explain their position in a more in-depth way, show more supporting evidence for their position, and open it back up to discussion (each story will have comments, though the readers' focus will be on the main pieces). There may also be point/counterpoint articles where two contributors go toe-to-toe about a single issue, and there may also be interviews with people that were the subject of previous threads.

I want to wrap these writings in a slick, well-designed package, giving authors proper credit, and giving readers something to look forward to. I'd add an introductory piece to go along with a table of contents on each collection of writing.

I want to do an online magazine to compliment MetaFilter.

Now, where other zines have failed, MetaFilter can excel. I'm not trying to create a writing space out of nothing; there is an established base of good writers with strong opinions that contribute to the site daily. All I'd be doing is simply directing some of their energy into producing longer works once every so often. My hope is to create something like evolt.org in terms of article length and audience interaction (some comments on each piece, but discussion is rarely the focus), something sort of like alistapart and teethmag in terms of challenging viewpoints and strong opinions, and something that is more newsy than those examples, but far from being strictly focused on news and politics.

Each day there are at least one or two exemplary examples of writing and/or debate. Imagine if MetaFilter were a daily real-life event, to create this magazine, you'd find the big circles of people discussing something, and tap the person with the standout comments on the shoulder. You'd ask them to expand on their position, in another venue a couple weeks from that day.

The purpose of the magazine would be to highlight the best contributors and their opinions. It would also be a fun project for me to explore new interaction design and to think about ways of presenting articles in an easy to read fashion. Writers wouldn't be the only contributors, each issue could have a cover design and article illustrations contributed by designers within the MetaFilter membership.