After a long debate, Tripunitara hammered out six pages of message board guidelines for hosts, moderators, postings and users. Best practices, worst practices Amy Gahran, moderator for the Online Writing listserv, spoke about best practices and worst practices in news site interactivity. There's no reason why newspapers can't create similar features. Paul added that photo sections can pull significant traffic. With the U.S. elections right around the corner, a number of sites are encouraging reader participation.
Databases also provide interactive opportunities for users.
PBS.org, for example, provides a list of localized political ballots to interact with at The Democracy Project. Scorecard.org also provides reams of data to study on crime, governmental data, etc. Laurence Bricker, founder of Popular Front, a multimedia agency in Minneapolis, presented several creative interactive Macromedia Flash and Shockwave presentations created for the likes of PBS.org, including award-winning interactive musical composition primers. Some interactive stories include Sound Lounge, Communities in Harmony and World Beat. I love the challenge.