It seems to me that you could do something like this pretty easily
with dotLRN + general-ratings + one or two new portlets.
Imagine creating instead of a class, a topic (like OpenACS, for
example). The existing dotLRN portlets would already give you a
unified view into activity on the various OpenACS boards.
Your idea for "featured" and "documentation" status is actually
very similar to an idea I had for pulling out interestng posts in a
large distance learning class with multiple smaller group
discussions happening simultaneously. The idea in that case
was to give the professor the ability to tag posts that he thought
were interesting. (This is essentially the same as allowing a
binary rating scoped to the "Professor" group.) Then you create a
portlet that displays the subject lines for the most recent, say,
half a dozen posts that were tagged by the professor. You could
do the same thing with documentation by giving topic (or, in the
OpenACS case, module) owners the same binary toggle for
"knowledge" and then create a couple of different portlets to offer
views into that tagged base of knowledge.
Now, if you wanted to get *really* funky, then add
general-categories into the mix. Imagine that we have a
dotLRN-style OpenACS "class" and, in parallel, an AOLServer
"class" hosted in the same package instance. Items in the
AOLServer area that are appropriately tagged could also be
pulled across to the OpenACS area.
Cool stuff, and a lot easier now that we have some real
infrastructure.
