I've decided that I need to create a niche portal for a topic I've recently discovered I find interesting. My ideas are kind-of grand, but - potentially - flexible, too.

The topic for my site is expected to be controversial, sometimes subjective - and usually complex... and the grand aim of the site is to establish a collaborative system in which a vast number of external sources can be referenced, summarised, peer reviewed and, in light of constructive criticism, improved. While I expect and accept that opinions will be posted, it is my aim to structure the site such that material backed by supporting evidence (such as a link to a corroborating document elsewhere on the web) 'floats' to be most prominent. I intend the material to my site to be more structured than that contributed to a Wiki... but to be organised more like a Wiki than a forum or a Slashdot clone.

As I see it, the primary challenges I'm faced with are:

* I need a bespoke ranking system for contributions - each of which needs an attribution, annotations of sources (maybe referencing one or more earlier contributions), peer-reviewed accuracy and relevance scores... where contributors accrue some sort of score relative to the credibility - which determines their influence on rankings. * I need a bespoke strategy to collate contributions so as to create as coherent a collection of data as possible... including both sides of a debate - if one arose. * While I've a few ideas about the broad structure of contributions now, I expect this to evolve during the lifetime of the site. It is essential that the implementation of the site remains flexible. * Each contribution, I think, can be captured on a "form" - including free-text, labels, dates, numbers - etc. - but contributions are likely to have associations... and I need to be able to display these. * I expect topical conversations - and I'd like keywords to link back to the emerging 'consensus' data - and for discussions to prompt enthusiasm and material to expand the more structured data. * Initially, I expect a very small volume of traffic and data - but I need to be able to cope if this were to grow exponentially... I can't justify building a site for 10,000 concurrent users at the outset (when 10 would probably be a coup) but I don't want to paint myself into a technical corner making it difficult to grow the site in future.

In essence, I guess, I'm trying to build a self-organising expert-system based upon the contributions from site visitors - guiding and collating the material that emerges.

I've fiddled with out-the-box Drupal 6, and I'm very impressed. I suspect that I may need to develop custom modules in order to achieve what I want - but, for obvious reasons, I hope to make maximum use of modules that already exist - where that reduces the burden of development. My main uncertainties at the moment include:

* I'm unsure if I should pursue using the CCK - It seems to target something like what I'm trying to achieve using forms - but I'm uncertain if the DBMS schema that emerges will pose later problems... For example, it seems undesirable to have a 'node' for each of my CCK forms... and I'm concerned about scalability with the definition of views. Is it worth my while to persevere with the CCK, or am I best trying to use a custom module and define my own DBMS schema that way?

* Should I start from scratch with my ambtious ideas about ranking contributors and their contributions, or is it a better idea to try to extend an existing modules (Karma, for example)?

* Is it likely that I can integrate an emerging 'knowledge base' into a pre-existing forum module, or will I need to embrace/extend - or write my own?

I'd be very interested to receive comments from those better versed in Drupal than I am... of all the frameworks I've researched - it shows the most hope... yet quite a lot of hurdles remain. I'd love to know if Drupal is already deployed to run a site with a structure similar to that I've described. I'd also appreciate hints as to suitable books... I've got "Pro Drupal Development" - the Apress one - but that seems to assume I know when I need to write a module, and how it fits into the wider scheme of existing modules. I'm wondering if there is something that covers topics such as making most effective use of the CCK and views... online tutorials seem somewhat ad-hock... if I'm going to use CCK then, I suspect, I'll need to think carefully about the DBMS schema to support later collation.

Any pointers and/or hints gratefully received...

Steve