The creation of information in Blogspace should be as easy as possible. Furthermore, wherever possible the creation, modification and display of information should be made as easily as possible. With most systems, the creation and consumption processes are separated by a vast chasm of time and effort. It is one of the key goals for Blogspace to eliminate this chasm.
For example, a Blogspace interface could provide an option to modify the information whenever it was displayed to a user with the appropriate access. This is already done in Manila, with its use of the "Edit this Page" button. In addition, a Web interface to Blogspace could take this one step further by with a "Create this Page" button when the browser visits a page which does not exist.
To go along with our goal of simplifying things for the user, Blogspace should provide the minimum number of fields as neccessary to complete any given operation. After the user has filled out that much information, Blogspace should safely store them and then continue on to ask the user for further (optional) information.
Whenever possible, the screen to modify an entry should look just like the screen used to create the entry, except that it is filled in. This another reason why it's so important to keep the exact information that the user entered: so that it can be presented back to them in the same fashion.
Obviously, one of the most important functions in Blogspace is the display of information. However, this is also one of the most variable. It's very important that the content entered in Blogspace remains exactly as the user submitted it, and all conversions and modifications ocurr only when the document is being displayed to the user.
In other words, if you're going to enter in plain text into Blogspace, it should remain as plain text and not be converted to HTML or any other format. When you display it to a web browser, it may be converted as part of the display process, but this should not affect any of the information being stored.
aaron@blogspace.comAn Aaron Swartz Project