Story

The idea of federation is a good one - don't let the fuss over SoylentNews put you off.
Many of us want a return to the old days of communities being in control of their forums instead of web sites (see the recent discussions on Usenet, and the slashcott)
The hackers answer to this is distributed social networks but these haven't taken off - probably because most require users to install software.
OTOH you could have a distributed discussion system - like Usenet - except accessed through web front ends, provided anyone could set up a website to access it then competition would mean users are still in control.