Last we spoke, the idea of incorporating "trackback" for Gothamberg was brought up. However, in our case, instead of leaving comments on a particular story, the user might write a story in response, and these would be somehow linked. There's a great short definition up at wikipedia, but I'll just try and summarize below:

It can be described simply as: "When someone links to one of my posts, my post links back to them"

Basically, TrackBack is a mechanism used in a blog that shows a list of entries in other blogs that refer to a post on the first blog.

In other words, when someone writes a story (B) linking to another story (A), the original story (A) is notified that (B) has linked to it, and some type of TrackBack information is displayed on (A)'s site linking to the new story (B). This information is typically a link and excerpt from (B)'s post.

People are, in a sense, encouraged to link to other stories, since their post gets "advertised".

In Wordpress, for example, all links in a published post can be "pinged" when the article is published. This is done automatically, when a user submits the post.

Typically, the trackback information is displayed below a blog entry. In our case, we would not just dump out the connected stories in full text below...especially if, say, 50 stories TrackBack to a particular story. Perhaps some type of excerpt (as specified by the user when posting their story) from each TrackBack story can be displayed below the focused story. When a user finishes reading a story, they find excerpts of all stories related to the story they just finished and they select the one they wish to read next.

A story's popularity might dictate the ordering of these excerpts at the end of each story...

This would be an easy, coherent method for navigating the stories. The reader would experience Gothamberg as a huge story (loosely speaking), but the story would, of course, change radically depending on which story is read first and which TrackBack links are chosen from that point onward!

They'd be no requirements that a particular story be accessible (by any path of links) to another particular story. In other words, islands could co-exist, which would also be pretty cool...

Just some thoughts...