Offices and face-to-face section meetings create pressure for writers to tap into their beats, pitch stories and complete those stories on time. Online, it’s easy for that pressure to dissipate and for the assignment and completion process to become haphazard. The concept of a controlled assignment desk can easily crumble into the dust.

But it doesn’t have to.

A few sites — like citizen journalism site ibattleboro — are trying different takes on the assignment desk. We like this one. It’s organized by topic of interest and lists specifics events to cover, among other things.

There’s also a list of tips for new citizen reporters at the bottom, featuring such gems as “relax” and “pace yourself.” They’re not particularly revolutionary suggestions, but they do make contributing look as painless as possible for new writers.

The New York Times’s The Local (Maplewood, Millburn and South Orange NJ edition) has an assignment desk of sorts, too. But it’s really just a post telling readers how to email in potential story ideas. Basically, it’s better than nothing but not a hell of a lot better. In fact, quite a lot of clicking around the net has yet to yield an example of an ideal virtual desk.

The time has come to draw out our own ideal Virtual Assignment Desk. Here’s how it could be done:

• The Desk lives in a tab easily visible on the front page of a Web site and is visible in its entirety to all registered contributors. No more of this behind the scenes BS; it’s too easy to lose track of stories that way.
• The editor(s) post stories they need arranged chronologically by due date and contributors sign on for each story. For bigger sites with more sections, the assignment desk should be organized much like the site itself, by section for ease of navigation.
• A notes field allows space for editors, the writer and other contributors alike to make observations, list contacts, pass on tips.
• Aside from the assignment desk main page, a secondary page will be open to pitches from all contributors. From there, editors cull the ones they like and add them to the main desk. Even ideas that aren’t getting much love from editors have a chance because their public airing will give anyone the opportunity to support them. This could be done both through votes and a notes option. We took this one in part from the bug reporting sites of old (and new), which allow contribution from both the users (writers) and the site administrators (editors). Sites like the one for Mozilla’s Firefox have been doing it for a while and to great effect.
• Once a story is completed, it goes into an archive rather than clogging the desk. If a piece is overdue, red caps are in order. If people aren’t getting their stuff in on time, come on, they deserve a tiny bit of semi-public embarrassment, don’t they?

Developing a successful assignment desk online comes down to a few key points:

• Make it public
• Make it specific
• Allow your writers to put in their two cents