[wp-hackers] Showing unpublished posts to the public (best practices request)

[Erik Froese]

Hey everyone,

This is my first time posting to wp-hackers. I've been on the list for
a very short time so I apologize if my terminology/etiquette is not
inline with the list. I've searched the archives for an answer but
came up empty handed.

I'm working on the Assignment Desk plugin with Daniel Bachhuber from
the Edit-Flow project. The goal of the AD plugin is to bring the
community into the virtual newsroom (aka Wordpress) and encourage
community participation and contribution. To that end we're using the
Edit-Flow plugin on WP 2.9.2 We cannot use 3.x since we're writing
this in conjunction of a commercial entity that hasn't yet scheduled
that upgrade (and probably won't for a good long while).

We're using Edit-Flow's custom post status functionality to mark story
ideas as pitches (Edit-Flow's custom status are stored in a term
taxonomy). Pitches are  unpublished posts that have yet to be assigned
to a user. We'd like to present a subset of these pitches to the
public so they can vote on them as well as volunteer to write them.

What's the best way to create these public page views? We were
thinking of hijacking a category to display them somehow. I've spent
most of my short WP plugin development time int he backend so I'm not
too savvy about manipulating the Loop and the public views.

Thanks for your help in advance,
Erik Froese