The Fourth Wall of CMS

I wrote a long and abstract blog post a few weeks ago about the idea of content “projection”: Breaking the Fourth Wall of Content

What are we supposed to believe about the origins of the content we consume? Are we supposed to believe that this content just exists, suspended in some fantasy world, waiting to be magically cast out to our browsers, all Harry Potter-like? Or are we always aware that there’s a more raw, less refined version of the content somewhere else that was transformed into something more palatable for us to consume it?

I talk a bit about the difference between intranet users and public website users, and my friend, intranet expert James Robertson from Step Two, had some neat thoughts to add:

What that means is that content closer to the top and centre (eg HR, finance, IT)… should be carefully crafted and managed. I would also suggest that you would hide the 4th wall…

As you move down and out, the content becomes relevant to smaller audiences or to more specific tasks… perhaps this is where the 4th wall gets progressively more broken, with the line between publisher and user becoming steadily more blurred?

(James’s comments will make much more sense after reading the post itself.)