Is this possible with wordpress?

Hey there,

I’m fairly new at webdesigning in general, with some basic knowledge in html/php/mysql.

I would like to create a page where people can submit their own stories, very similar to warpdrive.se or bash.org

I would like people to be able to add, rate, and possibly comment. I would also like to categorize every story and give the user the option of looking at stories from one or multiple categories. Other than that, I want it to be very minimalistic.

Is this possible to accomplish easier with WordPress than to do it all in regular code? I basically have to learn both from scratch.

Appreciate it!