Tech: Threaded discussion forums for groups

Subject: Tech: Threaded discussion forums for groups
From: Joe Offer
Date: 09 Jan 22 - 12:44 AM

I belong to a group that's building a cohousing project near us. We're hoping to get it build and move in about 2-3 years from now. We future residents are developing the project, and we have to keep in communication.
Email hasn't been working for us. Too much information gets lost, and good much gets repeated incorrectly.
I think a discussion forum like Mudcat would be great, mut it's a lot to maintain and keep secure. Are there services that provide threaded discussion forums for groups? I've heard of one called Slack, but I know nothing about it. Does Google have something that will fill this need? Of course, I'd prefer to have something that is free or that costs $100 a year or less.
Any advice?

-Joe-

Subject: RE: Tech: Threaded discussion forums for groups
From: Helen
Date: 09 Jan 22 - 03:15 AM

Hi Joe, I just asked the resident expert, i.e. my Hubby who is an IT coordinator, and he said Yammer might be a good option. Microsoft operates it. (Is that a good thing or a bad thing? LOL)

I've never used it myself because it was set up not long before I retired at my ex-workplace for discussions among staff and managers etc about all sorts of topics. People have to join a specific group and the forum can be moderated and pesky people can be locked out, e.g. people who try to talk about issues unrelated to the topic of the forum.

Hubby said Facebook could be an option but you might get targeted for advertising because it is data-mined for people's interests. He said he has never been targeted with ads while using Yammer.

Like I said, I have no experience of using it so it might not be what you are looking for.

Subject: RE: Tech: Threaded discussion forums for groups
From: Mr Red
Date: 09 Jan 22 - 03:17 AM

We had one on Yahoo for Ceilidh organisers, but it has been closed down - Yahoo Groups closes From what I remember it was the kind of thing, and easy to use.

there is https://www.proboards.com/ - I know nothing about it, free but suspect it has ads.

Wordpress seems to be, at its origin, a forum medium, but that would involve techy work and maintenance - and webspace that provides it, if you already have such.

Subject: RE: Tech: Threaded discussion forums for groups
From: DaveRo
Date: 09 Jan 22 - 04:28 AM

Yammer has been integrated into Microsoft Teams, which is their competitor to Slack. I know nothing about Slack other than it's popular.

Google is likely to just disconinue a service with no notice, but at least it will be free.

If some users want to communicate by email but you also want a web forum, maybe Topicbox. I have used that.

It depends on mainly your users. Indiciplined or tech-naïve users will screw up the best-organized system.

Subject: RE: Tech: Threaded discussion forums for groups
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 09 Jan 22 - 10:30 AM

There are free discussion sites out there that still operate kind of under the social media radar. I was a member of a discussion group that focused on stage and film actors that has been moved from one site to another as they buy each other out. If you use it free, it has a lot of ads. It isn't terribly expensive to have a paid account and remove the ads. All of the topics are threaded.

Tapatalk.com. I'll send you a PM with a link to my (all but defunct) group so you can poke through the threads for an example of how it works.

Subject: RE: Tech: Threaded discussion forums for groups
From: Helen
Date: 09 Jan 22 - 01:28 PM

I forgot to say about Yammer that the organisations we both worked for are major state government departments.

That makes me think two things: the organisations would not have used Yammer if they didn't trust it, but also they have large IT departments to make sure that everything goes well. Knowing the usual decision-making in our state government departments I'd be prepared to bet that the first statement is the most important - they would have checked it out thoroughly before going ahead with distributing it to the employees and managers.

Subject: RE: Tech: Threaded discussion forums for groups
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 09 Jan 22 - 02:42 PM

I glanced at the Yammer information - it said something about approved email addresses. Like they might all need a hotmail type of account.

Subject: RE: Tech: Threaded discussion forums for groups
From: Helen
Date: 09 Jan 22 - 03:59 PM

Hi Maggie,

When I looked at the general information which came up on Google it said:

"Yammer is an enterprise social networking service used for private communication within organizations. Access to a Yammer network is determined by a user's Internet domain so that only individuals with approved email addresses may join their respective networks."

I'm not sure whether it would work outside of an organisation, or how or even whether it would work in Joe's scenario. The project members might have to all get an email address from the same provider.

Your suggestion for free discussion sites might be better. I don't know enough about either those or the Yammer option.

Subject: RE: Tech: Threaded discussion forums for groups
From: DaveRo
Date: 09 Jan 22 - 04:45 PM

There's Google Groups, of course, which seems to have reinvented itself yet again. I copied this from the 'what's new' page:

New Groups includes most popular Groups features as well as:

*Improved navigation—Group settings are consolidated into one section for easy access.
*Streamlined group creation—A three-step wizard simplifies group creation.
*Powerful search options—New filtering and search options help you find content.
*Simplified My groups page—When you’re signed in to Google Groups (groups.google.com), you can find all your groups on the same page. If you're signed in to an account managed by your work or school, the groups and features available depend on the settings for your organization.
*Standardized messaging—Topics are now called conversations and match Gmail patterns.
*Enhanced member management—The updated Members page provides quick access to group member subscriptions and permissions.

Free, but Google could just close it at any time.

I haven't used GG for years, though I'm still a member of several. You'd have to try it.

Not the same as the usenet inferface of GG.

Subject: RE: Tech: Threaded discussion forums for groups
From: Joe_F
Date: 11 Jan 22 - 05:51 PM

A newsgroup?

Subject: RE: Tech: Threaded discussion forums for groups
From: DaveRo
Date: 12 Jan 22 - 02:47 AM

When I first saw the subject - "Threaded discussion forums ..." I immediately thought of newsgroups. Threaded as in threads, sub-threads, sub-sub-threads .... Joe could run his own NNTP server - it's not complicated. People could connect with Thunderbird.

But then I read 'discussion group like Mudcat'. So I think not.

Subject: RE: Tech: Threaded discussion forums for groups
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 12 Jan 22 - 08:24 PM

Sub sub sub reddit? :)

Forums are still around (see Mudcat) but not commonplace like they used to be. Have you found anything helpful, Joe?

Subject: RE: Tech: Threaded discussion forums for groups
From: Joe Offer
Date: 13 Jan 22 - 01:54 AM

We haven't decided on anything yet, but Slack looks promising.

Subject: RE: Tech: Threaded discussion forums for groups
From: Jon Freeman
Date: 13 Jan 22 - 03:36 AM

If this is the group with your GoDaddy hosting (or another one with web hosting), it may also be worth checking what your package offers.

A quick look at this GoDaddy page shows their Linux hosting packages come with the popular phpbb. I think going about it that way ought to take away installation and update concerns as I assume they do the maintenance.

My web hosting package (with a different company) does have softalacious in its cPanel. That supports a number of forums. That should make installation easy although I'm not clear at the moment how you proceed when you need security updates.

Subject: RE: Tech: Threaded discussion forums for groups
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 14 Jan 22 - 04:06 PM

The site I suggested (Tapatalk) uses phpbb. You can get a look at how it works there and set up your own. Code there tends to use [ instead of <, but it's easy to figure out.

Subject: RE: Tech: Threaded discussion forums for groups
From: Jon Freeman
Date: 15 Jan 22 - 06:50 AM

I think you'd find most boards like phpbb and smf support some form of BBCode and square brackets [].

The use of straight html (and angle brackets) probably gets increasingly rare for posts. phpbb used to support this (at the admin's choice) but removed it in 3.X.

Subject: RE: Tech: Threaded discussion forums for groups
From: Mo the caller
Date: 17 Jan 22 - 01:18 PM

The other forum that I go on uses https://www.phpbb.com/