Question What's the easiest way to set up a forum (ish) thing in 2023?

[Magnus McGinty]

When Dulwich Hamlet tried to move away from this forum to an 'official' discord one, lots of fans (including myself) hated the interface. It failed miserably as everyone preferred to stay here.

Yeah, it's no better than slack for posting stuff really. I do use the screen sharing stuff quite a bit for collaborative stuff but it's more me and another rather than a group.

 

[Magnus McGinty]

There are a couple of youtube channels I follow where I know they also have a discord server(?) where keen followers discuss engineering design type stuff, which is a bit like what I'm after here and I assume works for posting things like images and technical drawings, but I've never actually tried using discord. Of course instead of just lazily half asking about it here I could go and try joining one but hardly even know where to start.

It can be confusing to get into. You either have to have a mate on there who you can PM or join a pre-existing server.

 

[teuchter]

Proboards won't be the best either. Editor obviously shells out for image hosting, the free ones you'd have to point to an existing URL or host the image by other means.

It wouldn't be a massive group. There might never be more than 20-50 people. I do have a website & therefore hosting space. I wouldn't mind some of that being used, even paying a little for it, but what I really don't want is yet another system that I have to remember how to administrate and configure and so on.

 

[Magnus McGinty]

It wouldn't be a massive group. There might never be more than 20-50 people. I do have a website & therefore hosting space. I wouldn't mind some of that being used, even paying a little for it, but what I really don't want is yet another system that I have to remember how to administrate and configure and so on.

I know less about that. Editor or Lazy Lama know more about that.

 

[Puddy_Tat]

It would be a sort of spin-off of an existing Facebook group. Facebook is not really good because, well, it's facebook. But also too much extraeneous clutter, not good for uploading images, means people have to be linked to personal profiles, and I don't like the forked discussion threads and un-searchability of everything.

i agree that work and farcebook shouldn't mix unless people really want to. place i worked during the covid years got a farcebook group up and running, initially to keep in touch with people who were on furlough, and then it replaced some things that would have happened in staff meetings.

it got a bit unpleasant and there were fallings-out and HR imposing a code of conduct, and people being banned from it.

one or two colleagues really didn't like having their off-duty time interrupted with being tagged about things that people thought were their fault.

and there's people who might not want to mix every aspect of their social / personal life with work. (i certainly wouldn't even if was on farcebook - i would not want my tweeter or urban identities to be linked to my work identity)

MD wanted me to go on there and since i don't even have a farcebook account, i said no, it would be like putting my home phone number on work e-mails. if they wanted to set up an exclusive forum for staff, i'd go on there (one place i worked did the 'yammer' thing but no idea how much that costs. this was a pretty big organisation.)

I also use a few io.groups, basically where old yahoo groups migrated. That potentially could work ok, except it's not really optimised for posting images.

groups.io is ok-ish, i'm on there for one personal thing and (with work not personal e-mail address) something work related (based on a trade organisation rather than just one employer.)

it's not free except the very basic version and any images / documents get added as an attachment.

you have the option to get individual e-mails for every post, daily (or every X number of posts) 'digest' e-mails, or just go on and use it like a forum. I think either of the first two would annoy the heck out of me, bu tit does mean you can reply to an e-mail and that ends up on the group.

the 'digest' approach also means that the thread doesn't always follow in real time, and it's not always obvious what people are quoting when they reply to something from a while back.

another snag of doing it as an e-mail exchange is if your work e-mail system adds to the e-mail subject then any reply goes off the main thread unless you edit the subject carefully to stop threads getting fragmented, e.g. there's one thread re:stuff and another re:[external] stuff

I use Basecamp a bit (that's something hosted by relevant government department) which seems similar but with more gimmicks and no idea how much it costs. And someone's out of office reply managed to get through to one thread today...

 

[Puddy_Tat]

just another thought - would it be mostly one person doing the opening posts and others having the option to reply, or could it be anyone starting a thread?

if it's mostly going to be 'the management' posting subjects, then would a basic wordpress option work? it allows reply to blog posts

although not sure you can make the whole thing private - the one i've done the basic site was intended to be public, but i set it so that comments had to be approved before they were visible (that's optional though).

i'm not sure it would work for what you're proposing, but might just be worth a look.

 

[klang]

You'll just have to get your colleagues to sign up here.

 

[pbsmooth]

Discord is more like a continuous chat. Not threaded discussions. You can have multiple rooms but not really the same as a forum. All on the app.
Slack is similar but better on desktop but seems more suited to work chat (we use it at work).

I think a Reddit subreddit sounds like a good idea. Assuming you can make them private.

 

[teuchter]

just another thought - would it be mostly one person doing the opening posts and others having the option to reply, or could it be anyone starting a thread?

if it's mostly going to be 'the management' posting subjects, then would a basic wordpress option work? it allows reply to blog posts

although not sure you can make the whole thing private - the one i've done the basic site was intended to be public, but i set it so that comments had to be approved before they were visible (that's optional though).

i'm not sure it would work for what you're proposing, but might just be worth a look.

It would be anyone posting.

When I say "work stuff" I don't mean any kind of company internal thing.

It actually would be a small bunch of people, mostly self employed & working on their own, in the same sort of field, and just a convenient way of sharing thoughts/questions about work related stuff, largely technical stuff, in an informal way.

 

[teuchter]

Discord is more like a continuous chat. Not threaded discussions. You can have multiple rooms but not really the same as a forum. All on the app.
Slack is similar but better on desktop but seems more suited to work chat (we use it at work).

I think a Reddit subreddit sounds like a good idea. Assuming you can make them private.

Can you do private subreddit?

No-one would be posting anything super secret but would want it to feel a relatively "safe space" to discuss things in a non public way.

 

[teuchter]

groups.io is ok-ish, i'm on there for one personal thing and (with work not personal e-mail address) something work related (based on a trade organisation rather than just one employer.)

it's not free except the very basic version and any images / documents get added as an attachment.

you have the option to get individual e-mails for every post, daily (or every X number of posts) 'digest' e-mails, or just go on and use it like a forum. I think either of the first two would annoy the heck out of me, bu tit does mean you can reply to an e-mail and that ends up on the group.

the 'digest' approach also means that the thread doesn't always follow in real time, and it's not always obvious what people are quoting when they reply to something from a while back.

another snag of doing it as an e-mail exchange is if your work e-mail system adds to the e-mail subject then any reply goes off the main thread unless you edit the subject carefully to stop threads getting fragmented, e.g. there's one thread re:stuff and another re:[external] stuff

Yes I am on a couple of groups.io groups, including one that is kind of transport history focused and true to stereotype has a high proportion of retired men, most of whom use it via email (I just use the web interface) and it quite regularly descends into chaos with inconsistent subject titles, and then arguments about who is responsible for the inconsistent subject titles, all mixed in with occasional messages about the failure of someone or the other's email hosting service to deliver something, and so on and so on. I pity the moderator who is mostly very patient with all this.

 

[Puddy_Tat]

and it quite regularly descends into chaos with inconsistent subject titles, and then arguments about who is responsible for the inconsistent subject titles, all mixed in with occasional messages about the failure of someone or the other's email hosting service to deliver something, and so on and so on. I pity the moderator who is mostly very patient with all this.

and