A virtual organisation (e.g. The Link Institute, or a professional,
occupational, advocacy or common interest group) needs a channel for
communications among members.
In 2020, what would the Link Institute recommend as that channel?
A quick list of requirements is below (off-the-top-of-the-head).
Can anyone point to a more careful requirements statement than mine is?
Some categories and names that come to mind are:
- Email-Lists
- Listman
- Old-Style BBS / Message Boards / Internet/Discussion Fora / Groups
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Internet_forums
- Yahoo! Groups (now reverted to email-list operations?)
- Google Groups
- Whirlpool
- Social Media
- LinkedIn
- Reddit
- New-Style
- Slack
- Commercial
- Trello
- GroupSpaces
http://groupspaces.com/pricing
Is anyone aware of a feature-comparison of alternative channels, from
the viewpoint of virtual associations?
________
Quick List of Requirements (off-the-top-of-the-head):
- channel membership management, flexible, enabling any of:
- open for any email-address to subscribe to
- limited to email-addresses of people who join the organisation
- subject to channel-manager add, amend, suspend, delete, ban
- scope for selective moderation, selected by poster or content,
including amendment and forwarding
- scope for selective deletion of sub-channels, individual posts
- sub-channels:
- primary (with channel-subscribers default-subscribed to it)
- secondary sub-channels (requiring opt-in)
- easy spawning of a sub-channel from a thread,
duplicating the thread-archive across to the channel-archive
- member access options
- postings forwarded to the subscriber's email-address
- digests forwarded to the subscriber's email-address
- web-based interface with login required, and
displays by channel, sub-channel and thread
- member posting options
- new post on existing thread
- create new thread and post to it
- reply-to poster-only (default)
- reply-all, within thread or sub-channel (needs to be selected)
- post-content options:
- unformatted text, with links
- lightly formatted text, with links
- image-thumbnail, auto-linked to document / image / sound / video
- notification settings available with one click (default off) for:
- all posts
- all posts on the main channel
- all posts on a specific sub-channel
- all posts on a nominated thread
- all posts by nominated posters
- thread unsubscribe with one click
- agnostic to device-type, OS and browser / application,
i.e. designed for use on all handhelds, desktops, etc.
- archival, with search facility, global, by sub-channel, by thread,
with unlimited or at least very long retention
- minimal lock-in, especially to rapacious 'social media' juggernauts
Google, Microsoft, Apple, etc.
- no or minimal rights for a service-provider to access and to use
or disclose content of, or metadata relating to, channel traffic
- scope for interoperability with other channels (open protocols)
- scope for portability of archives to other channels (open standards)
- integrated access to this and other channels:
- by means of a single application
- by means of a single-service
________
Roger Clarke mailto:[email protected]
T: +61 2 6288 6916 http://www.xamax.com.au http://www.rogerclarke.com
Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd 78 Sidaway St, Chapman ACT 2611 AUSTRALIA
Visiting Professor in the Faculty of Law University of N.S.W.
Visiting Professor in Computer Science Australian National University
_______________________________________________
Link mailing list
[email protected]
http://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/link
