Side story: this discussion board has been a long-time project of mine. For years I have been looking for a minimalistic discussion board, but all I could find was bloated pieces of software that did 10x what I wanted, and were missing the few things I cared about - like mathematical notations, (hey, have a look at my EOQ, $Q=\sqrt{\frac{2c_l\cdot k}{c_s}}$). More recently, the big platforms started doubling down on both fact checking - as if such a thing was possible when operating platforms that discuss everything and the rest - and monetization. Both being quite toxic to healthy open discussions. This renewed my sense of urgency for this project.
Yet, I believe that an online community does require neither a big platform to operate, not a heavy handed moderation policy. As long you don't have to deal with millions of users, a few careful design decisions can alleviate the bulk of the usual problems that plague online communities (spamming, trolling, brigading).
About 10 days ago, I started actually working on the Supply Chain News project. For the tech-inclined, I have implemented this webapp in C# / .NET 6 / ASP.NET with minimal amount of JS. The persistence is performed via Lokad.AzureEventStream, an open source project of Lokad. I might open source this very forum at some point, once the webapp is a little more battle tested.
It is often the case in software that deciding on a solution based on a checklist of features leads to feature bloat. Picking a few core features, and wrapping them in a system that allows easy customization, is quite more effective.
Thanks and welcome! Don't hesitate to submit a link of your own, and/or to post a question. You will benefit from an extra level of care being on of the first non-Lokad contributors. :-)
Side story: this discussion board has been a long-time project of mine. For years I have been looking for a minimalistic discussion board, but all I could find was bloated pieces of software that did 10x what I wanted, and were missing the few things I cared about - like mathematical notations, (hey, have a look at my EOQ, $Q=\sqrt{\frac{2c_l\cdot k}{c_s}}$). More recently, the big platforms started doubling down on both fact checking - as if such a thing was possible when operating platforms that discuss everything and the rest - and monetization. Both being quite toxic to healthy open discussions. This renewed my sense of urgency for this project.
Yet, I believe that an online community does require neither a big platform to operate, not a heavy handed moderation policy. As long you don't have to deal with millions of users, a few careful design decisions can alleviate the bulk of the usual problems that plague online communities (spamming, trolling, brigading).
About 10 days ago, I started actually working on the Supply Chain News project. For the tech-inclined, I have implemented this webapp in C# / .NET 6 / ASP.NET with minimal amount of JS. The persistence is performed via
Lokad.AzureEventStream, an open source project of Lokad. I might open source this very forum at some point, once the webapp is a little more battle tested.It is often the case in software that deciding on a solution based on a checklist of features leads to feature bloat. Picking a few core features, and wrapping them in a system that allows easy customization, is quite more effective.
I am looking forward to some good discussions here.
Thanks and welcome! Don't hesitate to submit a link of your own, and/or to post a question. You will benefit from an extra level of care being on of the first non-Lokad contributors. :-)