Looking for Technology Assistance
The Law Commission of Ontario wants to create forums for various of our groups to have confidential conversations on various issues. For example, the Research Advisory Board has raised having something of the kind for discussion of issues. Our advisory groups could use forums to discuss issues relevant to a project. In fact, we started to set up a forum using Google only to find that government employees couldn’t use it (or any American-based system) because of the ramification of the Patriot Act. We have talked to a consultant about it and will be getting a proposal from them, but it occurred to me that this group would have all kinds of experience with this and might have some good ideas about how to proceed and what problems might arise. Thanks in advance for any input.
Patricia, I’d run a forum application on your own servers. That way you have full control. There are many out there, quite a few free. Take a look at the Wikipedia entries comparing internet forum software packages: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Internet_forum_software
At the bottom are links to detailed comparisons, based on the way in which the application is written. I’d look at the stuff done in PHP, and particularly at bbPress, from the makers of WordPress.
The four that come as 1-click installs with Simple Scripts are phpBB, SimpleMachinesForum, bbPress and PunBB.
phpBB is probably the most widely installed, but the interface on SMF looks pretty clean (and worth a review). Drupal is another option that comes with forums out of the box, and can operate as an instant community portal.
I agree to host it yourself, and get a backup routine in place. Be sure to keep a local copy of the scripts on an in-house PC, plus automate it to FTP or email you the SQL database daily/weekly.
If it proves to be a popular web feature for you, then invest in more support & consulting.
I’ll add a vote for phpBB. It’s a pretty easy set-up, pretty feature-rich, is actively maintained and is in very wide use.
I maintained an instance of it for a while once, and it needed very little technical attention.
Patricia, I echo what the others have suggested. If, however, you don’t want to do a lot of hosting and setting up, you might talk to the folks at Ramius Corporation. They are based in Ottawa and have created (among other things) a social network platform called Sixent that may fit the bill. Sixent Enterprise can be used privately inside the organization’s firewall, and also can be connected to a public side. It has a “white label” version–that is, a version without their branding so that you can brand it as your own.
Being in Ottawa, they are used to working with government-related organizations. You would need to ask them where their servers reside, or if they can set up on your own servers.
I visited their offices in November 2008 and was impressed. My interview with Simon Chen and Melany Gallant of Ramius is available in Episode 8 of the Community Divas podcast. (Don’t bother reading through all the comments, unfortunately spam-bots recently targetted us and I haven’t cleared them out yet).
Cheers,
Connie
My thanks for everyone’s suggestions. One factor I did think of including in my original post, but didn’t, is that we use Osgoode Law Law School’s server. I am advised that if we use that server, it will show Osgoode’s name. Despite our association with Osgoode and our technical location there (we’re actually located in another building on the York campus for now), we are independent. Other law schools are also partners to our Agreement. Having Osgoode in the name therefore does pose some problems for us. This is why we have decided we can’t use “our” own server.
Patricia double check the advice about Osgoode’s name appearing on your server. I am certain that it can be arranged so that the name does not appear when people use your bulletin board or in fact in any other way. Check out The Court, for example: it’s hosted on a York machine but shows its own domain name. Email me if you’d like to discuss it.
Have you thought about using a Wiki? You can have people discuss topics via wiki Talk pages. You have to ability to create closed discussion pages using hidden categories and user groups.
Mediawiki software is free and open source not too difficult to setup and handy to use because most users are familiar with how it works because of the popularity of Wikipedia. It should also be available to government employees.