Public and Private Group Discussion Options -- an overview
The question was asked "what options are there for private group discussions other than G+".
There are numerous options, ranging in ease of access, use, capabilities, privacy, control, technical skill, and most of all, personal and group goals.
There are a number of groups-oriented platforms: Google Groups, Yahoo Groups, simple email lists (underappreciated and powerful), and Usenet (obscure now, but also capable). All can host private groups.
Reddit has "subreddits" -- forums. These can be public or private, and offer a number of useful features, though also limitations. I have grave concerns over Reddit's "ownership" model for its subreddits: Any Reddit member can request control of any subreddit, if the owner has been inactive on the site for six months.
Federated platforms including Hubzilla and Friendica allow you to self-host group discussions on your own servers. If you're concerned about privacy, this may be your best option. Diaspora and Mastodon, also federated and self-hostable, do not have a concept of groups built in. These take some technical skill but are an excellent option moving forward, offering full control and ownership.
Blogs make excellent community platforms. They can be set to private, have discussions and notifications and numerous features: Wordpress, Dreamwidth, Drupal, and numerous other platforms.
There are old-school online BBS / weblog discussion platforms, more formally, "content management systems" (CMS) -- PHP-Nuke and many others.
Wikis can be a type (or part) of online social groups.
GitHub and GitLab are commonly thought of as programmer or development tools and platforms, but can be used as blogs and social sites. They are excellent for task-oriented or goal-oriented groups. Both options offer hosted service; GitLab can be self-hosted. I'm planning on using GitLab for my own future online presence.
There's a new platform called Groups.io that is based on email lists, though it goes beyond this.
Mailchimp is among the commercial mailing list management tools out there. I've seen (and have concerns myself) about its privacy and marketing policies.
Slack offers group-oriented chats. It's aimed at businesses, and for that reason the discussions are private by default.
There are a host of other messaging type tools, ranging from old-school IRC (Slack derives from this in many ways) to Jitsi (from Atlassian), Discord (offers video/voice, popular with gamers), and others.
There are a number of not-yet-released tools including Solid, OpenBook, and more. I don't recommend relying on these right now but they may be useful future options.
If you have an existing group you're looking to migrate now, our recommendation is use an existing and straightforward platform. Email lists, Google or Yahoo Groups, and Reddit are probably the easiest to set up, and most viable, for now.
If and only if you have the technical skills and capacities to do so should you be looking at self-hosted options, currently.
We've been constructing a few resources for additional information.
At #PlexodusReddit, the Topics and Site / Platform search page lets you see posts about specific platforms. This is very loosely organised, but tends to at least give an overview of the major (and many minor) options:
https://old.reddit.com/r/plexodus/wiki/post_flair
(We also strongly encourage you to sign up here for future discussion as G+ winds down.)
The "Sites & Platform" topic lists all articles concerning all sites and platforms:
https://old.reddit.com/r/plexodus/search?q=flair:%22Sites%20%26%20Platforms%22&restrict_sr=on
At #PlexodusWiki, we've been trying (and quite frankly, not succeeding as much as I'd like) to provide information on platforms and sites. For now, that's probably most useful for how it organises the information rather than the information provided. My apologies. Assistance with this page and area is strongly encouraged and hugely appreciated.
https://social.antefriguserat.de/index.php/Platforms_and_Sites
Wikipedia itself has many excellent articles. Among them:
List of social networking websites:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_social_networking_websites
List of virtual communities:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_virtual_communities
Content management systems:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_management_system
List of content management systems:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_content_management_systems
List of collaborative software:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_collaborative_software
(There does not seem to be a list of blog software, though there are many articles on blogs and blogging.)
There is a category for blog software:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Blog_software
You'll find many additional topics linked from these, as well as primary sources.
Also: John Saddington's "The Ultimate List of Blogging Platforms, Blog Software, Free and Paid":
https://john.do/blogging-platforms/
https://old.reddit.com/r/plexodus/wiki/post_flair
https://old.reddit.com/r/plexodus/wiki/post_flair
The question was asked "what options are there for private group discussions other than G+".
There are numerous options, ranging in ease of access, use, capabilities, privacy, control, technical skill, and most of all, personal and group goals.
There are a number of groups-oriented platforms: Google Groups, Yahoo Groups, simple email lists (underappreciated and powerful), and Usenet (obscure now, but also capable). All can host private groups.
Reddit has "subreddits" -- forums. These can be public or private, and offer a number of useful features, though also limitations. I have grave concerns over Reddit's "ownership" model for its subreddits: Any Reddit member can request control of any subreddit, if the owner has been inactive on the site for six months.
Federated platforms including Hubzilla and Friendica allow you to self-host group discussions on your own servers. If you're concerned about privacy, this may be your best option. Diaspora and Mastodon, also federated and self-hostable, do not have a concept of groups built in. These take some technical skill but are an excellent option moving forward, offering full control and ownership.
Blogs make excellent community platforms. They can be set to private, have discussions and notifications and numerous features: Wordpress, Dreamwidth, Drupal, and numerous other platforms.
There are old-school online BBS / weblog discussion platforms, more formally, "content management systems" (CMS) -- PHP-Nuke and many others.
Wikis can be a type (or part) of online social groups.
GitHub and GitLab are commonly thought of as programmer or development tools and platforms, but can be used as blogs and social sites. They are excellent for task-oriented or goal-oriented groups. Both options offer hosted service; GitLab can be self-hosted. I'm planning on using GitLab for my own future online presence.
There's a new platform called Groups.io that is based on email lists, though it goes beyond this.
Mailchimp is among the commercial mailing list management tools out there. I've seen (and have concerns myself) about its privacy and marketing policies.
Slack offers group-oriented chats. It's aimed at businesses, and for that reason the discussions are private by default.
There are a host of other messaging type tools, ranging from old-school IRC (Slack derives from this in many ways) to Jitsi (from Atlassian), Discord (offers video/voice, popular with gamers), and others.
There are a number of not-yet-released tools including Solid, OpenBook, and more. I don't recommend relying on these right now but they may be useful future options.
If you have an existing group you're looking to migrate now, our recommendation is use an existing and straightforward platform. Email lists, Google or Yahoo Groups, and Reddit are probably the easiest to set up, and most viable, for now.
If and only if you have the technical skills and capacities to do so should you be looking at self-hosted options, currently.
We've been constructing a few resources for additional information.
At #PlexodusReddit, the Topics and Site / Platform search page lets you see posts about specific platforms. This is very loosely organised, but tends to at least give an overview of the major (and many minor) options:
https://old.reddit.com/r/plexodus/wiki/post_flair
(We also strongly encourage you to sign up here for future discussion as G+ winds down.)
The "Sites & Platform" topic lists all articles concerning all sites and platforms:
https://old.reddit.com/r/plexodus/search?q=flair:%22Sites%20%26%20Platforms%22&restrict_sr=on
At #PlexodusWiki, we've been trying (and quite frankly, not succeeding as much as I'd like) to provide information on platforms and sites. For now, that's probably most useful for how it organises the information rather than the information provided. My apologies. Assistance with this page and area is strongly encouraged and hugely appreciated.
https://social.antefriguserat.de/index.php/Platforms_and_Sites
Wikipedia itself has many excellent articles. Among them:
List of social networking websites:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_social_networking_websites
List of virtual communities:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_virtual_communities
Content management systems:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_management_system
List of content management systems:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_content_management_systems
List of collaborative software:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_collaborative_software
(There does not seem to be a list of blog software, though there are many articles on blogs and blogging.)
There is a category for blog software:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Blog_software
You'll find many additional topics linked from these, as well as primary sources.
Also: John Saddington's "The Ultimate List of Blogging Platforms, Blog Software, Free and Paid":
https://john.do/blogging-platforms/
https://old.reddit.com/r/plexodus/wiki/post_flair
https://old.reddit.com/r/plexodus/wiki/post_flair
Also at #PlexodusReddit:
ReplyDeletehttps://old.reddit.com/r/plexodus/comments/af5h64/public_and_private_group_discussion_options_an/
Edward Morbius "Any Reddit member can request control of any subreddit, if the owner has been inactive on the site for six months."
ReplyDeleteIf you have ignored your group for 6 months, are you still interested in it?
Shawn H Corey Quite possibly, yes. You are traveling, you've taken ill, a family or work emergency has come up, you're living in a war-torn region, you have been incarcerated.
ReplyDeleteThere are many life events which may keep a person offline for six months or longer.
Reddit's rules date from when there were dozens or hundreds of subreddits. There are now well over one million. Where a given subreddit was once a major aspect of the site, virtually none are now -- save the largest 100, or may 1,000. That still leaves 999,000 others which have little overall concern. The rules don't fit the reality.
What would you deem should happen with https://old.reddit.com/r/talesbytoxlab -- a collection of personal stories by a former redditor, dealing with depression and life issues, who committed suicide several years ago?
Should that simply be recycled into the community mix?