Since we cannot wait for the Elephant, and we need a more general
solution anyway, I call on people with savvy about discussion fora to
find out which discussion board software fulfils the following
criteria, and can be set up on lojban.org to host threaded discussions.
This will in the short term solve the jboske problem (well, a jboske
problem), in the medium term serve as discussion infrastructure for the
BPFK, and in the long term help whenever all discussion on Lojban
matters blows up.
The main concern is that threads going at the same time and in
different directions do not allow people to follow who said what where,
and what is currently debated. The solution is to be able to browse one
thread on one page. I believe discussion fora are the answer. I have
some specific requirements I think we need for such software:
All the content on one topic is in the one place, and is threaded.
Preferably there is some hierarchical structure of topics (so there are
subtopics and trees)
There is some way to flag posts as being of particular kinds (proposed
solutions, chat, whatever)
There is some way of extracting the text of discussion into an archive
readily.
New posts to the board can be forwarded to a mailing list.