Hi @benohanlon and @7.4d4
I have given your concerns some careful consideration, which takes time.
Ben, don’t be too hard on yourself. In terms how technology has evolved, communication tools in the Web 2 social media environment have become a hot mess good for selling advertising and not much more.
I believe that the Cardano Technical Community would benefit greatly from IOG implementing a Usenet server Usenet - Wikipedia
Usenet has distinct benefits when compared with tools such as Discord or the enterprise application underlying the Cardano Forum, for example. Quoting from the Wikipedia article:
Usenet was conceived in 1979 and publicly established in 1980, at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Duke University.
The articles that users post to Usenet are organized into topical categories known as newsgroups, which are themselves logically organized into hierarchies of subjects. For instance, sci.math and sci.physics are within the sci.* hierarchy. Or, talk.origins and talk.atheism are in the talk.* hierarchy. When a user subscribes to a newsgroup, the news client software keeps track of which articles that user has read.
In most newsgroups, the majority of the articles are responses to some other article. The set of articles that can be traced to one single non-reply article is called a thread. Most modern newsreaders display the articles arranged into threads and sub-threads. For example, in the wine-making newsgroup rec.crafts.winemaking, someone might start a thread called, “What’s the best yeast?” and the thread—conversation—may grow into dozens of replies long, by dozens of different authors. Over several days, that conversation about different wine yeasts might branch into several sub-threads in a tree-like form.
In the above paragraphs quoted from Wikipedia, benefits of Usenet over current-generation communication-mangling tools are highlighted using bold text.
Also, the academic influence in Usenet development should appease Hoskinson and the rest of Cardano’s academic brain trust…
If Usenet seems too “dated,” then implement a Moodle server. For example, Moodle has a Forum activity module structured just like Usenet. In my professional experience, AAA game studios may implement a Moodle server to develop their first-rate titles successfully. Therefore, Moodle is probably also good enough to meet Cardano’s business requirements. Moodle is also open source.
As an aside, Cardano could learn a thing or two from Moodle in terms of how to prepare, present and maintain documentation… are those really online learning modules posted in Discord?! WWWWTTTTTFFFFF CAAARRRDDDAAAANNNNOOOOO!!!
I hope, Ben, that my idea may help make your life—and the lives of everyone else in the IOG Technical Community—easier.
Sincerely,
Paradoxical Sphere [CHG]