I am slowly working on adapting Discourse as a communication solution for the school community of a progressive education school.
In contrast to the mostly informal communities for which Discourse seems optimized, this community is based on a very formal structure.
This requires a number of adjustments.
Roughly speaking, due to the formal setting (all areas are restricted) as opposed to the informal setting (almost all areas are freely accessible), there is a weakening of Discourse's highly valued expectation of clear separation between private and public topics/messages in favor of better integration of the areas into a unified interface.
At this point, I would appreciate a discussion on the following topic:
We have created a separate private category for almost every group.Information for this group is posted in that category. It is very convenient to define who can write in the category.However, it is not possible to address multiple groups at once this way.
Furthermore, the ability to assign permissions for posting information via groups is missing (in the case of groups, communication rights can only be set using the properties "moderator," "owner," and "member").
Although this can be realized through group messages, topics posted there are inconveniently found in another place on the interface.
Therefore, I dream of an adaptation that combines the advantages of both approaches:
Writing permissions for groups (who is allowed to mention the group) should also be definable via groups.
Messages to groups should be displayed in the designated category. Messages to multiple groups would then appear in all addressed groups (potentially in multiple categories simultaneously).
Has anyone already tried or thought about something like this?
Discuss this on our forum.