I’ve been mulling over the possibility of adding a new level of online discussions. I notice that there is a lot of interst, resulting in lots of comments, on certain issues, usually issues where there is a strong contrast of opinions but sometimes a wide disagreement over the factual context. I’m wondering if there is any interest in a series of more focused online discussions that would include some specific readings, to get us on the same page regarding the “facts,” and perhaps Q&A’s with experts or other authorities.

My cousin, who teaches at Boise State, is an expert in such things, and I asked her for suggestions. She reponded:

I suppose you could use a threaded comment section following a blog post that either contains the article or a link to it, and close the comments for each blog post when you post the next article. I haven’t deployed a threaded comment plugin myself, but people seem pretty happy with both the Disqus and Intense Debate plugins for WordPress. I have had issues, as a commenter, with Disqus occasionally, as the university’s network here doesn’t always recognize it as a “trusted resource,” and in that case won’t display any comments at all.

Or you could use a WordPress plugin to turn a section of your site into a forum (for example, at forum.ilind.net or ilind.net/forum), and each article could have its own thread. You could close threads after a certain amount of time. Again, I haven’t tried this myself, but I have looked into it, and from what I found, there’s no one forum plugin that everyone loves (surprise!), but people who have a lot of members and don’t want to spend a ton of time approving and managing members tend to use either WishList Member or aMember in addition to their forum software. There’s also vBulletin and phpBB, of course, outside of WordPress.

Those online forum systems could accomodate as many as were interested, without scheduling issues. Smaller groups, though, could possibly use an online conferencing setup to hold live lecture-discussion sessions as well.

This format could be used to explore Hawaii’s sunshine and ethics laws, their substance, history, and politics, or jump directly into more political topics.

Or, perhaps, reading a daily blog is about all anyone has time for.

All comments or reactions appreciated.