Allow users to create their own group sub-forums? (like slack channels)

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One further thought, can I use the API to get to what I have in mind in terms of a slack-like restricted channel?

EDIT: I’ll try to simplify my earlier post:

I see how I can use the tag functionality to create a page that seems mostly like a subforum.

I suppose I can add some html at the top of the page to give the subforum a name and description. And, I see how I could have an app in front of the forum, where a user hits a button that says: “Create Subforum”, that then through the API creates a tag, and sends the user to the page for that tag.

So far so good. BUT, even being willing to be creative with a separate app that communicates with the Discourse API, is it possible to get the following key requirements:

  1. When the subforum creator creates a topic in the subforum, that topic is pinned to the top of the subforum. And, most important:

  2. The ability to post to that subforum is restricted to people that the creator has approved.

I’m fine having the approval process happen on a separate app I code up (if discourse doesn’t provide for that), but is there a way with “pure discourse” or “discourse+app that plugs into api” to make it so that only a certain group of users can post to the subforum?

Remembering that there will be a different group of permitted users for each subforum. And it needs to function like a subforum with its own page (just like slack channels)–so just using private messages would be insufficient.

Perhaps this is what groups are for (linking groups to a specific and unique tag maybe?), but I haven’t been able to sort through them yet.

Otherwise, maybe there is a way to catch a post before it goes through, check it against an external database I put together, and only allow it to post to the subforum if it has the requisite permissions?

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