Seeking Advice: making a discourse forum hyper local

Community
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Hello there.
I’m very new here, and new to sysadmin and all back end stuff in general.

I’m basically here because i’m trying to create a Forum, centered around the theme of building a “Solidarity Economy” &/or a “co-operative economy”, here in my local city.

FYI: these alternative economies generally have to do with local mutual aid organizing efforts, establishing democratically managed/owned organizations & businesses etc(aka: co-ops, worker cooperatives, land trusts, etc), and convincing established top down hierarchical organizations, to restructure themselves to be more participatory, as well as more accountable to and representative of the people they effect.
these generally run on participatory democratic strategies, like “Sociocracy”, that are still developing, and tools Like “Loomio” that expand such collaborative decision making processes into asynchronous digital spaces.
they often also use techniques like those in “Art of Hosting” to foster community consciousness at larger scales, for larger in person group formats.

I am basically trying to create a forum for people who are interested in discussing and getting involved in such things, here in our city specifically..
I want it to be public to some degree, because everybody should have access to the tools, and resources we’d be collecting and building there, as well as an entry point to getting involved in organizing efforts in their neighborhoods.
My concern is outsiders, AI agents, and bad actors that may try to access the forums.
Most social organizing efforts in our city use Facebook, or other standard social media, and those platforms have become utterly nightmarish and corrupt.

So my questions are as follows..

  1. Does anybody have any ideas on what pre-existing Discourse features could be used to ensure that only real, local humans, have the option to join?

  2. How could a forum be structured so that neighbors from a particular region can connect and talk about local issues, run polls etc, without non neighbors being involved?

  3. Could community organizations &/or groups, be given a private or read-only(for outsiders) subsection within a forum?

  4. Does Discourse have any features that could be used by either users or mods, to send a specific invite code, that would both allow a person to sign up, and also track who initially allowed that person to sign up?

I realize that what i’m asking for might just not be possible with Discourse as it currently exists.
Regardless, thank you for your time in reading and considering. :slight_smile: 0

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Okay somethings that could be used…upon signup you could have a custom field setup with options ie cities for example

Depending on the City chosen from s list you could use sn automation to add them automatically to a group

Then with category settings use permissions so that only a “City A” group can see/create/reply

Removing category security Everyone See/create/reply

Removing this permission completely only members of that group can view and participate. Only logged in users of that group “city A” can see and participate.

If you want ppl and anonymous visitors to see. Keep Everyone with only See security.

Yes there is a built in invite system. The link can be for anyone to use or even target a specific email address for sign up. Invites are trackable and their is a badge as well for invites. The Invite can add them to a group, bring them to a specific topic and a few other things.

These are built in and of course there are also add on extensions with Theme Theme component & Plugin

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Yeah, Discourse does all that stuff- with aplomb!

I recommend that you jump in and give it a shot. It has its quirks, but overall it’s an incredibly powerful and adaptable platform.

Oh, and a pleasure to use!

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My neighbourhood’s FB group had a creative one: on signup, you were required to take a picture of the neightbourhood and upload it.

That provides enough of a barrier against all automated signups and against most of the nefarious ones.
Not something you’d use to secure state secrets, but it’s enough to keep it all focused :slight_smile:

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Depending on how local you’re looking to keep your community, you could set it to invite only and use physical means to recruit people.
Ie create an invite code, print it out as a QR code, and put it up as a flier in some shared space like a mailroom or on telephone poles. People love scanning QR codes too, so it could be more effective than other means.

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