Forums

My suggestion is to start out with one forum "General" and
branch out as there is interest in sub-topics.

I concur, start with only General.

Also, it may be useful to have predefined list of subject prefixes (if the forum software can be tailored to support it)
e.g. [Politics] [Engineering] [Social] [Business] [Other] [Off-Topic], etc...

Only when traffic for one subject of discussion becomes substantial enough should it be segregated.

Hi Patri,

We are putting the final touches on an online discussion engine, that is somewhat similar to the stuff that you wrote for your dad's "Future Imperfect", just more powerful, using more up-to-date tech. You can take a look at the tech preview here: http://demo.thiblo.com
The first release is due this week; just need to squish that last one bug, you know. (seriously, it will be out this week if all goes well)

I believe that if the goal is constructive discussion of collaborating people, this kind of commenting system is the way to go, instead of the one that attaches a roll of toilet paper with comments on it to the end of the subject of discussion.

Instead of containers, you will be able to use tags. You will get the benefits of a discussion forum, a wiki-based knowledge base and a blog, combined, complete with versioning and roll-back capability. How would you like that?

We didn't see it before, thank you for the link. It is similar to what they used for the GPL v3 draft (http://gplv3.fsf.org/comments/gplv3-draft-2.html). A step towards the good direction. However, with webmore we believe we are gonna be able to provide something more natural, an organic way of commenting/contributing. Really, just fixing the last blockers... :)

Toilet paper makes it easy to catch up where you left off, but I do like the idea of tags.