The Nexus of 2024

What’s the best technology base for an activism Q&A website?

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by

jon
in ,

two question marksAn activism group I know is thinking about setting up a Q&A (question-and-answer) site.  What technology base should they use?

Here’s the functionality wishlist:

  1. users can ask and answer questions, vote on others’ answers, and leave comments
  2. multilingual and accessible
  3. a pleasant and attractive user experience
  4. good moderation tools
  5. easy to attach tags (or categories) to questions and to browse all the questions in a category
  6. people can sign in with their existing Twitter, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Facebook, etc. IDs
  7. questions, answers, and comments are easy to tweet and look good when posted on Facebook etc.
  8. there’s a way to include Twitter, Facebook, etc. responses as answers or comments
  9. users can have profiles if they want but don’t have to spend any time setting them up
  10. the overall look-and-feel can be customized (to match the activism campaign’s overall branding)
  11. there are a few options for themes for questions, answers, profiles, and categories
  12. it’s possible to integrate discussion forum and chat software [to help people as they’re learning to use the system, and to talk about ‘lessons learned’ as we’re using it]
  13. secure
  14. privacy-friendly (meaning a robust privacy policy if it’s hosted elsewhere)

In general, open-source software with a fairly  unrestrictive license (BSD-style) is preferable; if the GPL’ed or commercial tools for the job are better, that’s fine too.

There are a lot of different options.  For example:

  • WordPress plugins like Instant Q&A ($35), Answers, or WP-Answers.   Instant Q&A’s currently being used for sites in Dutch and German as well as English, so I’m fairly confident about the multi-lingual aspects; conversely, I saw a report that WP-Answers’ localization was difficult.   For any WP plugin-based solution, letting people sign in with other accounts might take some integration work.
  • Vanilla Forums, an “open-source, pluggable, themable, multi-lingual community-building solution.”  While Vanilla isn’t optimized specifically for Q&A, it’s easy to configure it that way, and it has some very flexible theming and login features.
  • Hosted Q&A solutions like QHub ($40/month) or QandAPress (currently in beta, pricing TBD).   Neither of the sites have privacy policies on their home page, which makes me nervous …
  • Open-source Q&A platforms like OSQA and Askbot, or commercial alternatives such as Qato (which offers the ability to switch between different presentations of the same information).
  • A custom solution on top of Echo as described here.  This might be the easiest path to including Twitter and Facebook comments but it seems like a lot of work (and Echo has a mixed reputation).

Does anybody have thoughts on the tradeoffs, experiences with any of these products, or example sites we should be looking to for inspiration?

Thanks as always …

jon

Comments

3 responses to “What’s the best technology base for an activism Q&A website?”

  1. Warren Hart Avatar
    Warren Hart

    Jon – I’d be really curious to see what you think about Fastnote.com. We designed it to be like an old style Town Hall – everyone can stand up and speak their mind as long as they are civil. Anyone can write a public note to anyone – and everyone can read every note. We wrestled with how to validate ID’s and decided instead to simply have everyone be anonymous. In other words, the content stands on it’s own. To write a note, comment, or vote, you do need to register – but – all we ask for is a valid email address. We request gender and location but don’t require it. We make it easy to share via Facebook, Twitter, etc and via your own e-mail or via our anonymous e-mail. We think it’s a platform that should be attractive to activists – would love your views / suggestions. We did look at allowing sign in via FB & Twitter but thought we’d be better being completely “unlinked”. THANKS.

    Reply
  2. jon Avatar
    jon

    Thanks for the suggestion, Warren — Fastnote looks really intriguing, and I’m delighted to see the focus on anonymous speech. Registration is a tricky conundrum; some people prefer sharing there email address (which typically requires a fair amount of typing), others prefer the two-click simplicity of using a Twitter, Facebook, or Google login. Given the anonymity focus, though, I can see why you’d prefer to leave things unlinked.

    Whether or not Fastnote is the right option for the Q&A aspects of the campaign but we also are going to be encouraging people to contact politicians and it seems a great option for that. Good stuff — thanks again!

    jon

    Reply
  3. jon Avatar
    jon

    qw3ries prototype

    German and KurdishHere’s a prototype Q&A site using Vanilla Forums. There’s a lot to like about this software: open-source (GPL’ed), a decent editor and a preview button, easy-to-install plugins including Twitter login (and Facebook too I believe), localizable with a dozen locale packs, and easy to set up as long as you know how to create a mysql database.

    It’s far from perfect: no comments on answers (a showstopper in a lot of scenarios), questions and answers look horrible when posted on Facebook, there are nowhere near as many themes as I had hoped, the locale packs still need some work, and email and social network integration seem limited. So this may or may not be the right choice for an activism campaign. Still, it’s a decent starting point….

    Reply

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