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querying the hive mind

Advice for creating closed online communities?

I'm mostly only on Facebook for the parent groups, and wondering if we could do the same thing outside of Big Tech. By "same thing" I mean multiple closed/private communities for Seattle parents, ideally with posts and threaded discussions. Something like private subreddits, the FOSS version thereof. Or a non-Discord Discord.

Are there good options for something like this on riseup.net? Or should I think about a (private, defederated) lemmy instance? Or something else?

And what would it look like in terms of money and time commitment? To have say 100-200 users who post text and images, and need moderation? I'm a total newb at this.

Seeking advice esp from folks who might have attempted something like this before; both success and failure stories are welcome.
posted by splitpeasoup on Nov 16, 2024 at 9:57 AM

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I haven't set one up but I'm in a regional artist group that uses the Mighty Network.
posted by xo at 11:07 AM

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There are many ways to achieve this -- ask a mod here how much effort it is to moderate and keep people contrubuting positively to a community. Tech-wise: Invite-only Discord. Private instance, non-federated, of Mastodon. Matrix video/voice/chat.
posted by k3ninho at 11:40 AM

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I was the sole moderator of a parents' affinity group on Facebook -- this happened to be parents at a specific school -- and you can see what happened via my earlier question.

My advice? Whatever the tech issues/solutions are, do not do this unless you plan to make a major commitment to moderation. Mine ran very well for 5+ years, until it didn't; harm was done within the group, and directed at the school all our children attended. By the end, it was taking up many hours of my time each week and I'm not at all sorry that I eventually chose to close it. Yes, a valuable channel for communication was lost, but the bad parts unfortunately outweighed the good.
posted by BlahLaLa at 12:32 PM

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