What up?

[Edward theurj Berge]

Just testing out the next site. Seems to work well and I like the editing capacity. This might work out.

[Balder]

Hey, welcome, Ed. Here's a reply, just to test the reply feature...

[Edward theurj Berge]

So far so good.

[Steven Nickeson]

I have to take back a comment I made over on Gaia. It appears that my complaints about the poor forum potential here at ning were based on old experience at a site called Open Source Integral where discussions were almost impossible to track. But I just reviewed OSI and that is no longer the case.

I'm good with whatever is easy.

[Sandra Jensen]

Looking good!!

I've just created a test Diving Deeper site and it also seems good. For my purposes the way the first post in a thread looks feels far more like a nice piece of 'creative writing' than posts in forums that I've seen.

But, I have had complete failure with the search function here - what is your experience.

[Sandra Jensen]

I'm also wondering about notifications. Seems all we get is an email with a link, no content, no digest possibilities..

[Sandra Jensen]

The ownership thing could be an issue for members of Diving Deeper -- being that they post their 'creative' writing. And it's worth remembering that this issue came up big time (for lots of people, not just DD members) when Gaia hadn't clear ToUs.

[Christophe]

Hi all.

Alright the Link Option is there, the Image inclusion also. No videos embedded, well. Can't have it all, eh.

I guess there will be ads popping up depending on what we upload and what we post, yes? That's the way it is financed? Why not. I'd also pay a monthly fee but if we can avoid this with ads, even better. How private is this site? Does forum content show up on Google?

The SocialGo site looked nice also. Let's not rush and compare alternatives, I say.

Test picture:

[Sandra Jensen]

Mark -- I personally don't have a problem with ownership. I realise that everything I post on the web is available for others to use as they will. And as Elisa said on the Gaia Ning forum: "what is copyright protected and laws regarding intellectual property supersede any rather irresponsible claims by Ning" (speaking of which what's with ning links? I can't seem to do this easily, i.e. link to a ning page)

As for places to put creative writing, DD is a workshop (in real life as well as online), not a place to be 'published'.

However, there are many members of DD, who, being artists, worry about ownership issue. I don't think it's such an issue here.

[Sandra Jensen]

Mark, I missed one of your posts. I think I've confused things - Diving Deeper is my Group on Gaia. I'm a member of this (IPMS) group there too, and I'm here now in the early stages as I need to move Diving Deeper to a new home, it's very active.. and I suspect whatever Balder does with IPMS will be a good option, so I'm following closely!

[Balder]

Hi, Christophe. I'm looking at a couple other options right now. At one, it would be privately administered and I'd have my own domain name. Embedding videos there would be possible, and there would be no advertising. We'd have a forum and space for blogging. But the guarantee of it being free is not indefinite (the friend I'm talking to anticipates it would remain free, but hesitates to make guarantees; as long as his other businesses remain intact, he could afford to host our forum at no cost).

The second option is another social networking site (SocialGo) where I have several options -- one free, with somewhat limited storage and bandwidth; two others at a fee. The middle option is within my affordability range, and it allows revenue to be generated from the forum either via advertising or charging members a monthly fee. Using the free option, we'd have to deal with ads. Using the middle-range fee option, we could go with ads or maybe a monthly subscription of just a couple dollars. But a good thing about the site -- unlike here -- is that we would retain ownership of material posted there.

[Sandra Jensen]

Balder, Over on my test ning DD site, Grey is looking into the content ownership thing. You might want to check in with him. He said: Hmm... It actually appears that we maintain ownership of all content here on Ning, too. So what I heard from someone on Gaia was apparently wrong. A legal/copyright expert would need to read the terms to be sure, but I took a look at the terms for both sites, and they appear essentially similar to my layman's eye. So probably a false alarm....

I've been looking at SocialGo too: at first glance it seems we have to pay if we want to move elements around on the home page. i.e. the layout manager is an app only available if you pay. But I might be wrong.

And, so far it looks like SocialGo has much more flexibility as to visiblity.. individual tabs can be invisible to members but not mods etc..even have a tab that is visible to non logged in people, but invisible to members. (Perhaps some of these things can be fiddled with in Ning in the CSS. Not something I personally have the skills to do)

[Balder]

Hi, Sandra, yes, I was just coming to revise my understanding of the "ownership" issue too, now that I read the actual Ning verbiage. I was going on what the friend at SocialGo had told me. But reading Ning's language, I recognized this as essentially the same wording used at Gaia -- basically, it deals with being able to publish the content on the website itself, or on future/updated versions of the website, rather than claiming "book rights" or something!

I've written to SocialGo to ask some questions about storage issues, but my friend there has already assured me that even the free version should be enough for a relatively active forum. I will check in with my friend there regarding layout flexibility.

Best wishes,

B.