We could, I just fear that discussions on here will be left abandoned for days at a time.

In my experience a lot more is always accomplished with direct communication. A thread like this would remain active for weeks before a final conclusive decision was made on anything.

I am happy to be proven wrong though!

Alright, I've got something for us to think about. I was trying find ideas for a SigCONT Tool (using the JSON API) and tried to think of what use it could be of. Although cool ideas like a aptitude inspired (with vim like movement keys, Emacs/vim editor, etc) curses interface, etc came up, I finally realized that what we really need is something that lets us interact with the community in a way that is appropriate for us.

We aren't the type of community that will have loads of threads open all the time with constant chatter/Q&A/etc. We want to have discussions and not be worried about the rest. Now obviously this means that there will be times when we have low activity - excellent opportunities for members to forget the website exists (for those of us who started it, it won't be as simple, but you can't say that with confidence for the others who may join later). So I though of making a front end that works exactly how most of us may want it: one that simply checks for new and updated conversations so that it isn't disheartening to see the homepage without any new discussions. The rest the website can handle. This wasn't very satisfying.

So, I came up something completely out of the scope we've been think off - a mailing list with archives hosted on the website. Why? It will allow us to focus on discussion that can take as long as they want and no one (except those not interested) will drop out or lose interest. There is no hurry to keep activity going. Alongside this, we could also have a wiki to showcase some of the work of our members, put articles, etc. If required, we could hang on to the web interface and make the email work like Debian's BTS (which doesn't have a web interface but can be controlled very well by email) or Launchpad (you may never know that you access lp only through email if you didn't look it up), thus allowing us to retain threads, ability to manipulate them, a nice looking website that doesn't look like an old and boring archive, etc.

@Tesiox: It seems you were slightly wrong:

A thread like this would remain active for weeks before a final conclusive decision was made on anything.

It isn't active at all!

Yes and no. Yes because the thread died/lost momentum and we haven't even begun a discussion let alone reaching a conclusion. No because I don't think a chat session would've been more conclusive. This is more revive-able and, given that we're only a small group we can't hope to maintain a chat discussion until a conclusion is reached.

I agree. I don't think a web forum like this can provide enough substance. I see two "solutions".

Either, there needs to be more (I don't have anything in mind at the moment) happening than just discussions and we need to center the website around something else or we need to accept that there isn't enough sustained energy to keep a web forum running by itself and use a system (like email) that can keep members from forgetting the community even if there is little or no activity for a while.

I don't disagree. I'm just hoping we can find a way in which we can generate and maintain content without the need to have a huge amount of continuous activity to keep people from forgetting the community exists.

We need to decide what sort of content to post. What is the topic? Tutorials? Questions? Reviews? News? I'm happy for all the above and more...
<...>
Anyway, what do we want to build?

I'm not sure, but I'm keen on having us put that in words so that we can move the community in a direction

As for veering away from the forum format, I love the mailing list idea, as it will force me to keep in contact. I will read everything (I might not get time to reply for a day or two, but by then I would have had time to think up a good reply) that comes my way.

Exactly!

Sometime this week I definitely should be available, besides my two exams. What about everyone else?