Community Discussions is an OpenPlans experiment in place-based online discussions. We're interested in tools that democratize the planning process by making it easier for more people to be involved, more effectively. Everyone has an idea about how their community can change and grow, but most of us lack the time and patience for the traditional planning process. Like our other projects, we hope this is a step towards using the scale of the web bring more voices into planning.
This project is in its very early infancy, so expect this list to change as we make progress and refine our ideas about what works and what doesn't.
- Start a new discussion
- Have an idea or concern? Start a new discussion for a specific place.
- Create watch areas
- Define the areas that you care about on a map. Easily find and explore the discussions in those areas.
- Be notified
- Never miss a discussion about your community. You and your neighbors will receive emails when new discussions are started in their watch areas.
If you have questions for the development team, get in touch. We are very interested in hearing from local groups who want to try this tool out and give us feedback.
- you'll find the team in #openplans on irc.freenode.net.
- hit us up on Twitter @OpenPlans
You can always contact OpenPlans directly via our website.
In the spirit of free software, everyone is encouraged to help improve this project.
Here are some ways you can contribute:
- by using alpha, beta, and prerelease versions
- by reporting bugs
- by suggesting new features
- by writing or editing documentation
- by writing specifications
- by writing code (no patch is too small: fix typos, add comments, clean up inconsistent whitespace)
- by refactoring code
- by resolving issues
- by reviewing patches
Community Discussions is a project of OpenPlans and based on a fork of PYBBM.