A selection of tools for setting up an ideas forum

I find the ideas based discussion forum to be a really useful tool for promoting discussions around a certain topic or for managing suggestions and ideas from a community. These sites are widely used by communities, corporations and government organisations. A couple of good examples are:

There are now a range of fairly easy to use tools that you can use to set up these kind of sites so I thought it might be useful to summarise them on this blog.

Uservoice  - example: JISCpress - there are free and paid versions of this site, the free version is limited in terms of how many people can participate in your forum and in terms of flexibility and downloading of the data stored on the site, but the design is good and it is easy to use.

Slinkset -  example: UK Uni Start-ups - this is a free site and seems to be very flexible. There is no option to download the data from the site.

Stackexchange - the software that powers Stackoverflow - this is free while it is in beta. Pricing details for when the beta phase ends are on the site. The ability to download your content on the site as a database is planned.

Ideascale - example: Open Austin - there are free and paid versions of Ideascale. The free version is unlimited in terms of how many people can participate on the forum but limited in terms of flexibility and data downloading.

I think these sites are really useful for focusing specific discussions around a certain topic or event and also for ongoing idea and suggestion management. I recommend seeding the site with a few ideas or questions as a blank slate is often intimidating for contributors.

Of course, as with all community focused websites, a community won’t spring up on its own, it requires a lot of work from a moderator or moderators to monitor and promote the site to ensure that it is useful and that it does not stagnate.

I have probably missed lots of tools, so if you have any suggestions you would like included please add them in the comments. I would also be interested to hear from people about their experiences of using these sites, what works and what doesn’t.

November 30, 2009 | Filed Under tools, web 2.0 | Author Andy McGregor 

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