Community forums about R? Containing R? Created with R?

[andrewH]

The markoverse contains tools for creating many kinds of documents, including web-based documents that can consist of meta-groupings of documents, such as blogs, books, and interactive science presentations (e.g. with distill).

But the variety of web-based document that I have had the most reason to create over the years are simple discussion forums such as Google or Yahoo groups and more sophisticated community software like Discourse. I think these tools provide threads that are easier to find and manage than, e.g., the traditional backwards text post series used by R-help. I have not been able to find an R-based implimentation of any such web-based fora. Have I just missed them somehow? Is it thought that R is a poor fit for building discussion forums?

If there are no mature R-based community foruk implementations, I would welcome recommendations for software with good functionality both for sharing code but also for substantive discussion of non-code controversial topics. I'd be looking for something that a smart layperson or a so-so programmer could set up and administer.

I'd say the minimum requirements would be good tools for moderation, threading, search, display of code and graphical output, and for search for and unthreaded storage of data files and various kinds of markdown-based documents. Moderator-created subgroups and pinned posts would also be useful.

[technocrat]

If R were a good base for creating a community forum, this forum would probably be using it over Discourse. I can't suggest other alternatives based on implementation experience, but among those I've used Discourse is decent, along with Stackoverflow, but both are commercial platforms. It's probably feasible to do this in Django/Python, the pieces are there, and I've seen at least one example.

What I found 25 years ago when I was running private newsgroup servers, when those were a thing, the big lift is moderation. With all the improved spam filters, it's still an art form, keeping down the flames and cultivating the community. I see a little of what goes on behind the scenes with this site and I expect that some substantial time commitment is required.