Ask HN: Building an Online Community in 2022
I'd like to build some kind of forum/communications mechanism for the parents of kids at our elementary school. We've got almost 1,000 kids there, and aside from the official newsletters that come from the school itself (or the PTA), parents have no way to talk among themselves, except on the street before dropoff in the morning.
Here's what I have in mind:
* A place where parents can ask questions of other parents and have some kind of threaded conversation.
* A way to interact with the conversations via email. Start a thread, reply to a thread, etc. Get daily or weekly digest emails of the threads.
* Minimal or no installation required (by the parents).
* Searchable, some kind of history and knowledge retention.
* Subgroups, like "Six Grade Parents", where they could ask "What was the homework in Mrs. Smith's class?"
* Some kind of moderation and spam control.
* A way to roll this out to other schools in the future.
Here is what I have considered and don't like very much:
* Discourse. Clunky, mailing list mode works poorly.
* Discord. Parents aren't going to install it, not really for threaded conversations or history.
* Some kind of Stack Overflow clone, but I haven't found a good one.
* Google groups. No good moderation tools, no real website branded website ("Lincoln Elementary Parents") where people can go and sign up.
* Facebook. Ugh. Exactly zero ability to ensure that the parents get the messages.
What works best for a community like this?