Potentially useful for the university: https://learningequality.org/kolibri/

So I haven't gotten anywhere with trying to advertise the project. My heart just isn't in it right now. And the app seems to be moving ahead under @krysztof's direction, so I think I'll try working on the University aspect of things for now, can always get back to advertisement later.

One of the limitations I've got to contend with is I can't personally start a business or even a not-for-profit as a priest, both because of policy and honestly I wouldn't have the time even if canon law were different.

But, limitations just shape action, they don't stifle it. What I can do, is focus on making an environment in which businesses and not for profits can start.

With that in mind, and with the fact that I argued before that the University has already begun with the beginnings of the Saint Maker app, I see the next step as finding a platform where the embryonic University can continue to gestate.

What that platform would need to support the University at the bare minimum: 1. A place to share ideas, and 2. A place to grow a reputation.

1, because without exchange and processing of thought, there can be no learning.

2, because without some way to investigate the person presenting/commenting/critiquing ideas, there is no way to know if they are worth listening to.

It's essentially what we have here on Discord and even moreso over on Reddit: discussion and presentation can happen, and contributions over time of specific persons can be explored.

But it also seems best that the university have it's own "place." It needs some containment, both the help organically grow it's identity, as well as being a little defensible against hostile actors.

I think a blogging social media could fit the bill. I also know we are nowhere near being able to do that with the app, it would be too much of a stretch from where we are at.

I also must admit my favorite project, SSB, is not ready for it yet.

I'm going to start exploring some of the possibilities I've linked above for further research. From what I remember when I linked them all, not sure if any will fit the bill, but I'll start there and then venture out into the great unknown!

There's a lot of options for pre-canned forums which seems to fit the criteria set out above (and that would allow us to gradually move away from the discord) However, I think the social media blog would be a bit better. At the moment we do not have much of a community which is kind of critical to a forum; because of that, the social media blog could sounds like a better idea. It could gradually build up attention and discussion and then that can be funneled either into the discord or into a forum

Definitely agree, a forum would be nice, but definitely presumes a bigger community. At some point I would like to see the University start it's own version of Wikipedia, along with a forum, in order to be truly universal and discuss everything, but again, a long way off.

I haven't dug deeply into any of the options above, or done any in depth research into other options, but WriteFreely jumps out at me as a good starting point: for $10 a month can get hosting for up to 100 blogs, it has an incredibly simple interface, essentially a Medium clone. We could use Hypothes.is for comments and discussion, cutting out need for moderation of comment sections. WriteFreely has a self hosted version I'm going to spin up and test when I start doing a deep dive into the above options, but from just a cursory scan it seems the most promising.

So, decided to deep dive on WriteFreely first, and glad I did, seems like it will work perfectly! I spun up an instance which can be accessed here: https://social.techpriesthub.xyz/read I started 2 test blogs, checked all the admin customizations, checked the invite/onboarding flow. If anyone else wants to try onboarding here's an invite link that will be live for a week: https://social.techpriesthub.xyz/invite/wqPx00 Super simple, and no need for an email address, so privacy is respected! Can get through sign up and start writing in about 30 seconds. I can envision having a sign-up process/application like the whitepaper mentions, invite link generated, a few other tutorials on how to get started. I tested out Hypothes.is with it, and it works flawlessly as well. I'm going to look into a few other of the options I linked before, but this seems like it will be perfect.

Did a closer look at Tribler, which is essentially torrenting over Tor with possibilities for streaming. I'm seeing mixed reviews on it's effectiveness, and I'm sure I'm on enough Government lists with all the p2p/tor/freenet stuff I've explored, so I'm not going to try it out. Could see potential usefulness for video streaming in the future, but it's definitely not what we need at this moment.

Well, my look into Plume was quick, they're what WriteFreely forked from, and it seems like development has stopped, so it will be struck from the list of potentially useful stuff.

Seedess is going to be a quick review as well, looks pretty dead. A cool project though, appears to basically use Bitorrent as well more traditional means to stream video. Not what we need atm, but still interesting.

Okay, not sure why I linked Radicle, it's a p2p Git thing. Probably meant to post it somewhere else.

This will be a quick one as well. Micro.blog appears to be a Blogger clone, just designed for individual blogs (though there seems to be a community aspect, but it's just everyone using Micro.blog). It's not going to be useful for what we need.

Okay, Linen is the most interesting thing I've seen out of the bunch, and it might be a useful direction to ponder, though it's not what I was thinking we'd need, or at least not right now. It's an alternative to Discord, but is open in terms of discovery-don't have to join the server to view the channels. They also render a static version of the server so search engines can index the channels, thus keeping it fully open and searchable by the public. UI is pretty bare bones, Github OAuth is supported, and apparently they have a way to import from Discord. Some cons that pop out to me are it's definitely a young project, and their pricing model for a business white label server isn't publically posted on their site, which makes me wonder how they are funded, though the site does state they are backed by Y Combinator, which appears to be a VC group, so they could possibly disappear when funding runs out. But their code is licensed as "GNU Affero General Public License v3.0," which appears to be a typical copyleft license, so presumably it could be carried on.

Oops, had more to say and hit enter too fast: This would be a different direction from the WriteFreely option, but it would fit both the criteria I gave above, as well as allowing for both posting of ideas and discussion to happen in the same place, instead of using Hypothes.is on top of WriteFreely. Or maybe they could even be complimentary: discussion on Linen, while longer form stuff got posted on WriteFreely. It might be something that could happen in stages, implement Linen first, then WriteFreely later. Lots to think about and mull over. I'll probably continue my research for the time being, see what other options I can turn up, and then do some comparison, there might be something even better than both of them I haven't come across yet!

Alright, here's what I'm planning for kickstarting a more formal expression of the University. My constraints: cannot start or run a business, don't have a ton of free time, don't have the desire or energy to start a not-for-profit. My capabilities: have typically a few hours a week, love to research, like to write up my research, like to find and share educational resources. With all that in mind, I think my immediate and short term goal, is to establish a loose learning community, where we essentially share research and resources, and once it has enough members, are able to ask for feedback on our writing or other projects. Basically a scholarly colloquium. Practically, I think it makes sense to start with just a channel here on the Saint Maker Discord. Once that gets too limiting, starting a Linen + WriteFreely community can be a next step. Only thing I could see starting sooner is the Linen, especially if it seems getting people onboarded to Discord becomes an obstacle. I can already see that potentially happening with some of the people I want to invite. Having an essentially open forum they can view without making an account might be easier than trying to get them accustomed to Discord.

Had some free time this afternoon and decided to start a Linen and see what happened. I got it running here: https://www.linen.dev/d/university-of-st-hildegard-of-bingen/c/the-colloquium easy to set up, documentation to setup a bot and connect to Discord was good. But I'm not sure if it's working as intended or not. My understanding going in was that it would be pulling convos from Discord to Linen. But how it seems to be working (and I could have messed up a step or something, could very easily be user error), is that it imported the stuff from Discord, and that's all it will do. Which is still great, just not what I was expecting. Going back to look at their documentation, in one place it does say "Import," however, in another it says "integrate."

I'm not going to try any more troubleshooting today, but if anyone has any experience with Discord bots and has any thoughts, I'm all ears. I'll probably try their support at some point, but they seem to be a small team, so not sure if that will get anywhere.

Looks like I got Linen reconnected, must of just been some errors that day I was originally messing around with it.