Create a forum for The Learning Fractal (with badge sub-forum)

There seems to be a range of views represented in the comments and discussion about different forms of credentialling or recognition, which suggests to me that a forum that is wide enough in scope to cater for discussion about all of those would fit best. There still seems to be interest specifically in Open Badges, so a sub-forum for them makes sense or the ability to tag posts easily perhaps could be an alternative so that the conversation doesn't get too fragmented. I think a Learning Fractal forum with a Badges sub-forum (and any other sub-forums the community suggests, or the ability to tag posts) would provide that scope.

I'm also in favor of setting up the forum. I think we can use this thread to discuss / vote on domain strategy too. Moving forward if we continue to do projects that are of our own volition, yet with a sponsorship strategy, I would very much like to have a domain strategy that makes sense for us. Maybe I'm overthinking all of this but, my OCD brain needs that we put projects in place consistently and that when a user finds them they know what to expect. It is also necessary for upkeep, budgeting, etc. We can discuss here, and I will add our decisions to the Brand Guide.

Current situation

We have weareopen.coop, badge.wiki (which also includes the badge wiki loomio) currently. For me, badge.wiki makes a lot of sense as a brand, and it is easy to remember. The Learning Fractal newsletter, however, is at weareopen.coop/newsletter which also makes a lot of sense to me.

Strategy 1: Multiple Domains

If the place for these project is http://weareopen.coop/sponsored/ we could make it so that when you click on "the Learning Fractal" you're taken to learningfractal.com which has the newsletter AND the forum (because they are part of the same umbrella, the learning fractal umbrella). Which would mean we add Badge Wiki as a sponsored project here (and make sure the landing page of badge.wiki points to the Loomio) on weareopen.coop/sponsored/ and redirect weareopen/newsletter to learningfractal/newsletter.

With this domain strategy, in the future you click on "Strategy Spider" and you're taken to the strategyspider.com website which houses all our strategy projects. On weareopen.coop, things are linked from the /sponsored/ page (meaning there's no more triple click from sponsored>newsletter>learningfractal.com )

Strategy 2: Central Brand

The other way to do this is to put everything at weareopen/newsletter, weareopen/badges, weareopen/forum or subdomain with badges.weareopen...and continue to brand in the Co-op style. The value of this is that we effectively "own" our own work forever and ever, which is maybe not good....

Maybe I just needed to write it out. I'm for strategy 1, but I want to be clear that this means that pages like weareopen.coop/newsletter are redirected or removed. Thoughts? Other strategies that we might talk about?

Oh Strategy 1, for sure!

As we are tying more things together under The Learning Fractal banner, I think strategy 1 makes a lot of sense.

It would help create a central hub. I've also been thinking about whether or not additional forums might be relevant for specific clients to share and discuss after/during our work with them. They might want these to be private or open but would position them in a central community space where other wider discussions and resources are openly available. Just pondering this idea but perhaps one to test out in theory in terms of upcoming clients..!