[Massplanners] Time for a different platform for MassPlanners? (Nathan Chung)

[Danielle Evans]

I tend to agree that the platform is clunky, but a lot of the problem is that most folks who reply don't change the subject line (as instructed) nor delete the irrelevant parts of the looooooong thread of the original email with multiple duplicate messages when receiving the emails as a digest. If we all take a moment to clean up posts/replies, it wouldn't be so unwieldy.

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Danielle Evans, AICP (she/her)
Senior Planner
Office of Planning, Development, + Sustainability | City of Medford
Medford City Hall - Room 308, 85 George P. Hassett Drive
Medford, MA 02155
PDS front desk: 781-393-2480 | devans at medford-ma.gov (email is the best way to reach me)

City Hall Hours: Mon/Tues/Thurs: 8:30am-4:30pm; Wed: 8:30am-7:30pm; Fri: 8:30am-12:30pm

Please note: The Commonwealth of Massachusetts considers most electronic communications to and from public employees to be public records and disclosable under the Massachusetts Public Records Law and its regulations.


-----Original Message-----
From: MassPlanners <massplanners-bounces at masscptc.org> On Behalf Of massplanners-request at masscptc.org
Sent: Friday, February 28, 2025 12:00 PM
To: massplanners at masscptc.org
Subject: MassPlanners Digest, Vol 46, Issue 26

Message: 1
Date: Thu, 27 Feb 2025 14:50:23 -0500
From: Nathan Chung <nchung at northamptonma.gov>
To: massplanners at masscptc.org
Subject: [Massplanners] Time for a different platform for
        MassPlanners?
Message-ID:
        <CA+PZJqFmyVNDM84fukAnBWXHRGW=qJEqqz5sfAV7hDiVUGvFXQ at mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"

Dear MassPlanners subscribers,
Forgive me if this has been raised already, but I am wondering if it is time for a different platform for MassPlanners. The current group email format is visually overwhelming and makes it hard to search past conversations. For example, at the bottom is the screenshot of the Digest that arrived in my inbox. It shows 17 different topics, but *it's only 6 distinct topics actually* with multiple replies per topic.

I think for the forum to progress into a more effective forum for sharing and storing knowledge, moving to a different platform, perhaps a web bulletin forum, might be necessary. This is a deep IT question, and I only have surface knowledge of it from my past work experience in a specialized field of IT. One risk is with so many forum software out there, if you choose the wrong one, that can cause difficulties. Here's a Wikipedia list:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Internet_forum_software

The amount of messages and valuable information that is getting buried has gotten to the point that I wanted to bring this up now rather than later.
Thank you.

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Nathan Chung, Land Use Planner
Office of Planning & Sustainability for the City of Northampton, MA nchung at northamptonma.gov; (413) 587-1262
Please note: The Commonwealth of Massachusetts considers most electronic communications to and from public employees to be public records and disclosable under the Massachusetts Public Records Law and its regulations. *Please consider the environment before printing this email.*