Discourse allows creation of ‘Groups’. These give users some extra communication options withing each other. It also gives other user the ability to tag them in a post, like this: @ReactJS
Everyone in that team now gets a notification. My suggestion is that we use this function to power up collaborations.
Say i post a topic in a project and we decide we could really benefit from some specialist UX advice or support. I can call it in simply by tagging the UX Team.
A lot of members will find the number of notifications irritating to the point where it pushes them out, while others will enjoy their skills being utilised to support others - so this shouldn’t be a default option.
My suggestion is that in the banner of each tag-page is a square button called [Squad]. Clicking it highlights it as ‘on’, the user joins the team. Now other users can notify me whenever they’d like support by tagging my team (we’d probably limit that to users on the 2nd experience level and up to prevent spam). Clicking it again leaves that team.
Making this automatic on every tag-page creates a highly flexible system, where users can spin-off into their own teams for specialisations, or if things get too crowded. ‘Mikes UX Squad’ for example, where they get less requests than the main group as less users know of them.
What are your thoughts?