FWIW I think technically this is very do-able. Discourse is a neat almost out-of-the box solution.

On the other hand if we go ahead with this we will need to set in place some solid procedures for moderation which can be tricky to get right.

I had a chat with @dannycolin about this already, who mentioned we could use some software called Discourse and host it ourselves, using some clever tech things that I have no idea about.

Here's a couple of other technical things we need to consider if we want to host it ourselves :

• We need some people who want to maintain the server(s).
• We need to decide if we also run our own mail server [1] (for the email notifications) or
  if we use a third-party provider (e.g Mailgun, Sendgrid). The second option is more pricey.
  If we choose the first option, we need to make sure we have the technical skills and the time
  for that.

[1] There's an Open Source software that can reduce the maintenance. It's called Mail-in-a-Box

OK, great, thanks @alexmorley and @dannycolin.

So, for moderation, does Discourse allow people to 'apply' to be moderators or anything? What we could do is ask if people want to use the MOOC content as teachers, perhaps one of the things they can or have to do as part of that is become a forum mod? We can apply the same CoC for the MOOC to that too probably.

So, if it is possible for me to maintain the servers, I can do that. We have the info@opensciencemooc.eu address already (and I use TinyLetter for managing the lists), but I suspect this might not be enough for what you are talking about here? If there is an open source provider that can help with that, that would be cool.

Note that I think this can be closed now, as Eliademy has a discussion forum for each module, and we have the Slack group now too.