Are there good alternatives to Google Moderator?
March 27, 2009 7:45 PM   Subscribe

The White House highlighted the power of Google Moderator when they used it for their Open for Questions forum. Are there any alternatives to Google Moderator that would give me more flexibility with authentication?

I would love to use Google Moderator for a nonprofit I'm working with, but it doesn't appear it can be used without a Google account (which is a deal breaker for us). The White House used their own accounts, but it looks like that option is not publicly available.

The main features I'm looking for are:

1. The ability for any user to easily submit questions for voting on.
2. The ability for users to vote on submitted questions.
3. The option for users to comment and discuss submitted questions.

Any and all suggestions are welcome. Thanks!
posted by ufris to Computers & Internet (7 answers total) 2 users marked this as a favorite
 
Best answer: Check out the comments on this TechCrunch article for a few ideas re: alternatives.
posted by xiaolongbao at 10:35 PM on March 27, 2009


You are looking for deliberative democracy/ political participation tools?
You didn't mention cost so I will start with free: http://www.e-democracy.org/, or http://www.weblab.org/home.html, which is a professional solution or the big player in the field http://www.americaspeaks.org/. I'm not certain what you mean by authentication- list based or something else?
posted by zenon at 10:35 PM on March 27, 2009


Response by poster: Thanks for the helpful responses! A few clarifications:

1. I wasn't looking for anything specifically political.

2. Regarding authentication: my organization does not want to require all of their users to have Google accounts to participate.
posted by ufris at 5:44 AM on March 28, 2009


Response by poster: Oops... forgot to mention price - there is a small budget, but it probably can't be more than $100 or so.
posted by ufris at 5:56 AM on March 28, 2009


Response by poster: It looks like You Suggest and Idea Magnet are my best options, although they appear to be a bit more than we want to spend. Thanks again for the help.
posted by ufris at 6:07 AM on March 28, 2009


Best answer: IdeaTorrent might be adaptable to this purpose. Ubuntu Brianstorm uses it.
posted by aheckler at 6:20 AM on March 28, 2009


Response by poster: Another option I just came across is IdeaScale.
posted by ufris at 9:09 PM on March 28, 2009


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