It's like you've been looking over my shoulder the whole time ;_; That said, thanks so much for your insights! If you'd be open to me further picking your brain, particularly about online community moderation, please let me know. What's here is really great, but I find myself wondering if showing you in more detail what I'm working with and discussing what we're going for might spark other thoughts. If you're not interested in that, then again, thank you for taking the time to collect and to share your experience with me.- knowledge capture and dissemination, which are glorified databases, but are highly configurable environments where you build your own customized solution using the vendor's tools (Zoho, Smartsheet, ZenDesk, et al). The end result is never as good as the demos they show you, because you suck at designing with their tools (because you have never done it before) and will do it wrong, and before you can fix it, too many people at your organization will have already adopted it, and you will always be stuck with a half-finished solution
Happy to chat about it, and help in any way I can. But you need to understand this is never a TOOLS problem. It's not something the right software can address. You can use any of dozens of different software tools. What it comes down to is the HUMANS who are pulling the strings in the background; the moderators. Not many people have the skills/perspective/talent to be a good moderator, and without the right people, the tool you choose won't matter. It's almost like you are approaching the problem from the wrong direction - looking at the tools first - rather than figuring out how to make your existing community leader's job easier. But yeah! Hit me up! Let's chat.