Let’s build a list of needed sub-categoreis for GIAI.
As mentioned earlier, we need at least following dedicated board
- GIAI Internal - For internal communications
- GIAI Research - Drupal*
- GIAI Books - Drupal*
- JMDS - Drupal*
- GIAI LMS - Moodle**,
- MDSA - Open for reading, but closed membership
For Drupal*, I expect @catherinemaguire and @ethanmcgowan can handle the old Drupal module vamp up. For Moodle, I will find a way to leverage LTI. Drupal comment is needed for our newspapers as well as EduTimes. Moodle integration can be our core for quizzes, surveys, and polls. I remember the EduTimes team also wanted the feature so that they can invite College/MBA/Law School admission counselors as contents contributors.
Share me your thoughts on the list.
There are a few Discourse options.
But I cannot see quizzes in a format that we are looking for.
For Research, Ranking, and JMDS, either poll or survey can help us do basic screenning, as answering to a form can be a road bumper for any newbies. Besides, there will be no self-posted forum postings in those sub-categories. Only Drupal posts’ comment will be activated, which will limit the discussion scope. MDSA’s closed membership also can help us to keep it clean.
What’s concerning is the LMS. Aside from Moodle integration, we have to give some channel for newbies to ask questions, before they jump to Moodle for course registration. A poll or survey might be enough, but as @catherinemaguire raised concerns earlier, we definitely have to set a non-financial but intellectual bar. Senior college year questions about GLS estimator form, \hat{\beta} = (X'{\Omega}^{-1/2}X)^{-1}(X'{\Omega}^{-1/2}Y), for example, can certainly be used to keep the forum in decent quality. None of us want to waste our time to clean dirty postings and/or answering elementary school questions. 
@KeithLee Your quiz requires another explanatory doc, otherwise we will have no members but us 
Guys, I added another Moodle function that automates Discourse level-up events based on GIAI LMS’s quiz performance. The quiz @KeithLee created is for Level 1 (although that looks like for level 100+). I also set default level to 0, so no users can do anything until they pass the quiz on GIAI LMS.
@davidoneill Can you please double check if users really have no rights whatsoever when they first join? We also need to test quiz based level up before going fully live.
@ethanmcgowan Kindly, either rewrite an easier quiz for level 1 or write an open doc that explains @KeithLee 's mean quiz questions. I think @KeithLee installed Discourse Docs plugin for this purpose, did he not?
Though I agree with you that we should put extra concerns on trolls, once we replace email based login with Google/Microsoft only, it is not going to be as deeply worrisome as you think. The entry barrier with quiz sounds good, but I would like to keep it as educational as possible. Let’s put some jokes in it
I suggest more intellgectual barrier than basic stat questions. It doesn’t have to be math/stat/data science, but a short quiz with a series of thought experiments should be enough to keep the community clean. What about we apply the same rule not just for GIAI LMS registration, but for all members?
The most ideal way to handle this would be to set up a quiz in Moodle and make it conditional for Discourse membership. I’ve set up an LTI connection already between the two. I will figure out other steps over this week.
@KeithLee can you plz set up a course for quiz? I am sure @ethanmcgowan will be re-writing your quizzes. 
@catherinemaguire There is a single quiz course for GIAI Square Membership. I’ve written first two questions, and would like to have 10. 60% or above should be good enough bar to screen out trolls. Once you are done with LTI from Moodle to Discourse, I will reconfigure Nginx redirection from old GIAI Square to here.
Had some trouble with TinyMCE incompatibility, but it is working now. Was due ot slash argument that is much related to server issues. @ethanmcgowan, plz let me know if you get in trouble again, and good luck working on quizzes.
@KeithLee I actually remember you mentioned about additional docs to explain complicated quiz as an entry barrier. People who actually pay attention to read can pass, otherwise only smart people can pass it by themselves.
It’s not like I fully endorse @KeithLee 's tactics, but I agree that this is an easy way to foster respectful attitude among community members.
For where to write that quiz instruction, I suggest we do so on the MediaWiki that we haven’t touched since the first installation. If you guys have other purposes of the wiki in mind, I then agree with @catherinemaguire that it is better to do so on Discourse docs - Docs - GIAI Square.
I will do the docs. @ethanmcgowan plz do the QA for @catherinemaguire 's LTI - API set up.