Tree of Life Open Forums
Some ToL pages are visited by hundreds of people every day. People who visit a given page share a common interest in the featured organisms, ranging from casual curiosity to deep fascination. Wouldn't it be great if there was a way for these people to get in touch with each other?
In order to make this possible, we are working on tools that will allow ToL visitors to initiate open discussion forums on any ToL page. People can use these forums to discuss hypotheses and opinions put forward by the authors of a page, or they can inquire about relevant topics that are not covered on a page.
Access to open discussions will be handled through the ToL Customization system; i.e., visitors who are interested in seeing discussions on ToL pages can set their preferences to have this feature turned on; while people who just want to browse content created by ToL authors can leave it turned off.