We ran a group project without dumping everything in WhatsApp

Group chats are where files go to be forgotten. Someone drops a PDF. Someone else drops a different PDF with a similar name. A third person is on the train and “likes” both. Two weeks later you are writing the bibliography from memory. I have been that third person.

The last group project I actually enjoyed (a methods paper, four people, too many PDFs) we put the sources in one LinkBoard directory and we made a rule: if it is not in the directory, it is not in the paper. Chat could still be for “are you free at 6.” Chat was not the library.

The boring setup that worked

One directory. Name: the course code plus the assignment. Description said who owned the Friday cleanup and that every link needed a note with the author, year, and whether we planned to cite it. Viewer invites for anyone who only needed to read. Editors for the two people who were actually collecting sources.

We tagged cite, background, and methods. That was the whole taxonomy. Someone wanted a tag per theory. We said no. Search still works if the title is “Chen 2022 — teacher retention survey” instead of the 90-character journal title.

Dead links showed up before the night before

University library links expire in ways that feel personal. We spent fifteen minutes on a Friday opening the first ten. Two were behind logins we no longer had. We replaced them while we still remembered the claim they supported. That is the whole weekly review idea, just with more complaining.

For citations, the note had to be written while the PDF was open. If you wait until the draft, you will invent the page number. I still write “table 2, household energy, used in the comparison” because I know I will not remember.

Decisions in the same folder

We had a stupid argument about whether to include a 2014 blog post. We made a poll in the directory with a 48-hour deadline. The blog post lost. I wrote “rejected, too old, 18 Apr” on the link instead of deleting it, because someone asked again in May. History is cheaper than a second argument.

We did not make the directory public. Interview notes do not belong on a URL you can forward by accident. Public is for a reading list the lecturer already put on the syllabus. Different tool.

If you are collecting sources alone, the research workflow is closer to how I work on a thesis-shaped pile. The collaboration clicks are in the team guide.

If you want the click-by-click setup, use the getting started guide. Questions go to admin@linkboard.io.