Why?

I think communication is a crucial point for any research project, especially, when it consist of many "sub-projects" with literally hundreds of participants.

While almost everybody nowadays is accustomed to the usage of e-mail and the web (at least in a passive mode), most of the time e-mails are used to communicate in a "paper-like" style: But this, then, creates rapidly hundreds or even thousands of e-mails, if a topic has to be discussed or simply an event has to be organised.

Therefore, I'd strongly suggest to make use of the new means of direct, "asynchronous" communication "over the web" - especially, when the usage of modern Content Management Systems is even easier than that of - for instance - a full-scaled word/text processing software.

And: All the information necessarily can be put and found in ONE place - and in a structured order.

Another advantage is the possibility to have different groups working on different subjects/topics without having to deal with others - and every member of this portal could be a member of several groups. Therefore, the "communication overload" can be minimised to those really engaged in a special topic or project.

As usually for content management systems like the one powering this portal, we also have a workflow-based system for review and publication of any content. This allows, for instance, to work together as a group on a topic, paper etc. until all agree on the final form - and to publish it then (and not earlier). 

Another main advantage is the possibility to let search engines like Google index all or parts of the content published on this portal (unpublished content will not be visible to search robots): So, even people who never heard of COLOSS or are not accustumed to its structure and content may be able to find documents they might be interested in. - For instance, try a google search for any line of characters in this document (like "I think communication is a crucial point for any research project"), and google should be able to find it - at least after a while, when this page has been indexed by google.)

[ ... to be continued ... ]