This question (of IRC or other chat client) has been very interesting, as it has led us to consider:
what do newcomers want or need? we haven't addressed this systematically in this discussion yet but we should, because one of our goals is to encourage newcomers and to grow the community
whether there should be (or even is) a single chat / communication system in the amorphous Plone community
what are we trying to accomplish with any chat system?
This discussion here and in Gitter and Slack and IRC should be first and foremost about those larger questions. As others have mentioned to me, we shouldn't argue simply about whether Slack or Gitter is better.
We have a good window of opportunity now to think about what should go on the new /support (or /help ?) plone.org page. (and of course we can continue to refine).
Now that we've had a cooling off period what do we think?
It seems to me most people have drifted back to IRC. Gitter activity is low. Many Plone Slack users have gone "inactive".
I think we need to focus on two needs:
what do newcomers need, not specifically for chat, but really for these separate things:
asking questions and getting answers
meeting with and interacting with the community
what do current community members need
For newcomers, if they need to ask questions and get answers then IRC is not good since it's hit or miss if anyone will answer before the newcomer disconnects.
Currently at http://plone.org/support we already show an emphasis on "asking questions" (goes to stackoverflow) over "chat" (goes to IRC).
Maybe for the "chat" bit we should emphasize there that people should stay connected – and how to do that – and maybe how to ask questions (don't get me started on that!) because they don't seem to be reading the page that is in the #plone channel topic.
For questions, we should consider how to mention this forum better (it's not mentioned on that http://plone.org/support page except in a teeny tiny footer!). It may be hard for a newcomer to decide what has long-run value and what doesn't so they'll need guidance.
I think with that we really have addressed what newcomers need. And then we can discuss further what current community members need and/or want.
+1 for Slack with slackin (or something like it) to facilitate anonymous sign up. Maybe we'll grow the community or maybe not, but at least we can rule out slack as an option (it's currently the "GitHub of Chat" IIUC) ~Old Man
IRC has been working for most people for 25 yrs, it will continue to work for the next 25 yrs.
Forget Slack in this context, other communities don't use Slack. Stick with IRC....not need for change.
I successfully use slack with my IRC client, if some message shows up and I'am online I can answer if I have an answer.
IRC is still the number one. Slack activity is low. We can pick up newbies via Slack, but in practice it does not seem to be accepted. Most friends around forced to use Slack in other contexts for one thing or the other don't like it much. As Andreas already wrote, also I say Slack will die at some point, IRC survives longer.
The new https://plone.org/support mentions this forum more clearly, along with IRC. Please have a look at that new page/folder and we'd love to get suggestions for improvements.
We (at Wildcard) were using it for a while. It's ok for free, you can self host, it had nice ways of showing you conversations and you could narrow down to topics, but its mobile apps suck. It doesn't look like Dropbox is actively doing much with it; last I heard they had maybe one part time person on it. We've since moved on
@tkimnguyen What did you choose after moving on? Just curious. We've been happily using Flowdock since 2012, but because it was sold to U.S. for some time ago, we are also considering self-hosted options (yet, it's hard to beat Flowdock in features and connectivity).
We now use Rocket Chat (self-hosted). It's certainly better for mobile, but I miss the Zulip concepts of narrowing focus (but since Zulip mobile was not working for mobile notifications, it was dead in the water for us).
Hm, yeah, re Flowdock, CA had a reputation for buying things, shutting down development, and milking the product for as long as they could.
I agree and hope IRC won't vanish but I'd add Slack as canonical TTW chat option in plone.org/support.
Most newbies don't/can't wait enough on IRC to get an answer, which would happen much more successfuly through Slack (not to mention irc's join/quit flood). Currently many newbies are even told to ask here in the forums cause IRC are "words in the wind", so we indeed have low visibility there if it's a doubt but not actually a direct chat. So please let's wear our Newbie hat this time instead of the Ploner one.
I like IRCCloud a lot – it's fantastic! – but it costs $5/month.
@davilima6 we never got consensus around switching away from IRC as the official chat system. A number of people use Slack (almost all for private messages, according to the stats I receive weekly), and for a while Gitter had lots of attention (but is now not used).
In IRC I don't know why people don't think of staying connected long enough to get an answer. It's in the channel topic! Sadly, if they're not bright enough to read the channel topic that appears when they connect, I wonder how much we can help them in there.
Slack the company is not interested in supporting large FOSS projects and communities. Can't blame them: there's no money in it for them.
That may well be, but in the meantime conversations on Slack are more efficient. (Comments on images/posts, counted reactions, pinned messages, seamless syncing across devices, etc.)
Don't use technologies that promote lock-in. I think Slack is better in this regard than e.g. using Mac hardware for FOSS projects. It bridges to IRC and gitter (target) and supports archiving.
One of the controversial things we did with Signal early on was to build it as an unfederated service. Nothing about any of the protocols we've developed requires centralization; it's entirely possible to build a federated Signal Protocol based messenger, but I no longer believe that it is possible to build a competitive federated messenger at all.
[...]
Indeed, cannibalizing a federated application-layer protocol into a centralized service is almost a sure recipe for a successful consumer product today. It's what Slack did with IRC, what Facebook did with email, and what WhatsApp has done with XMPP. In each case, the federated service is stuck in time, while the centralized service is able to iterate into the modern world and beyond.
[...]
This reduced user friction has begun to extend the implicit threat that used to come with federated services into centralized services as well. Where as before you could switch hosts, or even decide to run your own server, now users are simply switching entire networks. In many cases that cost is now much lower than the federated switching cost of changing your email address to use a different email provider.
But read the whole thing, it's well thought through.
That's interesting -- my participation is almost all on plomino and rapido .. I wonder who's using it privately.
For me it's either because I'm on bad wifi or mobile internet, or because I'm 6-12 hours out of sync with most of the community. Even with IRCCloud, by the time I reconnect, my question has been buried under myriad other discussions, so if I want to pick up the conversation, it's hard to maintain context (as opposed to a topic channel).
They're not interested in supporting Slack teams of many 1000s of members. That is something quite different from not supporting large FOSS projects.
I agree that Slack as first stop for asking a question is not great (neither is IRC). But for getting things done in teams it's very good.
I'm not that fussed gitter or slack or other but I already use slack and I no longer bother to use irc (due to timezone issues). I'd suspect lots of you already use slack. and those that use IRC are in the right timezones.
I'll just add this
a) chat is the easiest thing to replace if there are issues. We don't keep archives no so there is not much to transition.
b) if using discourse should have taught is that using FOSS and running it ourselves isn't always the best option. We still don't have email integration. We do have email integration with github. Github isn't FOSS. We are a small community. Let's not waste time on stuff we don't have to.
what do we think?