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As I posted on twitter[1], Slack is linkable. Not public, but if you can chat you see them. Gitter: public AND linkable. Async is a good argument; linkability i

by zellyn 10y ago

As I posted on twitter[1], Slack is linkable. Not public, but if you can chat you see them. Gitter: public AND linkable. Async is a good argument; linkability is not. Slack's UI is good. Not perfect, but it's quite usable compared to all the alternatives[2]. People always underestimate the value of good UI. [1] https://twitter.com/zellyn/status/851818007248678912 https://twitter.com/zellyn/status/851818007248678912 [2] I've been on IRC on and off since 1993. It's much worse.

grey-area 10y ago
Slack doesn't have public links and an archive of posts, it's a stream behind a login, which might go away at any time on an active project. It's a terrible idea for anything other than ephemeral communications which don't need to be logged or kept. Re the UI, for a chat app it's fine, most conversations around an open-source project should not be held in a chat format however, but in a format that respects participants not being in the same time zone or having the same time pressures (that means an async format, not a linear chat). If you want to have an open process (for discussions around proposals, bugs etc), you need an open, linkable, archivable format, ideally hosted somewhere you control. That means mailing lists or a public html server, not a private chat service which may or may not be around, which may delete data or change policies at any time. For this reason Github isn't great either, but at least it has public links and you could scrape the data if required.
kuschku 10y ago
> [2] I've been on IRC on and off since 1993. It's much worse. So? There are services offering that, too. Linkability is easy to add to IRC as soon as you are using logging systems and modern bouncers such as IRCCloud or Quassel.
aeorgnoieang 10y ago
'Async' isn't even that good of an argument. Have you never replied to an old forum post and been accused of 'necromancy'? Have you never been late to reply to an email chain or a thread on a mailing list or forum? There's no clear line dividing asynchronous versus synchronous communication. Even phone calls can be (partially) asynchronous – "hold on, let me check" let alone "let me call you back in <some amount of time>". And similarly, if a group of people are responding to each other quick enough, even using an 'asynchronous' medium, then they're basically communicating 'synchronously'.

by zellyn 10y ago

grey-area 10y ago

Slack doesn't have public links and an archive of posts, it's a stream behind a login, which might go away at any time on an active project. It's a terrible idea for anything other than ephemeral communications which don't need to be logged or kept. Re the UI, for a chat app it's fine, most conversations around an open-source project should not be held in a chat format however, but in a format that respects participants not being in the same time zone or having the same time pressures (that means an async format, not a linear chat). If you want to have an open process (for discussions around proposals, bugs etc), you need an open, linkable, archivable format, ideally hosted somewhere you control. That means mailing lists or a public html server, not a private chat service which may or may not be around, which may delete data or change policies at any time. For this reason Github isn't great either, but at least it has public links and you could scrape the data if required.

kuschku 10y ago

> [2] I've been on IRC on and off since 1993. It's much worse. So? There are services offering that, too. Linkability is easy to add to IRC as soon as you are using logging systems and modern bouncers such as IRCCloud or Quassel.

aeorgnoieang 10y ago

'Async' isn't even that good of an argument. Have you never replied to an old forum post and been accused of 'necromancy'? Have you never been late to reply to an email chain or a thread on a mailing list or forum? There's no clear line dividing asynchronous versus synchronous communication. Even phone calls can be (partially) asynchronous – "hold on, let me check" let alone "let me call you back in <some amount of time>". And similarly, if a group of people are responding to each other quick enough, even using an 'asynchronous' medium, then they're basically communicating 'synchronously'.