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I like Gitter, the Scala community is on Gitter. However I wish they'd fix their IRC bridge, which has some issues, like not reporting the full list of users,

I like Gitter, the Scala community is on Gitter. However I wish they'd fix their IRC bridge, which has some issues, like not reporting the full list of users, which is driving me insane. Speaking of Slack-like, the best alternative remains in my opinion good old IRC. I'm a user of https://irccloud.com https://irccloud.com for always-on presence on IRC and it has better clients than Gitter.

jonahx 8y ago
+1 to irccloud. that said, gitter has many useful features that aren't available on irc: inline code with syntax highlighting, inline images, etc.
sytse 8y ago
Gitter is open source. Do you maybe have a link to an issue about the IRC bridge?
StavrosK 8y ago
Gitter has this annoying bug where it'll email you for every message in any channel you're in and you can't turn it off. How such an egregious bug still hasn't been fixed, I don't know, but it doesn't inspire much trust.
- MadLittleMods 8y ago
  Heya, Gitter developer here, If you want to stop email notifications, https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitter/webapp/blob/develop/docs/notifications.md#emails https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitter/webapp/blob/develop/doc... You could also adjust your notification settings to "Mute", https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitter/webapp/blob/develop/docs/notifications.md#mute https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitter/webapp/blob/develop/doc... But the real problem is that unread item count is coupled to the emails being sent out, https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitter/webapp/issues/1205 https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitter/webapp/issues/1205. So if you have notifications set to "All" or "Announcements" which track unreads, you will get emails for any unread messages in the room which isn't desirable.
raspie 8y ago
Personally I'm really annoyed with Scala community's obsession with Gitter. It's such an inferior tool. Gitter search UI is the worst, and search itself is useless, often returning no results when you can spend an hour scrolling to find what you want manually. This is inexcusable when Gitter is your project's de facto Q&A place instead of more structured places like StackOverflow or Github issues. And so the users are left with a messy stream of collective consciousness that is impossible no search or navigate effectively.
- MadLittleMods 8y ago
  Heya, Gitter developer here, Search definitely needs improvement and is on the roadmap. You can track these issues, - https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitter/webapp/issues/1925 https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitter/webapp/issues/1925 - https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-org/-/epics/387 https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-org/-/epics/387
- bad_user 8y ago
  Chat works better than forums. Speaking as a library maintainer, I've got GitHub issue that stayed there for months before I replied. That's because my time as a contributor is very limited and I get fatigue when replying to too many support tickets. And you'd think, oh wait but there are other people willing to reply. But not really. Forum, email groups, even StackOverflow only work when the projects you're talking about are insanely popular. This is because of two reasons: 1. people with problems are bad at describing those problems — this is why StackOverflow answers often don't answer the freaking question, but rather try to guess what the author wanted, a trend that's driving me insane, because I often want the answer to the question being asked and not something else; whereas on a chat channel, people have conversations, which helps clarify the intent 2. people are afraid of being wrong; but chat is more casual, so in my experience more people end up participating Chat has other benefits. You can have off topic conversations, you can make jokes, you can make friends. I do wish Gitter had threaded conversations. They promised it at some point but nothing came of it. Also, I do like Discourse (https://discourse.org https://discourse.org). It does a good job to mix some chat features with forums. Scala has Discourse forums, like for example https://users.scala-lang.org https://users.scala-lang.org ... but the Scala Gitter channel is way more popular. And one final thought: I know communities that have virtually no meaningful online presence. You might be annoyed at our choice for using Gitter, but at least you've got some chat channels to go to.
MadLittleMods 8y ago
Heya, Gitter developer here You can track https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitter/irc-bridge/issues/52 https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitter/irc-bridge/issues/52 for seeing more users in the member list/roster. There is a proposal there to trickle in new users to the list every time a new message comes through the bridge with relevant code linked (merge request welcome).

jonahx 8y ago

+1 to irccloud. that said, gitter has many useful features that aren't available on irc: inline code with syntax highlighting, inline images, etc.

sytse 8y ago

Gitter is open source. Do you maybe have a link to an issue about the IRC bridge?

StavrosK 8y ago

Gitter has this annoying bug where it'll email you for every message in any channel you're in and you can't turn it off. How such an egregious bug still hasn't been fixed, I don't know, but it doesn't inspire much trust.

MadLittleMods 8y ago
Heya, Gitter developer here, If you want to stop email notifications, https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitter/webapp/blob/develop/docs/notifications.md#emails https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitter/webapp/blob/develop/doc... You could also adjust your notification settings to "Mute", https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitter/webapp/blob/develop/docs/notifications.md#mute https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitter/webapp/blob/develop/doc... But the real problem is that unread item count is coupled to the emails being sent out, https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitter/webapp/issues/1205 https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitter/webapp/issues/1205. So if you have notifications set to "All" or "Announcements" which track unreads, you will get emails for any unread messages in the room which isn't desirable.

raspie 8y ago

Personally I'm really annoyed with Scala community's obsession with Gitter. It's such an inferior tool. Gitter search UI is the worst, and search itself is useless, often returning no results when you can spend an hour scrolling to find what you want manually. This is inexcusable when Gitter is your project's de facto Q&A place instead of more structured places like StackOverflow or Github issues. And so the users are left with a messy stream of collective consciousness that is impossible no search or navigate effectively.

MadLittleMods 8y ago
Heya, Gitter developer here, Search definitely needs improvement and is on the roadmap. You can track these issues, - https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitter/webapp/issues/1925 https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitter/webapp/issues/1925 - https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-org/-/epics/387 https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-org/-/epics/387
bad_user 8y ago
Chat works better than forums. Speaking as a library maintainer, I've got GitHub issue that stayed there for months before I replied. That's because my time as a contributor is very limited and I get fatigue when replying to too many support tickets. And you'd think, oh wait but there are other people willing to reply. But not really. Forum, email groups, even StackOverflow only work when the projects you're talking about are insanely popular. This is because of two reasons: 1. people with problems are bad at describing those problems — this is why StackOverflow answers often don't answer the freaking question, but rather try to guess what the author wanted, a trend that's driving me insane, because I often want the answer to the question being asked and not something else; whereas on a chat channel, people have conversations, which helps clarify the intent 2. people are afraid of being wrong; but chat is more casual, so in my experience more people end up participating Chat has other benefits. You can have off topic conversations, you can make jokes, you can make friends. I do wish Gitter had threaded conversations. They promised it at some point but nothing came of it. Also, I do like Discourse (https://discourse.org https://discourse.org). It does a good job to mix some chat features with forums. Scala has Discourse forums, like for example https://users.scala-lang.org https://users.scala-lang.org ... but the Scala Gitter channel is way more popular. And one final thought: I know communities that have virtually no meaningful online presence. You might be annoyed at our choice for using Gitter, but at least you've got some chat channels to go to.

MadLittleMods 8y ago

Heya, Gitter developer here You can track https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitter/irc-bridge/issues/52 https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitter/irc-bridge/issues/52 for seeing more users in the member list/roster. There is a proposal there to trickle in new users to the list every time a new message comes through the bridge with relevant code linked (merge request welcome).