Why did this end up a slack channel rather than IRC? Many, to most, of these tools have IRC presences and frankly I just like not having to run multiple slack instances, which have numerous drawbacks.
IRC works really well when you have a core team who spend a lot of time in a topic-specific channel where visitors can stop by and engage with them. That’s great for channels focused on individual open source tools, as you point out. One of Slack’s strengths for community channels is that it handles low volume conversation better because you can check it intermittently and catch up on what you missed. Being able to respond to questions that were asked when you weren’t around is a big plus.
Our intention here definitely wasn’t to try to take the place of project-specific IRC channels at all. We just felt that there wasn’t really place to talk about experiences with different tools and tactics at a higher level. We get emails from people all the time about topics like this, and our hope is that making these sort of discussions public will be helpful to the community.
It’s absolutely not the the case that I fear that you’re trying to displace people from project channels to slack, apologies if it’s come across that way. It’s more frustration that for a community that’s fairly well established on IRC, there’s pressure to fragment across platforms.
While you present the argument that Slack is better for low-traffic communities, I’m not sure I agree. You mainly rely on these points:
You can check slack intermittently and catch up on what you missed
You can respond to things that happened when you weren’t around
Both of these points are well covered by IRC. While it’s true that the core protocol doesn’t cover it, it’s now the standard practically to use a bouncing service that permits it, or self host your own. A bunch of ZNC specific providers can be found here: https://wiki.znc.in/Providers , and additionally there’re services like https://www.irccloud.com/ that provide the entire system including a web client.
Slack has some downsides, like really poor community management, instead deferring to out-of-band systems to deal with things like harassment as well, essentially showing it’s colours as a business service offering. For example, there’s no ability for an individual user to ignore another they do not get along with or are being harassed by, with Slack instead suggesting this be resolved with HR policies.
Why did this end up a slack channel rather than IRC? Many, to most, of these tools have IRC presences and frankly I just like not having to run multiple slack instances, which have numerous drawbacks.
IRC works really well when you have a core team who spend a lot of time in a topic-specific channel where visitors can stop by and engage with them. That’s great for channels focused on individual open source tools, as you point out. One of Slack’s strengths for community channels is that it handles low volume conversation better because you can check it intermittently and catch up on what you missed. Being able to respond to questions that were asked when you weren’t around is a big plus.
Our intention here definitely wasn’t to try to take the place of project-specific IRC channels at all. We just felt that there wasn’t really place to talk about experiences with different tools and tactics at a higher level. We get emails from people all the time about topics like this, and our hope is that making these sort of discussions public will be helpful to the community.
It’s absolutely not the the case that I fear that you’re trying to displace people from project channels to slack, apologies if it’s come across that way. It’s more frustration that for a community that’s fairly well established on IRC, there’s pressure to fragment across platforms.
While you present the argument that Slack is better for low-traffic communities, I’m not sure I agree. You mainly rely on these points:
Both of these points are well covered by IRC. While it’s true that the core protocol doesn’t cover it, it’s now the standard practically to use a bouncing service that permits it, or self host your own. A bunch of ZNC specific providers can be found here: https://wiki.znc.in/Providers , and additionally there’re services like https://www.irccloud.com/ that provide the entire system including a web client.
Slack has some downsides, like really poor community management, instead deferring to out-of-band systems to deal with things like harassment as well, essentially showing it’s colours as a business service offering. For example, there’s no ability for an individual user to ignore another they do not get along with or are being harassed by, with Slack instead suggesting this be resolved with HR policies.
“Slack is better than IRC” is like saying “gmail is better than SMTP”.
Slack is owning:
People who appreciate running themself the programs they use go to IRC (get its hand dirty).
People who prefer not be involved in maintaining anything go to Slack (living in the “cloud”).
This is how I get my hands dirty: on a server:
$ abduco -A irc weechat.You can even have this in a laptop
.bashrc:And then you have the same feature of “being able to respond to questions that were asked when you weren’t around”. :)