Important: Signal K Instant Messaging Moving from Slack to Discord

[mairas]

Dear Signal K Community,

We are excited to announce an important update regarding our community's instant messaging platform. After careful deliberation, we have decided to transition from Slack to Discord. With this change, we hope to enhance our community's accessibility, collaboration, and overall experience. The main reasons for this major change are:

• Extended Message Visibility: Unlike Slack, which has a 90-day limit on message visibility for free plans, Discord does not have such restriction. This makes our community's valuable discussions and knowledge accessible over time and we can accumulate advice, answers and good practises.
• Search Engine Indexing: Discord offers the capability for select channels to be indexed by search engines. This feature will make it easier for people seeking information on Signal K and related topics to find our community. The content on select channels will appear on Answer Overflow.
• Better Suited for Open Community Collaboration: Discord's features such as assisted onboarding and forum-style questions and support boards help us structure the messaging contents for easier access in the future. Other communities have for example created great Showcase galleries with Discord's Post feature.

Next Steps

Join Discord Right Away: The Signal K Discord server is now open!. Join using the invite URL: https://discord.gg/uuZrwz4dCS. Key community members will stop contributing on Slack.
Transition Timeline: We will have a one-week transition period starting today. One week from today, our Slack channels will be archived and set to read-only.
Private Channels: Many people have used private channels for chatting with smaller groups. Discord does not let users create channels themselves. We are happy to create private groups upon request. Alternatively, you can use group direct messages instead.

We believe this change will benefit the Signal K community by leveraging Discord's strengths for a more accessible, enduring, and collaborative environment. Key contributors and other community members have expressed their frustration at the vanishing history, not being able to leverage past content.

Should you have any questions or require assistance, please feel free to reach out.

Let's keep the discussion flowing at our new home!

Warm regards,

Matti Airas, Scott Bender and Teppo Kurki

EDIT: The initial invite link expired after 7 days. The updated link is non-expiring.