Slack channel

[jsmith-dev]

Would someone with an @ipfs.io email account please register and spawn an IPFS - Slack room?

[daviddias]

Hi @julian-smith-code, we've been using primarily IRC for our chat room where everyone from the IPFS community gathers, gets support and discuss the IPFS protocol.

The fastest way to get into the channel is by using a web client ->

Would this be a good solution for you?

[dysbulic]

I really like Slack for the mobile app & logging & integrations with other
systems & capacity to create channels.

I'm willing to undertake the setup of a Slack-IRC bridge
https://github.com/ekmartin/slack-irc if I can find an appropriate
server. I don't know if a Heroku free instance will work or not.

—_☮_W

P.S. Is there anyone in the DC area interested in doing a meetup? I'm
planning on organizing one, but want to have a bit more of a clue as to how
the system functions before attempting.

On Thu, Oct 15, 2015 at 10:39 PM, David Dias notifications@github.com
wrote:

Hi @julian-smith-code https://github.com/julian-smith-code, we've been
using primarily IRC for our chat room where everyone from the IPFS
community gathers, gets support and discuss the IPFS protocol.

The fastest way to get into the channel is by using a web client ->
http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=%23ipfs

Would this be a good solution for you?

—
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub
#57 (comment).

[jsmith-dev]

Pros for IRC: Open / Lightweight / Pseudonymous
Pros for Slack: Context / Images and Contextual Formatting / Conversation History / Search / Faces

I get IRC... I'd argue Slack bumps up the community persona interactivity. (subjective personal view)

[lidel]

Current set of communication tools seems to work just fine:

• GitHub Issues are great for asynchronous discussions.
• IRC channel #ipfs at Freenode is used for synchronous communication.
  If you want a web interface or a mobile chat app, irccloud.com provides them.

That being said, Slack is mentioned quite often. I understand that some people prefer Slack's UX, so perhaps slack-irc bridge would be a solution for them (as long as Freenode channel is used as bridge backend).

PS. IRC vs Slack was already discussed in other places:

• https://github.com/protocol/distributed-work-tools/issues/1
• https://groups.google.com/d/msg/ipfs-users/bu-axW8_LQ8/ISiBdDU4AgAJ

[jsmith-dev]

Step 1: To upspin a slack-irc bridge... given there is namespace.. (e.g "ifps.slack.com") it really should be someone with an @ifps.org email who first registers an appropriate Slack room and thereby the applicable namespace (No credit card required). A volunteer? @jbenet ?

[daviddias]

@RichardLitt would be the ideal person to lead this effort, as he is doing a lot of the work on getting our communication better. What do you think Richard?

[whyrusleeping]

@julian-smith-code we have a matrix.org tie in to our IRC channel. They have android and ios apps that you can use, and you can access it via chat.ipfs.io

[harlantwood]

+11 for slack integration!

@dysbulic a free heroku instance will not do the trick; we would need a $7/month "hobby" instance (which never sleeps). The free instances now run a max of 18 hours per day, so they don't work for persistent services.

[RichardLitt]

I don't think Slack is right for IPFS.

I used to like Slack. I live on it - I have 18 different teams on my current desktop application. But I think it is suboptimal for open source projects. Slack is good for small, non-fluid teams; larger Slack channels don't gain anything that you can't get from IRC, except perhaps a shinier interface.

As @dysbulic says, Slack has a nice mobile app, good capacity for creating channels, and nice integrations. @julian-smith-code brings up "context / Images and Contextual Formatting / Conversation History / Search / Faces". I'd argue that images and contextual formatting dilute the conversational power, and don't aid it - giphy integrations, for instance, quickly lead to conversational derailment - and that conversation history is actually not as good as IRC, as it requires payment. Slack doesn't really have logs. The costs per member are exorbitant, and Slack hasn't shown that they have any interest in allowing long term logging. Something like a Slack-IRC bridge can help with that, but that effectively removes the channel aspect, which is Slack's greatest feature, and why I would consider it over IRC. I don't see the added benefit of Slack and IRC, so I'm not really sure why people want this, in general.

@julian-smith-code makes a good point about faces and community engagement - Slack is good at that, it makes people feel like they're part of something - initially. However, I think that when you have more than 20 members, you end up with essentially what you have in IRC - a few people talking a lot, a few people asking questions now and then - and there's no actual gain for being a member. Further, you end up with ghost towns, where you have tons of members who never check in. Channels become abandoned, and new people often don't know which places are best to post in, and you end up with a #general room that is overused, and other rooms that are underutilized.

Slack's multiteam functionality, as well, is so awful that I'm beginning to have a pavlovian tinge of pain just signing into Slack. They're pathetically slow at development, as a company. Personally, I'd rather not have another slack room.

Regarding an IRC-slack bridge, besides the points brought up by @harlantwood, I'm not sure about Heroku; they recently had a bit of controversy regarding data storage, although Marc Benioff retracted the letter saying that they support CISA. See here for more details. Maybe there's a way we can build a bridge using IPFS or something.

So, in short, I just don't see a Slack room adding anything. It also fragments the userbase, which right now seems to go just fine. I'm not even sure adding ipfs/support was a good idea - I think that IRC and faq do all we want. I think @lidel hit the nail on the head. It also seems like @jbenet agrees.

I can spin up an instance on ipfs.slack.com, but I'm not sure I've seen a convincing reason why we should. Please let me know if I'm missing something, here! I may be.

---

On another note, @dysbulic:

P.S. Is there anyone in the DC area interested in doing a meetup? I'm
planning on organizing one, but want to have a bit more of a clue as to how
the system functions before attempting.

I would open issue. See #54 and #53 for examples.

[harlantwood]

The Slack / IRC bridge is

1. Useful for those of us in slack all day (I know I will track/participate in conversations more)
2. harmless for the slack detractors (just don't use it)

We have already had offers to set up the bridge; if noone with an @ipfs.io email is willing to create the slack instance, I'd say go ahead and set it up yourself.

Regarding where to run it, if noone wants to pay for a heroku instance, maybe someone could self host it on their own server?

[RichardLitt]

Maybe I'm not understanding what a Slack / IRC bridge is, then? It's just a way of mirroring and commenting from one app to the other?

I can set it up; I have an @ipfs.io account. I just want to make sure I know what I'm doing here, because I'd like to talk more before setting up an IPFS slack room where people go, not knowing about the IRC.

[harlantwood]

It's a bidirectional mirror as I understand it. More info:

• https://github.com/ekmartin/slack-irc
• https://ekmartin.com/2015/slack-irc/

It looks like they have a docker container version BTW @dysbulic.

[davidar]

I'd also like to put in a good word for https://matrix.org (web client at https://vector.im or http://chat.ipfs.io) which also has a lot of the benefits people have mentioned about Slack, and additionally:

• bridges all the IRC rooms on freenode (I use this bridge to access #ipfs all the time)
• is open and decentralised (and is likely to integrate with IPFS in the future Matrix notes#42)

CC: @ara4n

[supertyler]

this this idea die?

[davidar]

@supertyler in my mind it has - please use Vector if you'd like a Slack-like interface to access #ipfs

[harlantwood]

yup, super dead, IMHO