irc/discord/slack/telegram

[MadcapJake]

Is there a chatroom where howl users/devs congregate? If not, perhaps there should be one (any preference for a service to use?)

[refi64]

Well, we just set up a subreddit, though I don't quite think that's what you meant...

What about Gitter?

[MadcapJake]

Gitter is fine too!

[abaez]

I think either gitter or telegram should be the choices. Leaning more so to telegram. Mostly due to it being slightly more transparent and open than gitter.

[abaez]

Also, I found this little tool for telegram recently and think it works pretty well: integram.

[shalabhc]

Telegram didn't let me create an account because I use a Google Voice phone number. Is there any way around that?

[MadcapJake]

Seems that Telegram doesn't support VoIP numbers at all (or they did at one point but don't anymore).

[abaez]

On Sat, Jun 4, 2016, at 11:32 PM, Shalabh Chaturvedi wrote:

Telegram didn't let me create an account because I use a Google Voice phone number. Is there any way around that?

I don't think they do. I'm no telegram expert though. Only offering an alternative to the options of an IM, for the editor's group at large.

Still, I think it is worth considering. Just looking briefly at the api, we could probably get say a bundle to interop, with the cli version of telegram, to have some weird integration with howl.

[phrohdoh]

IRC is as open as these tools get.

[shalabhc]

Agreed - I like IRC too. It's definitely easy to get started and has no prerequisites like sending your phone number to a third party ;-)

Also, I already have a registered nick on freenode.

[abaez]

Personally speaking, only brought up telegram to get the discussion flowing on the subject. Having both IM and forum is an excellent way to preserving an active community for any tool. I think the votes on @Phrohdoh comment speak for themselves. IRC is the way to go. It has worked this long for a reason. :)

[refi64]

FWIW IRC doesn't maintain any kind of log of messages by default, which kind of sucks when someone had some sort of "really important thing" and you want to see it.

[shalabhc]

A logbot could solve the logging issue. But I haven't looked into how much work it is to run and maintain one , and if there are any logbot services out there.

[abaez]

Here's a small list of what so far has become a desire:

keywords syntax:
  accesible = can newcomers invite themselves?
  mod       = moderate or modify the chat
  open      = is the client open source
  log       = can search the logs of conversation
  pin       = can pin a topic or post
  mobile    = can it be used on mobile

Enum types for answer:
  yes
  no
  _         = do not know

============================================================
client    accesible     mod     open    log     pin   mobile
------------------------------------------------------------
irc       yes           yes     yes     yes(4)  yes   yes(1)
telegram  yes           yes     yes(5)  no(2)   yes   yes
slack     no            yes     no      yes(3)  yes   yes
discord   yes           no      no      no(2)   no    yes
gitter    yes           yes     no      yes     _     yes    

1: works on mobile, but battery life is severely limited.
2: unless you define scrolling up in the conversation as logging.
3: logs, but only the first 10k comments. Rest is paywall.
4: logs, but you need to use an outside source.
5: only the api for extensibility with _promise_ of open source later on...

[refi64]

Gitter also has the advantage of GitHub integration, so you just sign in with your GitHub account (no need for another account) and can do stuff like reference issues. In addition, you can set it that new builds on Travis also get sent to Gitter.

[abaez]

If we going with integration, slack can do all of that (excluding new account) to the umpteenth level. Still good to know. :+1:

[nilnor]

All right, so we have some different alternatives proposed. In order to move forward I'd like to narrow these down to two: IRC or Gitter.

• IRC does not need much of an introduction - it's been around for a long time, it's open, and lot's of people have experience with it. Drawbacks are no automatic archiving, no images or fancy stuff, and decidedly sub-par experience on mobile.
• Gitter, features support for images, automatic archives, code snippets, Git integration, etc., but is a closed web thing.

(The above are just some points, see @abaez matrix for more complete evaluation points).

Let's choose one of the two, so if you have any preference leave a comment saying so and we'll settle on the winner (for now at least).

[abaez]

Put me for IRC. If the time is taken to add things to it, we could probably get all the bells and whistles that exist on gitter. Heck, just look at ipfs and their irc integration to matrix.

[refi64]

My vote goes to Gitter...if it weren't already obvious. :)

Also, remember that some IRC clients are closed-source, so "open-ness" isn't really that much of a deciding factor.

[MadcapJake]

For those looking for an excellent IRC experience on mobile check out IRCCloud (Although this is a closed-source client, it's really quite nice).

My vote is for IRC over Gitter mostly because the Gitter linux client runs very poorly on my machine. Also though some IRC clients are closed-source, it's important to remember that the entire Gitter ecosystem is closed.

[shalabhc]

Heh, check out https://irc.gitter.im/

While I like IRC and am completely new to Gitter, I'm leaning towards Gitter after playing with it a bit. The reason is the automatic and painless integration with github as well as logging and search. Of course we could set up all of that with IRC, but do we want to support all of that? Not to mention we also get markdown mode in messages and the ability to have a nice web link to the searchable chatroom from the website.

The only downside is the messages are stored in Gitter and not exportable. However with IRC, the messages aren't stored at all. If we can set up an IRC logger, we could perhaps set up the same logger with the IRC bridge linked above.

[shalabhc]

One more advantage I see with Gitter is seamless switching between devices. I currently switch between 3-4 devices and with IRC I lose the context, have to go to another site to look at the logs to catch up, and also have to kick off my nick or use different nicks.

[nilnor]

Since I also lean towards Gitter, we'll start with that. Should that not work out we can revisit the decision later, but for now everyone is welcome to https://gitter.im/howl-editor/howl!