Allowing login for people who want, but login-less use for contributors and visitors

[Pomax]

It would be a shame if, by setting up MatterMoz as friendly replacement of what we're using IRC for right now, we perpetuate the high barrier to entry when it comes to engaging with us "where we hang out". The nice thing about IRC is that you just join, and off you go, but getting to the point where you've joined is a high barrier. On the other hand, MatterMoz is low barrier to entry when it comes to joining, but high barrier to entry because it seems like it's locked behind a login system.

With an eye towards contributors and visitors, it would be extremely nice if we could offer logins for those who want the authority that comes with being a verified user (i.e. "us", really), without forcing our contributors and visitors to go through having to set up (yet) an(other) account with us just to ask a question. It feels like we can do better.

[Pomax]

<yalam96> there was a similar discussion on discourse but with telegram that may of interest https://discourse.mozilla-community.org/t/should-we-help-people-bridge-telegram-groups-with-irc-channels/5004

[simonwex]

25 Might solve this problem

[Pomax]

I don't see how it would - I'm talking about how do we deal with our (new) community after we move from IRC to MatterMost. Those people will never even be told we used to be on IRC, and certainly not be instructed to try IRC first. How do we get them into our communication stream without forcing them to get yet another user account before they can talk to us? We don't want to wall ourselves in.

[alanmoo]

If we complete #25, then we could direct users to IRC or Mattermost, depending on their desire to create an account. Would that be a satisfactory result, @pomax?

[Pomax]

once mattermost is available, we should never ever send people to IRC ever again =P

(it is a terrible medium unless you already love IRC)

[davidascher]

One of the reasons irc is problematic is that it's easy for bots and trolls to enter.

We want low barrier to participation by people, hard by trolls and bots.

Discuss. :)

On Mon, Mar 7, 2016, 2:52 PM Mike Kamermans notifications@github.com wrote:

once mattermost is available, we should never ever send people to IRC ever again =P

(it is a terrible medium unless you already love IRC)

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/mozilla/chat.mozillafoundation.org/issues/23#issuecomment-193492204 .

[alanmoo]

I realized today that Gitter does this and it's really nice- perhaps when hitting a channel, we can simply show the conversation, but instead of a text input there's a button to create an account/log in.

[davidascher]

+1 to looking at how different systems handle this for inspiration.

On Wed, Mar 9, 2016, 6:09 PM Alan Mooiman notifications@github.com wrote:

I realized today that Gitter does this and it's really nice- perhaps when hitting a channel, we can simply show the conversation, but instead of a text input there's a button to create an account/log in.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/mozilla/chat.mozillafoundation.org/issues/23#issuecomment-194619526 .

[Pomax]

That's an interesting in-between form. I wonder if we could go a step further and make the input a "sign up or pass this 'I am not a robot' check to participate"?

[alanmoo]

And not require an account be created? I feel like requiring an email to contribute has a few benefits, such as reducing spam and ensuring we can get back to contributors with questions, even if it's asynchronously. The ability to contribute to the conversation while remaining anonymous strikes me as an unfavorable balance.

[Pomax]

There's a difference between anonymous, and session-specific, though. A user called "user12462354" is obviously not meaningful if we want contributors rather than random typists, but if a user called "EveMiller" can ask a question in our channel that solves her problem immediately, the delay an email verification adds to "joining" vs "and then asking" seems an unnecessary step. A more interesting model would be: let them pick a name and immediately type after passing a robot check, but if they want the full benefit of asynchronous online/offline responses etc, and they want to keep engaging with us rather than just ask a question now and then never come back, then they'll have to sign up properly.

I may be naive here, but someone writing something that can spam a website, rather than a telnet-like protocol, is someone who can trivially add in a mail check and activation action into their bot. Email signup does not feel like it offers any kind of spam protection in this respect.