Suggestion: Switch to Slack, Gitter, or OSS equivalent

[sugarpuff]

Most new/active OSS projects don't use IRC these days, because IRC is inconvenient for most people to use. It was invented in 1988 and it's time to get with the 21st century.

People lose messages, sign off before receiving answers, aren't able to search archives, etc. IRC is difficult/clunky to use, and lacks too many features when compared to modern chat systems.

It would be better for Namecoin's community to switch away from IRC, IMO.

If there are issues with Slack or Gitter, here are some self-hosted versions:

https://moose-team.github.io/friends/
https://sdelements.github.io/lets-chat/

[domob]

I do not want to sound offensive, but my personal opinion is that this sounds a lot like "oh my god, IRC is sooo old, we have to stay modern!" and not real deficiencies. IRC and mailing lists have done extremely well (I prefer them very much to hosted things like a forum and Github, and have the feeling that a lot of people in FLOSS do so), and I see no reason to change that "just because".

[sugarpuff]

I see no reason to change that "just because".

Ah, you're right. My bad!

How silly of me for suggesting that.

[phelix]

We can't spend ressources on setting up a chat system ourselves. Can't say I'm a big fan of IRC, though. In any case it would be nice to be able to use Tor. Hypocrits at freenode don't allow Tor any more. Decentralized would also be nice but that might conflict with "easy to use".

[biolizard89]

We can't spend ressources on setting up a chat system ourselves. Can't say I'm a big fan of IRC, though. In any case it would be nice to be able to use Tor. Hypocrits at freenode don't allow Tor any more. Decentralized would also be nice but that might conflict with "easy to use".

Anything that we use has to be abuse/spam resistant. IRC qualifies, though unfortunately, this requirement has a habit of conflicting with permitting Tor.

[phelix]

Gitter seems to work with Tor. I created a channel: https://gitter.im/namecoin/meta https://gitter.im/namecoin/lounge
Second post was created via Tor.


It may not be optimal to move everything to github. But you have to admit they do a very good job. Gitter is so much easier to use that IRC, particularly so for the casual chatter.

[josephbisch]

There is also sandstorm, which is a platform for deploying webapps easily and they have a bunch of apps (including chat and collaboration apps) that can be deployed with one click once the initial sandstorm setup on the server is done. Unfortunately it seems like we would have to set it up on our own server or pay for the hosted option. So maybe just sticking with Gitter or other free hosted options is best for Namecoin's case.

Here is a sample of the apps they currently support.

[phelix]

I want to give Gitter a try: https://forum.namecoin.info/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=2379

Thanks sugarpuff for suggesting it.

[sugarpuff]

I want to give Gitter a try: https://forum.namecoin.info/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=2379

Thanks sugarpuff for suggesting it.

Thanks for setting it up! Are both 'meta' and 'lounge' channels active, or are we using only one?

[biolizard89]

Is there a way for anonymous users to use Gitter? It looks like a GitHub account is needed. Does GitHub allow registering throwaway accounts over Tor? What information is mandatorily collected during registration by GitHub and Gitter?

I do like that Gitter appears to offer an IRC bridge. Does the IRC bridge work over Tor?