Add a Gitter chat

[naveensrinivasan]

I would help us to have conversations in gitter https://gitter.im/.

[haacked]

👍

[hnrkndrssn]

👍

[khellang]

Y NO SLACK?

[M-Zuber]

I actually kinda want both. They can serve different kinds of discussions

[shiftkey]

I'm kinda indifferent on which we choose (I neglect both really equally, so I don't really have a horse in the race) but I think sticking to one would be better.

Are there specific features from either platform you're really attached to?

[khellang]

Phone, phone, phone -> Slack 😉 Also, Gitter is kinda buggy 😢

[khellang]

The only thing that suck with Slack is the invitation model, but we recently set up slackin for Nancy and it works like a charm.

Just spin up https://github.com/rauchg/slackin and give it an API key.

[shiftkey]

Yep, I don't mind doing that to take away that invitation pain...

[hnrkndrssn]

Out of the two, I like Slack better, but I'm 🆒 with either.

[M-Zuber]

I enjoy Slack so don't mind Slack only. Gitter on the phone is a bit of a pain, but it's still better the Github itself 😉
The main selling point of gitter for me is the integration. If Slack has something similar then I'll withdraw my gitter vote.

[khellang]

@M-Zuber What kind of integration are you looking for?

[M-Zuber]

Now that my computer started listening to me again ( I swear to God some days it behaves worse then a two year old), I was able to check the Slack integration with Github and it looks nice.
The main difference is in Gitter the information is displayed in a dedicated side bar, while Slack treats each event as just another message.

tl;dr I've been converted to Slack

[shiftkey]

Hearing news like this concerns me a bit:

I got on the phone with a couple of Slack people last week, and they have decided not to support infinitely large public communities. Slack wants to focus on building team communication software, and groups like Reactiflux don't fit into that.
...
The only way we could stay with Slack would be to cap our user base at < 8k. Probably around 1-3K. This obviously doesn't work for an open community. The most important thing about our community is that it's open and anyone can join in less than a minute. So when new people want to join the conversation, it's very low friction. We obviously can't keep the friction low if we start moderating accounts to keep our numbers low.

I know we wouldn't be at that scale for a while, but it's in the back of my mind.

cc @pengwynn

[hnrkndrssn]

That's a bit unfortunate...I like Slack a lot, but if that's their stance, then perhaps Gitter would be a better alternative...

[M-Zuber]

https://sameroom.io/blog/connecting-a-channel-in-slack-to-a-room-in-gitter/
https://sameroom.io/pricing
I am not sure how the pricing would work, but maybe there is a similar free option.

[ferventcoder]

Slack also caps search history... If it weren't for that, slack would be nice.

[ferventcoder]

I tend to grab urls from gitter discussions to use in issues and emails.

[M-Zuber]

There is also a new player in town: http://www.ryver.com/
I have played with it a bit and it is quite nice actually

[M-Zuber]

Re capping the search history, I just saw this:http://techcrunch.com/2015/11/30/slackarchive-gives-you-public-chat-archive-for-free/
@ferventcoder

[ferventcoder]

Looks interesting, but not built in so it presents a point of failure. Plus you can't see the entire conversation surrounding it, only messages that you search for. Not exactly apples and apples. :)

[M-Zuber]

True. Just thought it interesting.
I anyways strongly recommend gitter.
Ryvver is nice for teams, but I don't see any integration points right now

[ferventcoder]

I saw ryver a few weeks ago. I agree that it looks interesting. We'll see how they do given how nice slack is.

[M-Zuber]

I think no integrations will make it rough. But in my interactions with them, they have proven very open to suggestions and make changes quickly

[M-Zuber]

Ryvver has zapier and OData for integrations. Not super exciting

[khellang]

There's also https://rocket.chat/ 😉

[naveensrinivasan]

@shiftkey / @haacked Could we create one of these options?

[haacked]

I vote for Gitter simply because github/VisualStudio is already there and I want to avoid a million different chat systems. 😛

[haacked]

https://gitter.im/octokit/octokit.net

DONE!