28 Mar
2024
28 Mar
'24
4:03 p.m.
On 28/03/2024 14:24, Alan Pope via BitFolk Users wrote:
Hi Andy,
On Mon, 25 Mar 2024 at 01:32, Andy Smith via BitFolk Users
<users(a)mailman.bitfolk.com> wrote:
So, if you do actually engage in online chat for any projects or
communities please would you fill in this short questionnaire to let
us know about it?
https://forms.gle/cYyP2QFZzpDWdJ9T6
I have filled in the form.
I'm also not promising to set something up on whichever platform
comes out top (this is not a vote!). It would be very interesting to
me to find out where people are, though.
My teenage kids see Email as "old people letters", which are only
helpful for resetting your Fortnite or Pinterest password and not much
more. Similarly, I now see IRC as "old people chat", while fully
getting that I am a member of the "old people" group.
Personally speaking, I think "chat" is such a broad question. I think
you mean "social chat," sharing the odd amusing link, talking about
stuff that's good, bad, frustrating, etc. It's a "friendly group
chat."
I used IRC between 1999 and now, but I only spend a little time on it
because all the active communities are elsewhere. Partly because I
don't have a super robust IRC client, I can use it from anywhere,
including mobile. I have "The Lounge" (a free software web client for
IRC) running at home, but over time, I've become less inclined to open it.
Work stuff is on Slack, and many open-source and old people reliving
their youth in retro computing communities are on Discord. The
hardcore Free Software people seem to all be on Matrix. All three of
these platforms are crap for different reasons. I'm in exactly one
group on Signal because that was dictated by someone else. I'm not too
fond of that either. I'm in WhatsApp chats with many non-nerds (and
family). Some people use Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat groups, but
those people were mostly born in a different century to me.
Personally, these days, I spend more time talking to
friends/associates/like-minded people (who aren't work colleagues or
in topic-specific chats) on Telegram. There are a few nerdy
podcast-related channels and some group chats I'm in there. I'm sure
people find Telegram terribad, too.
Essentially, none of the options are amazing. For me, Telegram is the
least worst, and Discord is the worst, with Matrix, Signal, and IRC
lumped in the "meh" department. I have them all open all the time on
every machine, with notifications off, and dip in as and when I have
time or the inclination.
I was quite pleased to see Andy badgered into joining Telegram, tbh,
as I now see his ramblings, which I missed from the Bitfolk IRC
channel I never looked at. <3
/2p
I'm in a similar situation in that Telegram is the platform I check and
interact with most (all be it not that much for a while). I suspect that
is a combination of where people are and that it is the closest in
similarity to IRC use wise. I am in multiple Discord channels, but find
it too cumbersome in terms of client resources and the mess of channels
most servers have, which leads to less engagement for me. I've used
Slack for work and found it the biggest barrier to communication I've
ever come across. I tended to copy information from there into text
files so as not to lose it, and any questions / requests I had tended to
disappear up up the chat window and not get a response. The busiest
channel was the cat photos one, and I suspect much of the work
communication happened offline in the office where the core team were. I
also run a Matrix client, which is fine, but most of the channels I'm
most interested in seem to be Telegram. Stackoverflow and Reddit, which
have been mentioned in the thread, are platforms I tend to avoid. The
times when I've found them referenced in searches I've found Reddit a
minefield of criticism for the original question and no answer, and
Stackoverflow all to often full of questions with either no answer at
all, or a mass of suggestions that don't work and lead you to other
similar questions that supposedly have the answer, but in practice
don't. I guess that sort of sums up much of the internet ;-)
/2d
(OK, I don't actually remember that currency as such, but I have lived
through decimalisation.)
--
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