I have discussed this many times in the past, but I allow myself to bring this forward again as I'm still very convinced of the benefit it would bring to the community.
As we all know, the very source of nearly all the problem this project faced in the past is communication. I suggested in the past that we use an IRC channel to help people communicate with each other and create connections with one another. I have strong believe that things that can be said in a forum are different from what can be said in a chat room, where you have the other one nearly in front of you ;-) That way, flaming wars are harder to start ;-)
All other open source project have their IRC Channel. And with people in there !
Drupal : 150 people at all time
Joomla : 80 people at all time
TikiWiki : 5o people at all time
XOOPS : 1 or 2 ;-)
So if other projects do it, why don't we ? Of course, the fact that someone else does it do not gurantee it will for us. But this is something we never tried in the past. What do we have to loose ?
Now, there are 2 main problems with using IRC Channel. First, it's not easy to set up if you never done it in the past. This is a big entrance barrier... Second one : the logs or history. Usually, we don't have have access to logs so it is very volatile.
But, now, Skype as just made our life more easy ! Skype now has Public Chat, accessible by anyone :-) As we all know, Skype is rather usuer friendly, many people already have it, if not, it's very easy to install and best part : it keeps the history of the discussions, and even have a search feature ! Everything we need !
So, I set one up to see how it works. I would like you to have a look at it. Simply go on http://smartfactory.ca and have a look at the bottom of the left column. You'll see a XOOPS Skype Room block. Click on Join Now, to join us !
Please note that the only small problem is that you need a recent version of Skype for this to work.
I would like to see one general room for XOOPS which would become THE XOOPS room. We could also have a room for the core team, which would help us develop faster.
I do hope you will look at this favorably and I hope to see you in the room I created so far !
Cheers !
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
Just to clarify things, this Skype chat room is a "written" chat room, and not a "talking" chat room, even thought, as you may guess, talking with Skype is not an issue ;-)
So this will not be an issue for people who are not comfortable with talking in english and prefer writting.
Cheers !
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
I agree that we need a well-supported and well-used chat room capability. These days, it's mostly marcan and myself in the room, and rarely does anyone else come in (and those that do, ask a question and leave within 2 minutes, and we can't necessarily answer/respond in that timeframe).
However, in the interest of continuing to promote viable, open-source software, we should support it in everything we do. That said Skype is in no way an open-source project and probably never will be. In fact, they stand accused (pending litigation) of using open-source code and not attributing that fact, and violating the agreement of the code they are using (which states their project must be released as open source). Further, they have developed a proprietary system that doesn't support the agreed standard protocol for internet telephony -- SIP.
IMHO, Skype is bad, although I have used it, but generally shy away from it at this point. IRC isn't that hard, really, and if we pushed people towards the open-source projects for IRC or one of many webclients for IRC, where a web browser is all they need to connect, then it will be easy for them to come ask a question.
Realistically, though, the forums on Xi should be the main place we point people to, because by having the questions asked and answered there (since question are usually repeated) then they are searchable by the the newbie members of our community.
So, in the end, I support the idea of support a chat-room support capability, but I vote for continuing IRC with information posted in the support area of the site. [One of the better organized support communities I've found is the one for Ubuntu, a very easy to use distro of Linux.] Besides, it's time people rediscovered the wonders of the original chat foundation (LOL).
Trailing off....
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
"However, in the interest of continuing to promote viable, open-source software, we should support it in everything we do."
I do agree with the principle. I agree we need to support open-source whenever we can, when that is possible an efficient.
However, we did tried IRC and it did not succeeded yet. True, we could invest many effort in promoting it and helping getting around with the initial setup. But that would require many energy.
We have a solution now that is available and seems to work fine. It gets around the complexity of IRC and it will still be searchable by newbie if they want.
So I would suggest we use this Skype room as a temporary method. As soon as we have an IRC room that works, accessible via a simple web browser and perhaps with searching capability, then we could make the switch back to IRC.
Let's see where that goes...
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
Hello my friends,
I have discussed this many times in the past, but I allow myself to bring this forward again as I'm still very convinced of the benefit it would bring to the community.
As we all know, the very source of nearly all the problem this project faced in the past is communication. I suggested in the past that we use an IRC channel to help people communicate with each other and create connections with one another. I have strong believe that things that can be said in a forum are different from what can be said in a chat room, where you have the other one nearly in front of you ;-) That way, flaming wars are harder to start ;-)
All other open source project have their IRC Channel. And with people in there !
Drupal : 150 people at all time
Joomla : 80 people at all time
TikiWiki : 5o people at all time
XOOPS : 1 or 2 ;-)
So if other projects do it, why don't we ? Of course, the fact that someone else does it do not gurantee it will for us. But this is something we never tried in the past. What do we have to loose ?
Now, there are 2 main problems with using IRC Channel. First, it's not easy to set up if you never done it in the past. This is a big entrance barrier... Second one : the logs or history. Usually, we don't have have access to logs so it is very volatile.
But, now, Skype as just made our life more easy ! Skype now has Public Chat, accessible by anyone :-) As we all know, Skype is rather usuer friendly, many people already have it, if not, it's very easy to install and best part : it keeps the history of the discussions, and even have a search feature ! Everything we need !
So, I set one up to see how it works. I would like you to have a look at it. Simply go on http://smartfactory.ca and have a look at the bottom of the left column. You'll see a XOOPS Skype Room block. Click on Join Now, to join us !
Please note that the only small problem is that you need a recent version of Skype for this to work.
I would like to see one general room for XOOPS which would become THE XOOPS room. We could also have a room for the core team, which would help us develop faster.
I do hope you will look at this favorably and I hope to see you in the room I created so far !
Cheers !
Oky, now i downloading... here.
http://baixaki.ig.com.br/download/Skype.htm
A little complementary info.
Just to clarify things, this Skype chat room is a "written" chat room, and not a "talking" chat room, even thought, as you may guess, talking with Skype is not an issue ;-)
So this will not be an issue for people who are not comfortable with talking in english and prefer writting.
Cheers !
I agree that we need a well-supported and well-used chat room capability. These days, it's mostly marcan and myself in the room, and rarely does anyone else come in (and those that do, ask a question and leave within 2 minutes, and we can't necessarily answer/respond in that timeframe).
However, in the interest of continuing to promote viable, open-source software, we should support it in everything we do. That said Skype is in no way an open-source project and probably never will be. In fact, they stand accused (pending litigation) of using open-source code and not attributing that fact, and violating the agreement of the code they are using (which states their project must be released as open source). Further, they have developed a proprietary system that doesn't support the agreed standard protocol for internet telephony -- SIP.
IMHO, Skype is bad, although I have used it, but generally shy away from it at this point. IRC isn't that hard, really, and if we pushed people towards the open-source projects for IRC or one of many webclients for IRC, where a web browser is all they need to connect, then it will be easy for them to come ask a question.
Realistically, though, the forums on Xi should be the main place we point people to, because by having the questions asked and answered there (since question are usually repeated) then they are searchable by the the newbie members of our community.
So, in the end, I support the idea of support a chat-room support capability, but I vote for continuing IRC with information posted in the support area of the site. [One of the better organized support communities I've found is the one for Ubuntu, a very easy to use distro of Linux.] Besides, it's time people rediscovered the wonders of the original chat foundation (LOL).
Trailing off....
"However, in the interest of continuing to promote viable, open-source software, we should support it in everything we do."
I do agree with the principle. I agree we need to support open-source whenever we can, when that is possible an efficient.
However, we did tried IRC and it did not succeeded yet. True, we could invest many effort in promoting it and helping getting around with the initial setup. But that would require many energy.
We have a solution now that is available and seems to work fine. It gets around the complexity of IRC and it will still be searchable by newbie if they want.
So I would suggest we use this Skype room as a temporary method. As soon as we have an IRC room that works, accessible via a simple web browser and perhaps with searching capability, then we could make the switch back to IRC.
Let's see where that goes...
Problems with download last version Skype. If possible, send link for outher download for it.