Places to talk and chat platforms

[Duplode]

One question that comes up every now and then as we look at our community venues is how effective are our options when it comes to having, so to speak, a social lobby: an official, easy to reach place with active conversation, both "on" and "off"-topic, where, in particular, newbies can land on and settle. Below is a quick (and not necessarily neutral!) review of where things stand, meant as a conversation starter should we feel like shaking things up a bit. (For another take, see this post by @Cas , written in a similar spirit last year.)

Now, for a very long time this Forum has been the central hub of the community, providing a space for conversation and linking various initiatives across the Stuntsphere. The usage patterns of the Forum, though, have changed significantly over the years. On the one hand, it remains a key venue for Q&A, technical discussion, project coordination and team activity. On the other hand, the volume of open-ended conversation in the Forum has fallen a lot since, say, the early 2010s, specially when it comes to off-topic chat. While a concerted drive to make the quieter corners of the Forum more active could be a worthy initiative, I see open questions about how accessible the old-growth structure of the Forum is to newcomers, and more broadly about what kind of forum culture we can hope to rekindle in this day and age.

Meanwhile, the Stunts group on Telegram, started by Cas about two years ago (cf. the thread about it here), has become a pretty successful experiment in running a "third place"  for casual chat, a role not unlike that played by the Stunts IRC channel, in tandem with the competition sites and the Forum, back in the early 00s. It sparked many interesting conversations, bout about Stunts and otherwise, and helped us keeping in touch with a few long-absent pipsqueaks. While the group is open to people from the community (let us know if you want to join!), up to now we have hesitated a bit when it comes to actively advertising it, or bringing it to a more central place in our ecosystem. One reason for that, I reckon, is the fact that the group is hosted on Telegram, a social media platform which, like most social media platforms, offers us little control over its workings, and which people might be unwilling to sign up for due to various reasons.

There are, of course, other spaces we might conceivably explore. In particular, last year we had a brief look at Element/Matrix (cf. this Forum conversation about it), and how it potentially could offer the amenities of modern group chat/messaging in a platform providing us more meaningful control, thus making it easier to bring under the stunts.hu umbrella. It could be a fitting time to revisit Element and consider what would it take, and what issues we might have to deal with, in order successfully set up a chat venue based on it.

[Cas]

I agree that this is an important topic to discuss and bring our ideas to. I don't have a single position in this. Each platform has its advantages and it's good to have more than one. There are a few that I wouldn't join... for example, I don't use Meta platforms because of many reasons. The fact that I started the Telegram group might make you think that's my preferred one, but that's not the case. Of the ones we have, the platform I love the most is this forum because it's ours and like you say, we have full control of it. Telegram has many flaws, it's super commercial and bad for privacy (though not as bad as WhatsApp, for instance), but it brings some advantages that are a good complement for the forum. If I could choose, I would prefer to represent this complement with something like Element, but since more people are hesitant to adopt it than Telegram (accusative mode), I feel compelled to go for that one. Even better than that would be for me if our own "sovereign" chat were as powerful and multi-platform.

I'm open to contributing the best I can to try any new ideas you guys propose as long as they enhance our ownership and freedom of communication and to do my best in keeping them active and facilitate things for newcomers. Count on me.

[Spoonboy]

Is the IRC room still alive?
If so, I'd use it! #dosgameclub is on Afternet and is one of DGC's best places for keeping in touch with what's happening.
It's retro, we're retro!

[Cas]

Not sure about our own IRC. I would like the current Stunts chat to be compatible with IRC so that one could use it either via web or a client. But I think that having features similar to those of Telegram is important because that's what making the group attract members.

How do I get to #dosgameclub IRC?  I have Pidgin installed and I can use IRC

[Duplode]

@Cas I wonder if the hesitation about Element has more to do with the general hassle of moving than with the platform in itself (which we're still getting to know). Looking at it from another angle, I think, in hindsight, that any move from Telegram to elsewhere was very unlikely early last year: several people had just joined over the previous few months, activity was very high, and there was a palpable buzz over the repressed demand for a third space finally being met in some way. A year and a half later, after a period of stability and with people having grown more familiar with the group chat dynamics, there might be space for reviewing our options.

@Spoonboy The channel was/is #stunts on EFNet. Its heyday was way back in the 00s, before my time here actually. @dstien and other people involved with Restunts then kept it active for some more time, but I believe it has been dormant for a very long time now.

[Spoonboy]

How do I get to #dosgameclub IRC?  I have Pidgin installed and I can use IRC

@Cas DGC is at irg.afternet.org:6697
but they also have an IRC chat client on the website:
https://www.dosgameclub.com/chat/

[dreadnaut]

While making the webchat into an IRC client is probably too large a quest, it would be interesting to upgrade it. What it needs, in my mind:

- full unicode support
- a better scrollback
- upload small files: replays and replays, maybe screenshots

[Duplode]

Something I forgot to mention in the initial post: we have a "prototype" Element/Matrix chat room! Here is a direct link to the room. You can read the conversation as a guest, and try out the chat by logging in with a matrix.org account.

(Why so many names? It turns out they are all closely related: Element is the end-user chat app, Matrix is the decentralised platform on which the chat rooms run, and matrix.org -- which is managed by the official Matrix project -- is the host of this specific room. This clarification aside, I guess it'll be easier to settle on a single one of those names to use among ourselves  )

[Cas]

@Duplode - In my case, I don't have much hesitation. Although I do use Telegram generally and I have many contacts there, I see the importance of having something we have more control on, that's more private, etc., so I am very willing to use Element as well. Only thing I remember I didn't like was that it would as you to solve a Google reCAPTCHA, which kills all the privacy. There must be a way around that.

@dreadnaut - Indeed, it'd be nice to have an upgrade on the chat. Would it be possible for it to somehow integrate with Matrix so that we would have both the option of using a client or just log in via web or is it too complicated?

@Spoonboy - I was able to log in via web. Thanks!  I'll add it to Pidgin too

[alanrotoi]

I didn't like Element actually. It does not replace Telegram but it could be a good upgrade for the chatroom

About the IRC if you mean the old chat servers it was fun. A place and instance to meet other pipsqueaks in real time, it was great. This place is very well filled by Telegram and a possible upgrade of the chatroom with Element if possible.

To meet other pipsqueaks in a personal way is great. You know about personal stuff, family, sports, politics in a different level that the forum could reach. Anyway the forum is a must in my opinion. We can't replace it because still there isn't a better format to share some kind of information. We already tryied with Yahoo groups back in 2002-2003 and it wasn't the same. I also opened a Facebook page in 2011? For the Stunts Community... not the same. Two or three years ago opened an instagram user for stunts staff. It needs a lot of work and again by far it is not the same. Also opened a personal but stuntish youtube channel. This was better but of course is limited to audiovisual stuff only. It's a side and useful tool but not enough to create a community. I think the social media as a bridge to bring potential pipsqueaks but the core still is the Forum and the main competition is ZakStunts.
Maybe it's time to upgrade the chatroom. Something cellphone friendly.

[Cas]

I think anybody can set up a Matrix server, only I don't know how complicated it can be. Then the web front-end could be our own style and we'd have a chatroom whatever way we like and if somebody wishes, they would be able to connect via Element or some other client. Another, simpler (older) alternative to do this same thing could be XMPP. The thing with these is they're more oriented towards Telegram/WhatsApp style conversations and so I'm not sure how suitable they would be for a classical chatroom, but I guess it could be... similar to the Telegram group. IRC is indeed more like a classical chatroom. I tried to set up an IRC server about a month ago and I got stuck, ha, ha. Anyway, if one service isn't good for a certain thing (say, upload photos or other files), then maybe one part could be covered by one back-end service and another could be independent or be supported by a second back-end service. But of course, it's better to have all provisioned the same way.