Do we have a chat space for second renaissance and where is it?

If we deprecate Discord we have a couple of follow-up questions:

  1. Want a replacement chat space(s)?
  2. Where is it?

My 2c on point 1

I’m not sure we need a distinct chat space beyond this forum for now …

  • First, I think it would be good to see if the forum structure works better for what we want (and this avoids duplication)
  • Second, we do have some decent chat functionality built-in this forum as part of discourse

In my experience, chat can have an unfortunate gravitational field for discussion in a community: because it is so easy to get into chat becomes the default place to engage. However, the (lack of) affordances of chat is problematic at several levels: lack of threading makes rich discussion difficult, it encourages a certain superficiality and velocity of engagement.

IMO it would be better to try to limit chat to some combination of: watercooler, announcements and (informal) helpdesk and void its use for substantial discussion (the issue always is that once you offer chat … because of its ease of use even if you discourage posting substantial stuff … substantial stuff will get posted)

Where is it?

If did want chat … I’d suggest restricting to two initial options (happy to hear others of course):

  • Using this forum chat
  • Using whatsapp (if we use whatsapp this should be distinct from Life Itself)