How about a Kirby Slack?

Community
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So yesterday I was going back and forth with @texnixe for a route problem/question and I realized that even though I love this forum sometimes a forum is just not the perfect solution when you’re looking for help.

So I was wandering if a community driven Slack team for kirby can be useful to someone.
This is obviously not to move all the discussions there. I think it’s useful to have a forum because one can find answers to a ton of questions but for example my discussion about the routes should be cut down to basically 2 posts: my initial question and the final answer.

I don’t think the whole back and forth is really that useful and also can be confusing for some people.

Anyway, I’m curious to know what you people think :slight_smile:

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Do you know about the Gitter chat? Maybe could be the right place?!

I heard the internal Kirby team chat also moved to Gitter.

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That’s right, we moved the internal Kirby communication to Gitter as well, so we are more present in the chat then before as well.

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I’m quite familiar with Gitter but I was also thinking at people who are not necessarily dev and might not have a github account. And I know you need an account to sign up on Slack as well but in that case the thing is more direct. You sign up on Slack to get access to Slack so it might be a bit more straightforward for some people. Also one big room is also not ideal in my experience when you’re trying to help out some people.

There are cases where people are asking for help here on the forum and you might be willing to help them out but doing it on the forum is a bit tedious if you know what I mean and you also end up with some crazy long threads :slight_smile:

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i was also thinking about a slack chat, but I’m not so a fan from slack, because it looks a bit wired :sweat_smile:…

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Ahah yeah it does look a bit weird at first.
But once you get used to it is quite a good tool.

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Hmm yea,i use Gitter very long now and its very easy ! :slight_smile:

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The big benefit of keeping discussion on the forum here is that we’re building a repository of knowledge. People can search for threads that might help them with a similar problem. Slack is more of a closed system in that respect.

… and I have too many Slacks already :stuck_out_tongue:

Edit: Not sure if this German-language Slack is still active, but they have a kirby channel: German Kirby Slack Community

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Yes we are definitely still active. I just wanted to reply to this thread.

The problem with Slack is that you can’t save more than 10,000 messages if you don’t pay for every user. That’s inefficient and frustrating, especially if the same questions must be answered several times.

I just looked at our #kirby channel and the last post is literally “I explained that already, just scroll up”:

Bildschirmfoto 2016-10-24 um 15.36.12.png971×401 67.4 KB

We started a knowledgebase with Notion mostly for plugins/fields but gave up shortly after starting it. It’s just too time consuming.

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I hear you about building a repository here on the forum and I totally agree.
And that’s exactly why I said that the forum is important for the community.

But as I was explaining earlier, sometimes I think is most useful to have a short thread on the forum with a question and a solution rather than a long back and forth with dozen of posts where one is debugging problems and looking for help.

That’s why I was thinking at slack :slight_smile:

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The 10000 limit is definitely a problem if one want to use only Slack because with that limit as you said you end up answering the same question over and over again.

That’s why I think Slack should live next to the forum and be a complementary tool and not a replacement.

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Reading through other peoples’ debugging processes on the forum is a great way to debug my own problems.

I think it would be very difficult to diligently summarize every valuable Slack exchange on the forum.

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I mostly find an answer to my problems by googling with site:forum.getkirby.com, too.

But I have to agree, there is a complementary use case with something like Slack or Gitter. Sometimes you know it’s just a small error you’re not seeing, sometimes you want to know if you could do it more efficiently, sometimes the name of the field or plugin is on the tip of your tongue. Nobody wants to create dozens of threads for every small question in the forum.

There is a open-source Slack alternative called Mattermost that doesn’t seem to have a archive limit.

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That’s my main concern and that’s why I’m curious to hear other people opinions.

I personally hate to scroll through dozen of replies on a forum while looking for a solution to a problem but that’s obviously me :slight_smile:

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Nobody wants to create dozens of threads for every small question in the forum.

100% agree.

Also sometimes people need some help for things that are very project specific and it’s not super helpful to have those discussions stick around, crowding the forum and the search results (this always IMO).

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There’s a very simple show stopper for Slack for me at the moment. I’m locked out entirely. My password is no longer working though I stored it in 1password and whenever I try to reset it via email, I don’t get any email at all. I also don’t receive any emails when I try to create a new account. Just nothing. I contacted the support already, but they can’t help. I’m totally lost.

But besides that I also have a problem with Slack being a very closed platform. The 10.000 messages limit is another issue. Another thing I totally hated about it, is how they handle account switching. It works quite well in the apps, but it’s a nightmare in the browser.

Gitter feels much more open and light-weight to me and nowadays you can sign up with a Twitter account as well. I know that there will most likely be users who don’t have a Github nor a Twitter account. But there are also many users without a Slack account. Starting a new Github/Twitter account or a Slack account to join the chat doesn’t seem such a big difference to me.

But if many of you prefer Slack over Gitter, I definitely don’t want to be the one to decide against that.

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I contacted the support already, but they can’t help.

This is very, very strange. I contacted the slack support 2 times (for very minor and trivial things) and they’ve been nothing but amazing. Probably one of the best support experience I’ve ever had.

But besides that I also have a problem with Slack being a very closed platform.

This is an interesting point. It never occurred to me to think at slack in those terms probably because I don’t really care about the “content” on that platform and the only thing I’m concerned is that if the service works or not. And as for the rest, slack is one on the most open platform I have ever used since can be integrated with basically everything.

The 10.000 messages limit is another issue.

With this I totally agree but again, this is only a problem if one wants to use slack with a long term goal in mind. I was thinking more at something 100% extemporaneous, for quick chat related to problems one is facing while working on something and not to store long solutions and discussions about complex problems.

Another thing I totally hated about it, is how they handle account switching. It works quite well in the apps, but it’s a nightmare in the browser.

I always used the standalone app but now in the browser switching teams can be done using this menu. Not sure if has always been this way or not though :slight_smile:

IMO the best solution would be a real time chat directly here on the forum but since it’s not available I think a tool like slack could be a decent replacement.

The only reason why I think slack is better compared to gitter is the level of structure one can have because, and correct me if I’m wrong, gitter doesn’t have 1) direct messages and 2) multiple rooms (although I’m not 100% about the last one, I think there are multiple rooms available)

The main reason while I was asking about this is because sometimes a forum is not the best tool to solve a issue.
And as I was saying yesterday I 100% think the forum should NOT be replaced by a real time chat. The form is super helpful at the current stage.

Anyway, always nice to hear opinion about how can we improve things :slight_smile:

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