Try out gitter.im, the new chat for GitHub users

I just want to inform you about gitter.im since I noticed that there is not diaspora channel.

PLEASE NOTE: This discussion is not about making a decision about whether or not gitter.im should be used as a permanent communication channel. It is about TRYING it out in order to get it known. It can be set up with a few clicks and also be removed with a few clicks.

I would like to suggest opening a diaspora channel on
gitter.im - not as a replacement, but as an addition to the existing IRC channels.

Gitter is a "chat for GitHub", nicely integrated with it.. Channels in gitter are based on GitHub repos/accounts (in our case the url of the channel would become https://gitter.im/diaspora/diaspora).

Gitter offers a free hosted chat-service for public GitHub repositories. It’s extremely easy to “install": just sign in with your GitHub account (one click) and chose a repo: This can be any of your private or public repos on github. That’s it. What you get is a long-term chat (that saves all messages) where everybody with a GitHub account can join.

A short overview about some features:

Activity Feed: each channel has an activity feed on the right, which contains all activities on the GitHub repo (for example new issue, new pull request, new commits etc.). Each referenced Issue/Pull Request ID is a link like we are used from GitHub issues. Additionally it is possible to bind in third party services like TravisCi into it in order to get notified about build statuses.

GitHub flavoured markdown: images are displayed directly in the chat; code can be pasted including syntax highlighting, issues can be referenced like #123; users can be mentioned like @username etc.

Notifications: you can define whether you want to get notified on each message, on each mention or totally turn notifications off. Other than IRC you don't have to be online to receive notifications. Missed messages can be sent to you via email so you don't have to wonder whether or not someone has read your message.

Search and Logging: the whole chat history is logged and can be searched at anytime. This is not only useful for the direct usage of the chatroom, but also when people are searching for topics on google that have been discussed in the chat before, since the logs are indexed by search engines => additional resources for users

Gitter is accessible from everywhere through the browser, but it also offers an App for MacOS and iOs (Android is following). For those who love their irc client: they can connect to Gitter through IRC: https://irc.gitter.im/

Badges on GitHub Repo: you can add a Gitter-Badge to your repo's README next to those of TravisCI and CodeClimate and give users the ability to directly jump into the chat without having to install an IRC client first.

Also there is a Developer API which includes a REST API, a Streaming API and Faye endpoints you can subscribe to.

I see more and more open source projects using IRC as well as Gitter. https://gitter.im/rails/rails has more than 330 active members at.

We are using it for a customer-project since the early Beta. We tried IRC before as well as campfire, but Gitter quickly became our main channel and decreased the amount of Emails we are writing as well as the number of issues for asking questions, since you can leave private messages, no matter if the user is online or not.

I know that most of you are used to IRC, but as I said earlier: we can use both. IRC for those who like IRC and Gitter for those who like Gitter.

I don't see a downside of offering users an additional channel, especially since this could decrease the number of newbies popping up in the IRC to ask a question. People will tend to directly click on the Gitter badge in the GitHub Repo if they have a question instead of setting up IRC.

What do you think? Is it worth making two mouse clicks and giving it a try? It can still be closed later if it is disturbing or not beneficial enough.