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

On a third point, you should extend the voting period a bit for this one, I try to always include at least two weekends. Loomios default is way too short unfortunately.

More specifically I don’t want a second client open for the same type of communication.

You don't have to have a second client open. You can join the Gitter chat through IRC as well and it will appear in your IRC client just as an additional channel. See https://irc.gitter.im/
Alongs with all its benefits over IRC I believe it could even replace the freenode channels without any disadvantage for anyone. For developers it is a much more powerful chat than IRC through markdown support, image uploads, build statuses, search functionality etc.

Another problem is that we already confuse people with what to discuss where, adding another channel won’t help there.

I talked to the guys from loomio about integrating loomio with gitter. Seems to be really easy. in Gitter you have an activity feed at the sidebar where you would see activities in Loomio so I think this and the ability to use in irc could actually help a bit. But even if it won't help, it won't make it worse.

It would help getting all the different communication channels known through the activity feed and since he can just click on the gitter-badge in the readme he can directly join the chat by signing in with his github account and could use it through his browser, no matter at which device he is on. For joining IRC he might have to setup an IRC client first. Not every developer, especially those of a newer generation, are using IRC.

On a third point, you should extend the voting period a bit for this one, I try to always include at least two weekends. Loomios default is way too short unfortunately.

Good to know, thx. changed it

the negative feedback surprises me a bit, since the proposal is not about a final decision for or against using Gitter permanently, but about having a short look at it, despite of whether or not you decide on using it afterwards.
When I signed up here for informing you about Gitter after haven been directed here from the IRC, I was surprised that suggestions on having a look at something have to go through a bureaucratic procedure and thought of it as default procedure.

I would have not expected people being against trying something out since I thought that the part of "being against is" would follow after having a look at it.

In the title of the survey I wrote "try out Gitter.im for chatting", but in the title I used "Use" instead of "Try".
Did this mislead to the assumption that this poll was intended as a final decision for or against Gitter?

That was not my intention. I am no contributor and not even a user of diaspora and might be the most inactive person in he chat. So I don't see myself in the position of telling you what you should use for communicating.

If your feedback is caused of this misunderstanding, I feel really bad and sorry. Your reaction would make sense to me since I couldn't come up with a better explanation on why else so many people at once would be against trying something out.

Let me explain my decision. Disclaimer: this is my opinion and not a statement from the projects team.

We use IRC and mailing lists at the moment and I feel pretty good with that. I don't think we need another channel of communication as it won't replace what we are using right now because those services are easy and convenient for us to use. We also worked the situation out for newcomers, so I don't feel like that's much of a problem.

We tried stuff like uservoice in the past, a lot of fancy 'decisions' were made but nothing really happened. We have a forum right now, but a huge portion of our active developers are not looking into it. I expect the same from a new chat platform.

First of all - this seriously sucks. Like really, really bad.

"Markdown, syntax highlighting and even LaTeX. Auto-completion of GitHub #issues, @usernames and more. Real-time integration with the services that matter to devs."

Who the hell uses markdown, or latex to send short messages? I don't even use it here, on loomio. We have #issues on IRC, we have usernames. I don't see the new stuff it brings.

On IRC you can log in anonymously - there, you have to get through a whole procedure of logging in, which will be hard especially for people who need help, but are not developers using github. I see those kind of guys each week.

The next point - what if their business model fails at some point? We will have all our discussions, all the related infrastructure locked somewhere, crippling our communication for about a week. That's vendor lock-in, and that's a proprietary platform.

A jabber would bring no benefit over irc: users would have to install a client, sign up/connect etc.

Also you would have to maintain it.

If it's so hard to install a client, use a web one. Web clients exist for IRC, as well for XMPP. We can even configure one, so you would automatically log-in to IRC, with a random user name. Just a single click on a link, that's all it takes.

https://kiwiirc.com/client/irc.freenode.net/#diaspora-dev

This would be the link, btw. It's too easy.

I don’t see why a distributed and open source chat would be better.

Then what's the point of diaspora*? You don't seem to grasp the essence of the project at all, the ideas and ideals behind it.

Hey folks, I'm one of the founders at Gitter and Can pointed it this discussion to me and thought I'd contribute a little.

First off, by way of background, we're a small team of 5 developers trying to build the best place for other developers to talk. We aren't marketers, we aren't sales people, we're just developers like you.

What we feel makes us different is that every day we work, all we think about is how to make developer communication better/easier/faster/more and whilst I completely grasp your position on vendor lock-in, I don't see any other tool or network trying to achieve this.

The reason developers love us and are moving their conversations over to Gitter is because of the developer-centric features we've produced. Markdown was mentioned and @dumitruursu sure it's not used for every message, but it's used frequently when talking about code. Developers are used to code readability in their IDE, why not in the way they communicate. Here's a great example from one of communities: http://cl.ly/image/2A1i1E0F2q0j.

Additionally our issue mentioning is richer than just hyperlinking the issue to GitHub, we show the issue status and hovering over the issue will give you a full summary, including it's status and who's assigned. So you don't need to jump back and forth between your communication client and your browser just to know basic information about what is being discussed.

These are just a few examples. I think my overall point is that from a feature perspective, Gitter is the sum of it's parts and we're constantly making new parts based on how people are using the product and what people are asking for.

But Gitter is more than just a UI and some features. More importantly, it's a network and a community too. We find that not being anonymous and using GitHub credentials actually improves the conversation, we have little trouble with trolls/spambots/DDOS/takeovers and such. I'd also like to point out we are looking to allow other existing identities to participate too, so a non-developer could feasibly login with Facebook and bring that identity with them to the conversation.

We'd love you to come and try us out and add more value to the community.

I don’t really want to watch yet another communication channel, especially if it has such a gigantic overlap with one we already have.

That's another point where I strongly agree. I for one do not participate in the forums (never knew they existed), nor the mailing list.
So, let's count where our communication gets divided:
- Github issues ( data out of our control )
- the wiki ( the silo in our hands + the platform )
- IRC ( ephemeral, we have the platform )
- loomio ( out of our control, but we have the platform )
- mailing list ( out of our control, alternative exists )
- forum ( data & platform in our hands )

*gitter ( out of our control; no similar platform)

Adding yet another channel will lead to even more lost contexts for developers, even more confusion for someone in search for help. Unless we'll be somehow be forced to abandon the last 4 and use Gitter + GH issues - I don't see this happening. Even trying this might be damaging for the community, because some developers will probably never join the platform.

You may say that I'm a hypocrite, using Github, and arguing against Gitter: I might be, but I know that at least every developer has a copy of the repository - if 3 nukes go down on the Github datacenters, we'll be able to recreate the previous state on gitlab/gitorious in a matter of days.

IRC is actually a special case: the way I see it, it's mostly for informal discussion, and "live" conversations about the project. It has one great weakness and feature at the same time - the conversations are ephemeral. For example, I would not dare to ask @augier about his sex life on Gitter or in a Github issue, but I will not hesitate to do that on IRC; informality is great for building a community. Also, the fact that IRC is ephemeral - always remind us to keep crucial knowledge on the wiki or in the Changelog. People will be forgetful about it, when using Gitter or forums, I'm sure of it.

We've found that most people use us as a replacement for IRC, they take a little while to transition across, and some will use tools such as this bot (https://github.com/finnp/gitter-irc-bot) to do so and given you can still use our IRC bridge and your existing IRC client for those that don't want to use our UI, this is often a good solution for many.

Obviously it's entirely your choice, but just thought I'd chip in as we're passionate about making something better.

For example, I would not dare to ask @augier about his sex life on Gitter or in a Github issue, but I will not hesitate to do that on IRC;

Naughty boy ! :p