I am only asking/proposing a) at this time Ben... and I have been doing b) already, but am not really seeking any sort of assistance yet. Was waiting to see the result of this proposal.

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What follows are some thoughts on next steps, towards implementation... Maybe this saves you some time if you don't feel the need to keep reading now.

I am currently leaning towards using Gitter for our Public chat room. It will require people that want to chat to set up a Github account, if they don't have one already... But this act alone moves someone one step closer to being a full-blown MM collaborator (if they are a coder I guess), it may also have them check out our codebase, or even just see our github, when they might not have otherwise.... Plus, choosing slack or Hipchat would require someone to create a new account on a new platform too... just without the added benefits just described above.

There is the option of IRC too of course, and it seems we already have this set up... and IRC is really great because it affords anonymity and is a really easy way to allow anyone to come chat without them having to set up any sort of account.... Thats the argument for IRC... However, IRC is really lacking in most other facets. There isn't a chat history, and therefore is also lacking in search capability... so someone just dropping in would have no context at all without asking for it... Another drawback is that we can't paste in nice snippets of code or screenshots, which is a really neat feature... Also, if someone really wants to be anonymous, they can always just create a bogus Github account, to come chat as CraZyCaTlAdy246 (Not that anonymity is really what we are going for anyways, since this is a community building venture).... Also, getting to know our community through Github, seems superior to slack or Hipchat too, because Github already has a rich social network and enables us to get a social graph data of our current and future connections... I am currently just writing ideas just as they come to me.... Hopefully the warning I gave above means nobody is frustrated by my poor English right now :P

Another PRO for Gitter, is that it is a very natural way for our community to come and hang... It doesn't even feel like we are adding yet another platform into our repertoire.... Gitter just feels like an extension of Github, which is a deep deep element of our Community Stack, that likely isn't going anywhere soon.... The natural integration of Gitter is also probably why we already have 13 members in the base room without even making a big public invite (i realize some of these are due to our hack day, but not all of them)

To Ishan's other concern about switching between project spaces... this wont necessarily help him with having everything all in slack... But Gitter is great for switching between chat on different Github Repos...

Finally, Gitter offers 1 free private chat within a github 'organization', which we now have. So we could utilize this too, if desired. They also allow unlimited public channels, if we want to totally shift all our rooms over from Hipchat.... (More discussion about "Open source communication with Gitter" is given here on their blog: http://blog.gitter.im/open-source-communication-with-gitter/ )

Anyways, I'm sure there is lots to scrutinize about what I just said... But Hey! We have lots of quality and free chat options! Which is great.

I like the idea of an open and inviting space where conversation can happen...and then again isn't that supposed to be metamaps.cc itself? The comment that Devin made at the very beginning of this discussion sounds closest to my idea of a public chat room - as long as it is on the site itself and not a place that takes you away from the mapping experience, then it makes sense to me :)

just a note - I voted Yes and maybe for a sec too late, which is why my position does not appear in the summary!

I missed voting here but I agree as well, a 'lobby' of a sort for Metamaps users would be very useful, even more so if these are also within maps..

I'm also with Marija and Devin that I don't know if it should necessarily be in another place than Metamaps.cc.

I agree Gitter is cool, but as I said in my brief response, for the public I'd want barriers to entry to be much smaller. So for me, I have those two default solutions:

1) IRC, probably on freenode, which is kind of clunky but is very widespread and people figure it out all the time
2) a well-implemented embedded chat room that used some clever technology we find on the internet to filter out spammers. It would be hard to beat IRC

I think it's telling that FAmous uses IRC as their chat room - it's a solid technology and it's easy to slide into.

I believe the vast majority of our users someday won't be github users, they'll be old people and elementary school students and salespeople. And so I think we should make it easier for them to get in. I don't see features of gitter that make it better than IRC, and it's hard to beat the (relative) ease of logging in to IRC.

I came back to add: I am totally fine being overruled on this - don't take my "disagree" as a "block" or anything.

I see what you are saying about that last little barrier, of needing a Github account... But IRC has its own accessibility-type issues and isn't exactly the most user friendly option for the "public"... also by choosing IRC we would be giving up on a lot of nice features that all these newer chat apps offer. (There is a reason why we have been using HipChat and not just IRC ourselves)Things like chat history are key, especially for promoting a sense of community and ongoing conversation. IRC doesn't have a chat history... So each time a person drops in, they effectively drop into an quiet room. (I could list a tonne of other nice features that IRC doesn't have, e.g. a mobile app the "public" might actually use, but I think you get the point that IRC is very basic... and using it in a more advanced way either puts burden on us or our users)

I am assuming we can tack on a whole bunch of stuff to IRC to make it do almost anything... But the point of this proposal was to have a nice chat space to start using now, without really any upfront work, to give us the time and freedom to design/build a really great Metamaps chat feature all the while learning about how our community is using chat in reality/practice. When this is viewed as a really nice temporary thing, I think the proposal makes more sense.

Also, having people create a Github account, or very likely just use the one they already have, has its PROs too. It moves someone a little further along that path to being a contributor to MM, maybe even a developer. It also allows us to begin growing a network, and networking (v), on Github... Which is a really great untapped social network all on its own. Especially when you are talking about open source developers (the perfect match for us).

If we chose IRC we could very likely wind up with people just quickly jumping on to see whats up, see that there isn't really anyone around... there is no chat history... so then they just leave and there is no friction to doing this either and never coming back. I think if someone is very tangentially interested in MM, then they have plenty of touchpoints to interface with already.... So if someone is interested enough to join the Gitter, maybe even set up a gitHub account to do so, thats a great signal to us. We then likely have a face/name and means of contact, which IRC doesn't provide through its temporary pseudonyms.

I hope this doesn't feel like I am being overly critical or narrow minded @devinh , please "rebuttal" if you still feel there is something I am not considering. Please propose totally different changes to the proposal too. Lets figure this out! Also, if at any time your opinion changes, please update your vote to reflect that.Thanks for the input!

This blog post from Gitter actually answers a lot about "why Gitter?", and it seems like if we really wanted, we could pipe people from IRC into gitter too.
http://blog.gitter.im/long-live-irc/

An excerpt:
"Built on top of GitHub, Gitter allows public and private chat rooms for organisations and repositories. Already we’ve got a number of businesses and open source communities running their chat rooms on Gitter. It features infinite chat history, integrated issue mentions, markdown in chat, syntax highlighting for code snippets and activity feeds from GitHub, Trello, Jenkins, Travis, Huboard and more.

Gittter is available as a web app and a Mac App, but obviously there are numerous people, ourselves included, who use IRC daily. So we built an IRC bridge into Gitter. Now you can use Adium, ircII, Colloquy or whatever weapon you choose and easily connect to Gitter."

Another great thing about Gitter, over IRC, is that you can get email notifications and do @mentions... This is just another way to keep the community engaged and the conversations ongoing.

As this discussion is getting lenghty, and I always prefer the self-dogfooding instead of using commercial offers (Gitter i.e. doesn't show the log if you don't pay), and as OKLab Berlin is having the same discussion (but around Slack), have a look at

https://github.com/sdelements/lets-chat/issues/99#issuecomment-72842990

Where

• Let's chat
• Convos (!!!) and
• Shout.js

are mentionned. So either XMPP or IRC, there are very nice and useful web frontends. Cheerio.

Thanks @jonrichter ! What gitter log are you referring to that needs paid for?

I agree that a MM-integrated solution would be best, and it is in the works! But I think a temporary solution like Gitter, that is fully-featured so as to best serve our desired purpose and to provide the experience we hope to eventually offer, will teach us the most about how we can support and grow our broader community through something like real-time chat.

The choice of Gitter is more about having something really nice to offer right away... Even if we do decide to go with an XMPP/IRC option in the fairly short-term, we will still learn from the comparison of: "How was community engagement on Gitter prior to switching to IRC" vs. "How is community engagement now that we have switched to IRC"
(Gitter and IRC here could be replaced by other Commercial/FLOSS options)

These are really good points Rob, that I hadn't considered.

I think what I'm feeling then is that I'm not qualified to make this decision without seeing more research of a) human-written reviews of different options and b) feature lists of different options + why each feature is important

Can you do a comparison like that for us? Otherwise I'm convinced by your arguments for Gitter, but don't know what other options I'm missing out on if I were to commit to gitter

@devinh In terms of features, the gap between IRC and Slack/Gitter/HipChat is pretty large.... However the gap between Slack vs. Gitter vs. HipChat is pretty small.. They all have very similar offerings... They all have chat history as well as a search feature for it. They all have mobile apps. They all have a free version (which is what we are looking at in this case because the hope is a lot of people will come join this chat, so we can't really afford a per-user type fee). They all can have bots added, say for example if we wanted a chat bot to greet people :P

I will outline the 4 main reasons Gitter stands out for me below (these are things that are unique to Gitter)... But really, this decisions is splitting hairs in some sense... Especially since I am proposing this as being a temporary thing until the MM-Chat feature can take over for this Public Chat room / Lobby / Hub. (i.e. We need a good enough decision here so as to be agile, there may be no "best" decision, nor do we really need that)

1. Gitter gives unlimited chat history for all public chat rooms (HipChat and Slack limit you to 10,000 messages)
2. With Gitter, anyone can find our chatroom online and just join all on their own. (With slack/HipChat they need to be invited)
3. Because a Gitter account is tied to your GitHub account... Many people won't have to create a "new" account to get into Gitter. (They can use their existing Github account, so cognitively... no new account created) This also gives us a way to find our community on Github, and do networking on there... Which is great I think! Making connections on a mostly untapped network. (Vs. HipChat/Slack where this isn't an added bonus)
4. Gitter offers a bridge into IRC, so for those really keen on the idea of IRC... We can still do something here.

OK I'm convinced actually this sounds really good.

Having our public chat and our internal chat be the same would be cool. If we could somehow massage slack to make it work with public accounts I would change my vote so we could standardize on slack.

But given the advantages of Gitter for public discovery I agree it's the best choice.

I really wish we could find something you didn't need to log in at all. Even Google hangouts would be a possibility here, but I agree Gitter is better.

I have very limited time this week to consider the question or contribute, but my initial sense (without actually looking closely into the tools in question) is that Gitter could likely serve as an open connection point for the more tech savvy, geeky / hacky aspect of 'our community' but is not likely to be a particularly noteworthy or attractive space for the 'average mapper' yet (if there is such a thing) nor is it ideal to push them towards especially if better solutions are in the pipeline. So, in general I'm happy if something works out as a better option than hipchat to connect and coordinate with people who have a technical interest in the project or who want to actively engage around specific topics, but I'm not interested in putting this forward as "the new metamaps public gathering space / community hub" kind of thing...as I think it may not serve well for that and I don't want to disappoint or divert people with an interest in more casual, social, mapping-oriented engagement (for which I think G+ is probably worth cultivating further).

Gitter is no more geeky than slack/hipchat/IRC, and I don't think it is any more geeky than general chat will be on MM once we eventually have that.

Its a chat room (a really old internet thingy, that many people will recognize and be comfortable with) this means it is likely more open, and attractive, to the "average" user than G+... which is relatively new.

This won't be replacing anything as our "new" ______, because we don't currently offer a real-time always-on communication space for the broader community.

@benjaminbrownell , how do you envision this not working out or disappointing? and therefore is not a good move to make.... I can't picture it, thats why I said this is low risk/high reward in my eyes.

If anything... I think pushing for G+ to serve this more casual type of role is a little more risky... since often times conversations die off on there, or more commonly are never discovered after the newest posts bury the older ones... G+ feels more like a hands-off, post-something-that-I-found interesting-then-leave type of space to me (for the average user)

As I see it, this new real-time space is more about "where the humans can be found" and G+ is a little more about "Where the documents/resources/blog posts can be found"

I think it should be obvious I am still pushing for us to actually create this space and put it out there with the honest intention for our community to actually use it... to come meet up more regularly (Though with less of a deep commitment than say a hangout video chat brings with it... i.e. come and go as you please)

It is a test/prototype, but one I want to give a wholehearted chance. I am not really interested in this idea if its going to be constrained to a small-scale user-group right from the start.

Next proposal coming soon.