Before social media was a thing and before the average person spent hours a day on the WWW, there were web forums full of geeks! Great fun and ideas, for better or worse, spawned out of these primordial soups. I'm glad a similar community exists here on Permies.
One thing I miss from those days/communities is some sort of real time chat. Many used an IRC channel. Some had a built-in mechanism. Even nowadays some sites have that, like
StackExchange sites having community chat rooms. It's like if the Purple Mooseage system turned into a communal tavern. ...wait that sounds like a disaster.
Is there such a chat room for Permies.com, or has it been considered in the past?
The function would be for ephemeral community chat, not so topic-specific as threads. Like a watering hole or something, while we're on the computer doing whatever we're doing we could tune in to chat with others in the Permies community if we're so inclined. One could tune in with notifications, tune in without notifications, or not tune in at all and hardly notice it exists. It would have to be guarded by apple-thresholds to keep it higher quality and spam free. IRC or a Jabber chat room wouldn't be hard to setup, but I'm not sure how we secure it using apples.
A downside is it could be distracting or whatever other ails come with communal watering holes. But I think casual, general chit chat could be good community building and learning. What do you think?
Related posts:
Same idea, didn't seem to get off the ground: https://permies.com/t/20334/Zello-Channel-PermiesEncouragement, oh ya: https://permies.com/t/97457/permies-social-media-experience
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