I’ve been looking for links to any real time community comms systems in the month or so I’ve been using ASL. It’s quite normal these days to use platforms such as Discord, Slack etc for quick questions, one-to-one chats, and wider community building and sharing. I see references to the use of Slack previously but it would seem to be only at a “board” level.
If there isn’t a solution being used, are there any plans to, not that it needs to have an official ASL stamp on it of course and could be enabled by anyone.
I dont think we need other type of communication.
We are in real time here, what is the difference between sending a message to a mailling list than to a reddit server, a telegram server or a discord one? the realtimeness is the same. What make a discussion real time is the fact that all party involved in the discussion are online at the same time. If you send a question on Reddit and no one online at the moment, the response wont be real time no matter what you would think. And the worst setup would be IRC or Discord because if someone ask another question and people know the answer and they start to chat about it, the previous questions will be lost in the noise. Those 2 are real time, but really not good at giving service.
One other thing, why go on multiple plateform, this is only spreading the limit amounth of good knowledge to a larger space, thinning it more.
I answer right now from the web site hosting the list but most of the time I work from email. This is I think the best way to do the support for allstarlink.
I accept that you may not like IRC/Discord/Slack but they are actually superb for real time interaction, problem solving and for the forming of community. Remember that the Mars Rover teams used Slack, they may still do so; there’s proven merit in such systems. But thanks for your opinion.
If you want real time, the best way is an audio and/or audio video conversation.
Slack irc telegram discord and community do exactly the same thing, If I would have been online when you answered me my answer would have been the same.
I accept that you may not like IRC/Discord/Slack but they are actually superb for real time interaction, problem solving and for the forming of community. Remember that the Mars Rover teams used Slack, they may still do so; there’s proven merit in such systems. But thanks for your opinion.
I dont think we need other type of communication. We are in real time here, what is the difference between sending a message to a mailling list than to a reddit server, a telegram server or a discord one? the realtimeness is the same. What make a discussion real time is the fact that all party invo…
I am on a multiple of discords server, Some for ham radio, some for gaming, other for family. I am also on a multitude of telegram groups. I am on reddit, I have been on IRC when a 486 4-100 was the pinnacle of the CPU and a lot later when f-servers were the best way to trade mp3. I know slack, never liked it much. and there are multitude of other platforms that can do the same thing with all having a little niche or market, Like teamspeak for gaming.Zello for radio like communication. Even Facebook and Twitter are communication platforms.
No matter the type of client/server platform you will name, they all have something in common, they manage to regroup some humans to communicate. Some are easy to search for answers. So will show the status of other users as being online or not. Most will notify you by email or text or notification on an app that someone posted something.
They all have strong points. But one thing is sure, someone will always find that platform A is not as good as platform B and they will try to bring some users to that , new , improved, better , with less trans fat, low in calories , with a sweet taste platform. Did I say that the whites are whiter with that?
Did you know that Slack is not free? Yes there is a free version, with 10 000 messages in memory. after 10 000 messages they are deleted, With one liners like, :
Ok been fun chatting with you.
Let your node online I will contact you tomorrow
73!
I just did 3 messages. It won’t be long, a few months, and we will lose all the messages with some nice answers to recurring questions.
It is not that I prefer Community. In facts I dont like it that much.
But it has something that most other plateforms dont have. It does not need a specific app. It will work on all type of computer and OS. Even a win95 computer running the simplest of all email client will be able to use it.
Linux, FreeBSD, MacOS, I even think that we could run it on dos with a tcp stack and a text only email client. (not that I would like it, but it is possible)
We are still evaluating all options. Each option has benefits and disadvantages. Not one is perfect. There are also a limited number of volunteers to help people out. We don’t want to spread ourselves too thin. One of the main reasons we chose Community/Discord is so there would be a pool of knowledge for people to search for their answers. Our intent was to create a platform that is easy for new users and new hams to learn about Allstar and Ham Radio.
Hi Todd, I can understand the desire to “not spread ourselves too thin”, and I guess by ourselves you mean members of the board and the close band of experts. That’s not really what I’ve asked, I simply wanted to know if there is anywhere that people are chatting with each other, helping each other out, sharing, and building a community. The short answer is no, well not something owned by ASL anyway.
We’ve all been around the Internet long enough to know that forum solutions like these become a huge database of the same old questions, and the signal to noise ratio is pretty low. It’s also a system that needs to be maintained, backed up, resourced etc. But then that’s the choice of the board.
I look forward to you evaluating systems that allow for conversation in real time, be that at the keyboard or voice/video. Lots of other groups are using those systems well and have a real sense of belonging, with community led specialisation areas, on-line meetups, daily/weekly gatherings etc etc.
There is no perfect solution and we are considering all the options. We are always open to suggestions. I totally get the appeal of having a slack channel that people can just chat on. - As far as spreading ourselves too thin, I actually meant the all-star community as a whole. As least from my perspective, one of the big aspects of Ham radio is teaching other people. Right or wrong, our goal was to consolidate all of the all-star users on Community/Discourse. A subset of allstarlink community is the volunteers that have backend access. We get requests all the time from something as mundane and changing a node password. Right now the volunteers check Community and emails to help the new users or give support. As we have been growing, we are actively seeking all types of volunteers. For example, just thirty days ago, we use to have around 5000 nodes online and active at any one time. Today, we hit an all time high of 5321 nodes online. (See the board announcement from a couple of weeks ago. - We are looking for Web designers, programmers, linux admin people, a lawyer, etc.) - You mentioned that lots of groups are using different types of systems for real time conversations. Please post some of the systems you are aware of so we can evaluate how easy they are to implement. Thanks again for your support. You are going to continue to see a lot of improvements soon.
Discord, Mattemost, Slack are all zero cost systems that can be configured to the nth degree, and can be moderated, controlled etc by the owners and those they give privileges to. They don’t need Board members etc to sit over those boards and adding to their workload.
Telegram and Signal are seeing a huge takeup by those that just want simple comms but I think they’re probably lacking for the development of a community.
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