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Conlin Durbin
Conlin Durbin

Posted on

Starting a Dev.to IRC?

I love the discussion and community here, but sometimes it would be nice to have a real-time communication tool. How would DEV-ers feel about setting up an IRC server/channel for the community to chat?

Top comments (11)

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Ben Halpern

While it hasn't been fully released to the fresh air, we want to make /connect work for this purpose.

With the built in follow relationships, tag relationships, preferences, as well as navigation between posts and chat potentially, we really think having chat as a native component of the community is the best longterm bet. (Not that we couldn't possibly integrate other chat channels).

I can't say nobody can create IRC/Discord/etc. but we want to lean in on our own fully open source platform chat space in the future. We'll give it another cycle of our attention to really let it shine in the near future.

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Ricardo Rivera • Edited

/connect sounds really exciting.
I hope it is ensured that the chat does not cannibalize the website. I think it's important to make sure the chat extends the Dev.to page, enriches it and does not replace it.

If dedicated chat is really necessary then it should be intigrated into the page (could the DEV.to page become more real-time to make the chat obsolete?, reduce the hurdles for writing articles and comments can have the same effect ).

For me, the Dev.to concept stands between Medium.com and Twitter.
I am curious if the "warm community" or the "multiplatform unicorn glossy articles" will win the concept fight.

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Conlin Durbin • Edited

I didn't even know /connect existed! That is pretty much what I was looking for, if it had a chat for everyone!

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Thomas Junkツ

Yes. It seems a bit under marketed ;)

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Hugo Torzuoli

What about a Discord server ?

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Conlin Durbin

I use Discord, but I just love IRC. I'd really be cool with either (or both!)

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Gabe Kangas

Agreed. Why give ownership of your community over to Discord when IRC is an open protocol that gives you the freedom to use any client. I honestly don't understand why people bet their entire community on Slack and/or Discord.

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Hugo Torzuoli

I don't think establish a community on DM software like Discord/Slack/Rocket etc means giving ownership of your comumunity to these softwares.
IMO no need to reinvent the wheel. But I understand the open source wish of Ben for this tool ;)

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wuz profile image
Conlin Durbin

I'd say in some ways you are giving them ownership - just look at what happened with Reactiflux: reactjs.org/blog/2015/10/19/reacti...

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Ondrej

My 2 cents: IRC would be pretty cool, it would make me feel like back in the 90s :) I would definitely support this idea !

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exbe • Edited

#slack it