-17

I didn't see any discussion alike and hence would like to check it out in case it is being discussed in the background by the fathers of the site.

Many pro's and con's, personally I dislike it (real questions, no real answers, no order, tons of noice), but the way that things go, there has been a massive adoption for this chatting programs that are being pushed in with a "productivity" sales pitch.

Question is in the umbrella of the existing chat system that is used by SE, there is no reference in this question to -entertainment, fun or alike, hence do not consider it duplicate of Give each site a parallel site for polling, recommendations and subjective-ish stuff

9
  • Maybe? maybe not? what kind of answer are you expecting to this question? Are you just referring to the existing chat system?
    – Kevin B
    Commented Jul 15, 2019 at 19:32
  • Uh? See already has a chat platform. It's not optimal, sure, but... I don't get why you'd think they'd move it (or the main sites) to Discord. Please edit to clarify.
    – Jenayah
    Commented Jul 15, 2019 at 19:32
  • @Kevin B Tag was for discussion, but yeah existing chat system
    – DRP
    Commented Jul 15, 2019 at 19:33
  • @Jenayah not saying they would, "would like to check it out in case it is being discussed in the background by the fathers of the site." Yes or No would suffice
    – DRP
    Commented Jul 15, 2019 at 19:34
  • @KevinB Thanks for the feedback, I have updated the title as requested.
    – DRP
    Commented Jul 15, 2019 at 19:42
  • 9
    SE, Slack and Discord should all move to irc ....
    – rene Mod
    Commented Jul 15, 2019 at 19:44
  • 2
    I think there's some confusion as to what your goal is with this question. What would be the purpose of adding either of these to the system? What is the benefit? What are you trying to get out of it? Are you unaware of our existing Chat system or talking about replacing it?
    – Catija
    Commented Jul 15, 2019 at 20:08
  • @Catija Main goal was understanding if there was any conversation on those keywords (slack , discord) to migrate or use the existing chat system, as it's marketing suggest a more agile way to work. Those keywords did not pop-up in the search bar and did not research with different terms that might have pointed me to gnat link above. Benefit I see thinking out loud, is to get all chats in one place rather than going to each SE looking for the chat room, just personal opinion and not having in mind any consideration for architecture or what not.
    – DRP
    Commented Jul 15, 2019 at 20:19
  • 2
    I doubt it. Premade solutions like Slack and Discord wouldn't be very well suited for the SE chat model. For one, you wouldn't be able to create a chat anymore. You have to request that SE do it. And imagine the sheer number of channels or servers needed. Any time a comment thread gets too long it may be moved to chat. There'd be tons of dead channels or servers. Not to mention the requirement for everyone to have an account for whichever platform on top of their SE account. Commented Jul 15, 2019 at 20:20

2 Answers 2

13

I like our chat system (AKA Bonfire).

It's simple to use and not too frilly and complicated. I've used it more than I've used Slack and Discord but I've used both and I'm not a huge fan of either. There are some things they do better but, in particular, Slack's odd threading just means you miss content from time to time.

As far as I'm aware, there's no burning urge to somehow swap in either of those for our in-house chat system... and I'm not even sure how we would do that in the first place, so... no.

It's also worth keeping in mind that both of those other products are built to allow private discussion in a segmented, private chat area. Our chat system is default public. While Slack and Discord may have public chats, that's not a part of them I've ever used. From my experience, the content on them is default private.

In contrast, we explicitly prevent the creation of private chat spaces in Bonfire - or at least restrict such to our moderators, entrusting them to use them for moderation purposes. We do not allow one-to-one private messaging in particular as it would require far more moderation than we currently have.

There are other problems with it, particularly privacy protection. Many users here do not want their accounts connected to their person in any way. That becomes more difficult as you add connections to external products that users may utilize for work, particularly Slack.

Some of our sites do have unofficial private chat spaces off site as places for the community to interact but they're non-sanctioned and we do not support them at all. We also generally discourage sending users from our chat to those other services because they're unofficial and unregulated (by us) and that's often unclear to the people being linked to them.


That said, for our non-public content, we do have a Slack integration for posting questions from a Team into a Slack Channel to help our users get visibility for their internal questions but this is a far cry from actually bolting Slack onto Stack Exchange.

1
  • 2
    Also there's a good many things it simply does better. Replies and starwalls are stuff I miss on both the other chat systems I use Commented Jul 18, 2019 at 14:02
6

No, we should just fix the system we already have rather than relying on a 3rd party tool that may or may not fulfill our needs a few years from now. By having our own system, we're not subject to the practices of the 3rd party.

You are of course free to move your own community to discord or whatever other platform you want, several communities from SO chat have already done so.

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .