Web-based IRC for the Trilogy?

Question

This is a followup meta topic from the blog post.

https://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/04/do-trilogy-sites-need-a-third-place/

I tend to think that meta is the work part, while Stack Overflow, Super User, and Server Fault are the home. But where is the other place, the third place that isn’t work or home?

We noticed early on that some Stack Overflow users were using IRC to socialize and coordinate their efforts on the site in real time. Per their request, we even set up a special RSS feed just for these folks, so that new questions would be visible there as they were asked.

Similarly, we’re using the 37signals Campfire app to coordinate our own work in real time between the NYC team and the distributed core team. I’ve been rather impressed with it; Campfire is an awful lot like a web 2.0 version of IRC. Try it yourself and see. It’s great!

Which makes me wonder — should we add a Campfire-like “third place” for real time socialization and coordination of work?

1. unicornoverflow.com
2. meta.unicornoverflow.com
3. chat.unicornoverflow.com

I’m not sure “chat” is the right word here, necessarily, but it’s all I have at the moment. Other proposed names:

• offtopic.
• offline.
• coffeehouse.
• cafe.
• live.
• social.
• thirdplace.
• mod.
• lounge.

So, specifically:

• do you think this makes sense?
• does it meet a real need for informal, real-time backchannel, similar to what people were using IRC for?
• how would wediscourage people from asking and answering questions there in chat form?
• what existing web-based "IRC-like" solutions do you think work, and why?

Edit: it seems many are unfamiliar with Campfire, so please watch this brief flash video to get a sense of what we think this feature might look like.

Answer 1

I think this is a great idea! Were we only talking about the existing trilogy, I would not be so enthusiastic, but I would still be supportive.

I would like there to be a place where questions could be discussed, without necessarily answering the question. It would be nice to be able to throw out tangents, or ask ancillary questions, etc..

People, this isn't about US, it is about everyone else.

The existing non-answer discussion methods won't scale to lots of sites, and won't be easily adopted by the non-technical target users of StackExchange 2.0. This isn't about improving the trilogy, it is about making SE 2.0 work.

SO and the trilogy were made for US, but SE 2.0 is for everyone else. We are strange. For regular folks, there must be some sort of social component for the community to form.

I suspect that for most SE 2.0 sites, chat will remove the need for a separate meta site. Discussion about the sites itself can be done in the chat module, but feature discussions could be directed to meta.stackexchange. The last thing you want is a discussion about features and functions on the meta site for every topic site.

My recommendations ...

• Have a "room" for each question, with the feed visible on the question screen. Have an easy way to make a chat item point to a specific answer or comment.

• Have "rooms" (as Jeff mentioned) for general discussion and for specifics.

• Perhaps have "rooms" for each tag, or for each tag with over n questions.

• Enforce a (relatively small) message size restriction in the chat module, especially for newbies. The chat message size restriction could be increased as rep grows.

• Thread the chat .. allowing (and nesting) replies to existing items.

• Have the same kind of control tools (flag, close, etc.) for chat as already exist for questions, answers and comments.

• Connect chat into rep and badges. Perhaps have voting on chat items, at smaller numbers (perhaps up vote +1 rep, down -0.5), or rep awarded for quantity of chat posts.

• Include chat items in the search results.

• Perhaps show status (controlled via user setting).

• Perhaps allow (controlled via user settings and/or rep) a user to "poke" an offline or inactive user, which might IM or send a note asking the target user to join a conversation.

• Some integration with Twitter or Facebook .. perhaps allow a user to choose notification of activity via a twitter DM or a Facebook message rather than through email.

Answer 2

Replicating what I just posted to as a comment on the blog piece:

Oh God, please, no. This kills off the argument that the Trilogy is not a social network. If people are interested in chatting and hooking up off-topic, they have -- by your own post -- already found ways: Twitter, IRC, etc. You don't need to divert development resources away from your core mission to support those who want that extra social vibe.

This leads, in my mind, down a slippery slope. What happens at chat.[foobaroverflow].com? Same engine? Different engine? Open-ended discussions? PMs? Smileys? All of those will be requested very quickly, especially on the SE sites which are not as "professionally-oriented" as, say, SO and SF.

On the other hand, a certain Meta user would probably love it.

Answer 3

We're already using IRC, Wave, Sidewiki, e-mail, smoke signals, lasers and Meta comments.

Another method won't really change anything. We already have a third place notwithstanding your slowness in creating one in any official capacity.

Nevertheless, this kind of thing is important to community. It's taken you long enough to realize that.

Knowing that, I don't see why you should seek to use some new thing when the community has already organized around several old things. Just pick one of those (probably the largest) and make it official (or make an official branch). Or just leave them be, but facilitate finding the existing unofficial third places (a link to the popular IRC channels/wave accounts/sidewiki/e-mail addresses/GPS co-ordinates of smoke/lasers/etc).

Answer 4

And how would the chatroom Make the Internet a better place to get expert answers to your questions.one question at a time.?

Sure there're going to be questions and answers, but it's just a chatroom. You logout and the collective knowledge the question generated is gone and recorded nowhere.

If such a chatroom exists and gets traction, it will be tempting to post your question, get a answer, post followups and get your work done (something I always do on #python irc)

So I would say it's a big NO.

Answer 5

Not everyone knows or goes to the IRC channel. I understand they can find out.. but making an official hub for chat would attract a lot more people. If they're all there as fans of stackoverflow, they'll have at least that in common.

I don't see why this is a bad idea. At its worst, not a lot of people would use it. At its best, it would be a really good social hub for programmer extraordinaires. (That is, if I understand what's getting proposed here...)

Answer 6

Is it more useful for Stack Overflow to provide a third place, or more useful to provide easy access to existing third places? What if profiles were augmented to provide places to enter XMPP IDs, user names on developer sites such as GitHub, Bitbucket, and Ohloh, IRC screen names, etc., with everything hyperlinked as appropriate?

If a real-time chat solution is added, however, it would be nice to be able to connect to it via either IRC or XMPP conferencing as well as the Web. I don't know if Campfire supports such a thing, but there shouldn't be any insurmountable technical hurdles to the concept.

Answer 7

I think a chat feature makes sense for moderators, but the type of chat a mod would want should not be publicly available. If you were to implement something like this I'd either make it moderator only, or have discrete channels for users and moderators, e.g. mod.unicornoverflow.com and lounge.unicornoverflow.com

I'd also consider making posting on it a privilege based on reputation to stop it from being a spam-fest.

Answer 8

I've got a great idea for a new [X]. Let's take [existing protocol] and implement it over HTTP!

Coming soon.. Email over HTTP!

Answer 9

Uh... That Camp thing looks nifty and all, but... They had, what, seven people chatting in the demo? There are a few more SO users...

Who's going to sit there and moderate it? If you intend to leave it unmoderated, do you have it in you to brush off whining from users whose feelings get hurt when they got flamed for spamming their SO questions?

As Welbog notes, this sort of thing has already kinda happened, without you. No offense, but... you're not a chatter, more a Twitter person. Maybe Robert C can help you out with this though?

Oh yeah - and Wave rocks.

Answer 10

I must be the only person (besides Jeff) that thinks this is a good idea. Real-time collaboration is an essential tool for any collaborative project, which Stackoverflow exemplifies.

Yeah, people are doing it with other tools/sites already, but why push users away from StackOverflow to talk about StackOverflow? Shouldn't that tool be readily available as a part of the site?

And as far as taking so long to implement something, it's better late than never. That's not a reason to dismiss the idea entirely.

Answer 11

My opinion - for all that it's worth - is that IRC is the best real-time chat facility. Clients are pretty lightweight, it's a well-understood protocol, the design is well known. I'm not saying that it is technically super wizbang, but man, it gets the job done.

I have advocated - occasionally - for a long time that forums are an excellent model for certain interactions. I'm not saying phpBB is teh awesome - it's not - but the idea of n-threaded asynchronous communication is not to be pushed aside lightly. SE is thread-level 1 async communication. There have been requests since what, day 2, for n-level async discussions?

I don't see the advantage of campfire. Especially if it's blocked at some workplaces.

(edit) IRC suffers hugely if more than 5 people are chatting at the same time in the same room. I don't think it's The Solution, but having an IRC server to ready spawn rooms on demand would be a good tactic, I think.

I should also note that I am not a Twitter person. I am an IRC/email person.

Answer 12

I have no idea if I would find this useful in the long run. However, I don't feel entitled to vote against a feature because I might not use it. I can certainly see how this may be useful, and that some users might love it.

The only downside I can think of is that many of us log on from work. While we can take a few minutes here and there to post to a "forum", keeping a "chat" open is crossing the line. I don't think that would kill this entirely, but it might discourage many users (like myself) from using it.

how would wediscourage people from asking and answering questions there in chat form?

Easy: no rep. If you want to earn points for your q&a, use the correct site!

Answer 13

If it is anything like campfire, I must say that I like the idea, personally. I do think it would be a great tool for Moderators to communicate better. I also think that a rep-based entry might prevent a lot of activity that would be unwanted. If users were required to have 3k rep to participate, there may be a lot less complaints about spammers, trolls, etc.

this is something that is captured in the "rooms" functionality of campfire already, and we'd certainly have that. Private rooms, passworded rooms, 10k+ rep rooms, moderator rooms... – Jeff Atwood♦

Sold! Sign me up.

Answer 14

Hmm... Although I don't necessarily think SOFU, as a trilogy, needs its own chat, I agree that offering chat as part of the stack exchange package might have value. Because although SOFU has a directed purpose in which chat might not be valuable, many stack exchange sites are social sites. They're becoming the new forums.

That's not necessarily a bad thing; especially if it drives usage and revenue.

Edit Also, if you go chat, you better give us some emoticons...

Answer 15

Why web-based? If you want to set up a chat system, why not use an existing technology that allows the user to pick his own interface, be it web-based, command-line, or direct neural implant?

I agree with Mr. Rudy that we don't need another place -- we've already found each other if we wanted to, and I'd rather not move discussions into another medium that really should be taking place on the site.

Answer 16

I love the idea of the third site. Sorry, I don't have a TLDR version of the below.

I don't see it so much like IRC... I see it more like this. When I was listening to Jeff Atwood on Scott Hanselman's excellent Hanselminutes podcast, the conversation went towards the possibility of a third place per stack exchange in addition to Meta Stack Overflow - I think it was referred to as "off-topic".

So I immediately had this flash in my mind, of "personalinjurylawyeroverflow.com" and "surgeonoverflow.com" and "saltwatertank.com" and on and on and on each with their satellite meta sites and their satellite offtopic... this Universe of overflow sites. Escaping the engineering ghetto even. PatchworkQuiltOverFlow.com, and so on.

And in the picture in my head, the "Q&A professional" or "Q&A serious interest" sites were these big motherships, islands to themselves - places to do battle, earn badges, reputation, garner community and build search engine traffic ... but the off-topic questions were something different... they were the social network that connected them - more overlapping.

And I thought to myself "it would be like this if I logged on to FacebookTwitterThingWithStatusUpdatesAndAddAsFriendFeature, but I had my badges and reputations... and all my Stack Overflow buddies were on there and we were all in the same off-topic group, but I could add my brother-in-law over on legaloverflow and his buddy on saltwatertank... and nobody, I mean nobody would ask anyone anything about Farmville ever seriously!" and I think this could work.

If Stack Overflow is the intersection of Digg, Reddit, Wikipedia and whatever, this is the intersection of that and Facebook. But it wouldn't be a place to upload pictures of yourself drunk at the party the night before, it would be what LinkedIn couldn't ever become even if it tried really really hard. Because LinkedIn is just the "off-topic thing" in the middle - they don't have the mother-ships that surround it.

Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter ... re-imagined. So the lifecycle would go like this.

Bob, a new personal injury lawyer, googles to try to find some answer or other. This might already be implausible, as I have no idea if lawyers google to find answers, but bear with me. He finds an answer on personalinjurylawyer.com. Repeat. Bob notices that this site is typically pretty good at getting him answers.

Being a kind of Jon Skeet of personal injury law, he starts answering questions, and doing a bang up job. He starts to recognize other lawyers, even one of whom is a cute blonde that he went to law school with and wants to date. He wishes he could reach out to her in some way.

Bob notices a link to the "off-topic" site, which the PersonalInjuryoverflow moderators have lovingly named the Legal Eagle, a sort of watering hole place. Bored one Friday evening (hah! lawyers are never bored) he stumbles in and notices that the object of his affection also has an account and is already a regular at the Legal Eagle. He is able to strike up a conversation, wearing his badges and joking about his gigantic reputation he earned on PersonalInjuryoverflow proudly. Much to the delight of Maslow, he asks her out and they are eventually able to pass on their genes.

Bob eventually adds his brother to his friends list, who has an account on SaltWaterTank.com and they use the off-topic megasite to trade YouTube videos of cats doing funny things. He adds his old university buddy who's on stackoverflow.com and they trade drinking stories and talk about the new bands that they're listening to.

I guess I don't see it like IRC... IRC and web chat sites tend to have the almost MMO like the problem that you have to be logged in all the time to get the benefit from the community. I see it more like Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter, just inherently attached to the overflow sites.

The "main sites" are strictly Q&A - no monkey business. They attract the professionals and people with interests.

The "meta sites" are the meeting rooms - well intentioned moderators and community members speaking in polite tones about how to improve the site.

The "off-topic questions" are the social side of things. Sure, we self organizing Twitter obsessed already blogging geeks have figured it out and don't need it. And sure, Facebook already exists.

But that's no reason not to try to go one up them. :)

Answer 17

I'm not really sure a third place directly connected to the trilogy is necessary. This need might be better served by helping SO users connect with each other on existing online social sites/services.

However, if you do proceed along this route I would encourage you to make it more than just chat. At the vary least, consider some means of asynchronous communication like threaded discussion.

Answer 18

I don't think an IRC is the perfect solution. And I'm sure I won't use it.

If you really want a chat system, there's some good Metaforum (web 2.0 Forum, if you'd like) available out there. Like this one.
It's no longer under development -and written in PHP-, but the basic functionalities are there: good administration system (locking, post-it, ...), automatic update of the topics -no need to hit F5 every 5 seconds-. And its open-sourced.

The automatic update feature allows an almost chat-like functionality and has the advantage over IRC to keep an historic of the conversation for the people who can't stay on it 24/7.

Answer 19

Too many sites.

I'd rather introduce a special type of question into Meta that has chat format, or try to find other ways to integrate this stuff with Meta without turning it into a crapswamp.

If this is at all necessary, Meta is the place for it IMO. The "Work / Home" analogy doesn't really apply because SO is not really "work", and Meta is not "home".

Answer 20

I think CampFire is the wrong interface. It seems to me that group chat is much more likely among a diverse and loosely related population such as SO, to devolve into flames more often than not. I think you should consider something similar to FB, if anything, where you control who your friends are and offer control over communication mechanisms to the individual based on established relationships. I'm not sure if I would use it or not, but I would prefer a system that allows me to control who I interact with rather than one or more public spaces that I can either choose to enter or not.

Here are some features that I would like to see if something is done.

1. Real-time interaction (chat/group chat)
   • One-to-one access controlled by each individual via an mutual opt-in mechanism, or may be public.
   • Ability to share files, pictures, etc.
   • Use cases
     • I want to collaborate with another SO member on a project.
     • I want to have a conversation with one other SO member.
2. Status updates (think FB wall)
   • Personal update access controlled by each individual via a mutual opt-in mechanism or may be public.
   • Should be able to
   • Use cases:
     • I want to let my SO friends know what is happening
     • I want to let people know when I've answered or asked a question
     • I want a place to organize an interest group or local user group based on SO
3. Messaging
   • Ability to send a private message to another SO user
   • Ability to reject messages (permanently) from another SO user
4. Groups
   • Should support both real-time (chat) and non-real-time (status updates) interaction
   • Real-time access should be multiparty (2 or more)
   • Requires a minimal amount of rep in the system (200?) to create a new group
   • Inactive groups are automatically removed
   • Access is controlled by membership
     • Public mode, anyone can join
     • Private mode, must be invited by group creator
     • Membership can be revoked/blocked in problem cases

Note -- what I'm describing sound a lot like Facebook so I'm not sure that it's actually important to provide the mechanism within SO. I'm actually ok with not having it, though, I've occasionally wanted the ability to directly contact someone that I knew could answer a question better than me to let them know about it.

Answer 21

I don't really care if there is a web-based IRC, provided that I can also connect to it with a regular IRC-type client. By that I basically mean any of the protocols that Pidgin works with. ^{_{( Which also includes Facebook chat )}}

Answer 22

I'm saying no, specifically in relation to the Trilogy.

My reasoning is around the real-time nature of the chat.

My major concern, and the one that popped into mind straight away, is that certain groups of people would post questions/answers in the chat. I can imagine there is people who don't post a question on the trilogy because they don't like just posting it out into the ether, where as if they had a list of people, which would be obviously changing in real-time, they would be much more inclined to post.

I could see people post links to their questions, pleading for answers.

My other concern would be moderation. To keep a relatively public chat clean, on-topic and not filled with spammers and other disreputable types would require a significant amount of human resources.

And my other thought is that I really don't think the trilogy needs it. I think the community has been forged successfully.

So again no, but I'm all for these types of thoughts.

Answer 23

I want to tee off the two words you cite as motivating this proposal: 'coordinate' and 'socialize'.

Coordinate

When your development team sets out to coordinate, they all start with one critical common premise about what they are coordinating: "We work for Jeff." I'm sure that there are disagreements from time to time; I certainly don't mean to accuse you of running the corporate equivalent of HMS Bounty. My point is that there is much, much, much more common understanding of the goal of the effort in your team than there is in the entire so.com community, or even the 10K subset thereof.

I fear that an IRC channel or any of the other mechanisms discussed here will mostly deliver fuel and oxygen to the disputes about subjective questions, editing, and question voting (just to name three).

The structured Q&A format of meta serves as a set of control rods in these reactions. People post up their views, there are comments in tiny print. Nothing is resolved, but the clumsiness of the whole business seems to me to impede the inevitable rush toward name-calling.

If this thing existed, my most frequent post might well be: "Quick: question X is open for deletion! Let's go get it before they finish reopening it!"

I suspect that this, and it's mirror image, are not going to lead to building a happier community.

I could summarize all of this under the general description of "Snark Fin Soup."

Socialize

I could see some socialization at the 50K level. People who invest the time to get really high rep put so much time into this that they are prone to feel like they want the moral equivalent of the local VFW hall in which to swap stories and compare wounds. Below that level, my personal opinion is that the various denizens don't have enough in common.

Answer 24

I will not use any chat system that's not XMPP based. Seriously, I'm tired of having to have a special account on a special system that doesn't interact with any of my other software in a reasonable way.

The chat problem has been solved, and for better or worse, it's XMPP.

As for whether or not it's needed, I have no idea. Personally I don't see why there's any need for 'discussion' or 'community' on a site that's supposed to ideally be a collection of largely anonymous oracles. In fact, it seems quite highly counterproductive to that goal.

Answer 25

I think the answer to a "third place" is to create glue that enables users at the account level to connect with each other, but abstract away specific communication technologies and let users choose what they want.

For me the biggest challenge is how to get in touch with the SO userbase about items of discussion. The people who know each other have already found their own channels and means. But how do I even start an intention to connect with 'BigEasy5' about my answer on "C# references"? Right now I'll have to visit his profile, see a website link (if he provided it), visit the web site, and try to track down an email or something about him. Or I'll have to leave a public comment and cause comment spam.

The challenge in my view isn't finding an existing technology to communicate with, or creating a new techology which may or may not fly (although it would tightly bind the userbase to communication with one another) but how to connect within the community.

I suggest making users available to each other for communication as the first item, based on their own communication prefs, and subject to appropriate privacy controls and such.

Secondly focus on technologies that can enable that communication. Let the users choose their own way as they do now. One of the choices might be your handy dandy new "third place" web 3.5 chatroom -- think Wave killer :). Or I might choose IRC with SO users to get away from yet another web-based communication forum and log my own chatter.

I say consider separating the concepts of enabling communication and communication itself.

My answer misses the point of gathering all discussion in one place but there's already a lot of that given main and meta. I'm addressing the realtime discussion scenarios with fellow users.

Answer 26

I like idea of campfirenow alike site for somehow, but unicornoverflow.com might be a joke, if you are serious, the domain should already be taken, but now looks like still available at the moment.

Answer 27

Can't you give every question their own discussion 'page', like they have on Wikipedia?

That way if people want to talk about the question, they can do it over there rather than spamming extremely long comments to one another.

Also discussion on why questions are closed could be held there, rather than over here at Meta. Meta should be about the site, not about the questions themselves.

Answer 28

Backchannel Q/A, not a problem

Nobody's going to waste their time answering a question for one person and have it scroll away where it won't get any votes!

Answer 29

I just thought I'd point out this conversation I was having with Jim B (as transcribed into his answer from the comments on my answer) on SF as an example of something that would be perfect to have a "third space" for. The topic was interesting and germane to IT professionals, but fell out of the scope of an Q&A site.

I would have loved to have a place to continue that back-and-forth, hopefully with a way to attach it to the originating question - maybe a link to a transcript in the vein of "discussion moved to thirdspace.serverfault.com/path/to/transcript" after the discussion was done, and "Join this conversation at: thirdspace.serverfault.com/?id=xxxxxxx" while it was ongoing.

Answer 30

Why not cornify.stackoverflow.com? Oh yeah I went there :P

Actually, I was thinking it would be good to have a moderator control that allows you to convert a chat question into a question in either SO or meta with approval by the person asking the question. That would save new people from trying to figure out how to do it as well as minimizing questions in chat.

Some other "real" channel names I thought up include:

• irc.
• rap. (this may have several meanings LOL)
• gather.
• group.
• growl. (as in the MAC notification window)