Good points Ben. Gitter has Communities and Rooms. Currently, we seem to be represented in 2 Gitter communities and a few rooms:
- Airflow Developers (This was our first Gitter community) - 2 rooms - Dev - Lobby - Apache - incubator-airflow The Airflow Developers community seems to be the one we had before joining Apache. It's a black hole in the sense that we can't create new rooms under it, we don't know who owns it (possibly Airbnb), & people show up once in a while, ask a question, and don't get a response. This one should definitely be shut down. The other community is the Apache one, which is where our Github gitter badge on the Readme.md points. We have a single room there called incubator-airflow. This is what you refer to.. essentially, it's impossible to have more than one conversation at a time. It's jarring. Committers are allowed to create new rooms under this community, but that functionality is not open to the general public. I just had one of my colleagues try it out -- as he's not an Apache committer, he was not able to create a room under Apache. This is not community friendly. In Slack, any one can create a channel, so it supports multiple concurrent conversations. Message retention will be arguably/slightly better on Slack than Gitter. Slack will support multiple conversations and has a good desktop client. Gitter does not require you to register a new account, allow you to use your GitHub account, but as mentioned, the registration is still pretty lightweight. -s On Thu, Sep 6, 2018 at 9:55 AM Ben Gregory <b...@astronomer.io> wrote: > +1 to Slack over Gitter but understand the concerns of disruption to > community and message retention. > > IMO - Gitter's main disadvantage is forcing all conversations through one > channel which means following any one issue is confusing and inefficient. > I've stopped checking it so much precisely because multiple conversations > happening at once make it difficult to follow, with or without retention. > And based on the number of questions that get asked over and over again, I > would be surprised if people are actually looking through old messages > prior to posting their own as much as might be expected. > > Would this project qualify for a Non-profit discount? Free for 250 users > and 85% off after that on a standard plan. Unsure as to the Apache > Foundation's legal status and how this would fall under it. > https://get.slack.help/hc/en-us/articles/204368833-Slack-for-Nonprofits > > On Thu, Sep 6, 2018 at 10:20 AM Sid Anand <san...@apache.org> wrote: > > > Some good points. > > > > @Arthur Wiedmer <arthur.wied...@gmail.com> The Apache mailing list is > > always the official record and Google indexes it well, so that any > previous > > discussions on the mailing lists are available to future generations. I > > originally started this thread with the thought of having everyone on the > > mailing list, but then I heard that people need some sort of near > real-time > > support in an try-fail-ask iterative fashion -- something that is not > met > > by the async nature of mailing lists. This might be for more people > setting > > up Airflow for the first time and hitting some stumbling blocks. We don't > > want walled gardens for sure, but there seems to be a legitimate ask for > > near real-time collaboration, so the discussion now is just Gitter vs > > Slack. Slack does require registering, all be it pretty light-weight, but > > offers a nice desktop client. > > > > @Bolke de Bruin <bdbr...@gmail.com> I'm concerned about the disruption > to > > the existing community as well. I'm hoping the vote here reveals that > > concern in numbers. Also, why can't we shutdown the Gitter channel? At > the > > least, we can stop pointing to it. > > > > > > On Thu, Sep 6, 2018 at 7:55 AM William Horton > > <william.hor...@compass.com.invalid> wrote: > > > > > +1 > > > > > > *William Horton* > > > Backend Engineer > > > > > > 90 Fifth Avenue, 3rd Floor > > > New York NY 10011 > > > m: 404.432.8480 > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > On Thu, Sep 6, 2018 at 10:03 AM, Ravi Kotecha <kotecha.r...@gmail.com> > > > wrote: > > > > > > > -1 > > > > > > > > On Thu, Sep 6, 2018 at 2:01 PM Chandu Kavar <ccka...@gmail.com> > wrote: > > > > > > > > > +1 > > > > > > > > > > On Thu, Sep 6, 2018, 10:30 AM Sid Anand <san...@apache.org> wrote: > > > > > > > > > > > Hi Folks! > > > > > > In the Apache tradition, I'd like to ask the community to vote on > > > > > replacing > > > > > > Gitter with Slack. > > > > > > > > > > > > For more information about what was recently discussed, refer to > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > https://lists.apache.org/thread.html/8eeb6c46ec431b9158f87022ceaa5e > > > > ed8dbaaf082c887dae55f86f96@%3Cdev.airflow.apache.org%3E > > > > > > > > > > > > If you would like to replace Gitter with Slack, vote +1. If you > > want > > > to > > > > > > keep things they way they are, vote -1. You can also vote 0 if > you > > > > don't > > > > > > care either way because you wouldn't use either much, preferring > to > > > use > > > > > the > > > > > > mailing list instead, which is highly encouraged as it is > Apache's > > > > > official > > > > > > record. > > > > > > > > > > > > The vote will be open for 72 hours and will expire at 8p PT this > > > > > Saturday. > > > > > > -s > > > > > > > > > > > > P.S. If the community votes for Slack, we could create our own > > > > workspace > > > > > > (e.g. airflow.slack.com). > > > > > > P.P.S. In general, anyone in the community can launch a vote like > > > this > > > > > from > > > > > > time to time. There is no binding/non-binding distinction since > we > > > are > > > > > not > > > > > > running an official Apache vote. > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > -- > > [image: Astronomer Logo] <https://www.astronomer.io/> > > *Ben Gregory* > Data Engineer > > Mobile: +1-615-483-3653 • Online: astronomer.io < > https://www.astronomer.io/> > > Download our new ebook. <http://marketing.astronomer.io/guide/> From > Volume > to Value - A Guide to Data Engineering. >