Realm-java: [Support] Official IRC/Slack channel?

[StErMi]

Hi guys, do you offer an official IRC chat or Slack channel? It would be a good thing for us developers to talk with you but also talk with each others and try to solve problems.

[bmunkholm]

Hi,
We are experimenting with a Slack channel in Japan at the moment. But unless that's your language, it's likely not to much help :-)
We are considering this, but to be honest our biggest issue is setting false expectations. We try to do close to realtime support already in many channels (StackOverflow, github, and Google groups, twitter) - and that already takes quite a bit of our resources. Those channels are much better to track issues and ensure things get resolved, something IRC and Slack is really not designed for. So I don't think it will be a good channel for communicating with us as it sets realtime expectations which really is hard with a 24 hour worldwide audience - we will never get any sleep :-) But if we could establish the objective to connect users together, I think we could consider that. My concern though is that our friendly devs will spend all their time chatting instead of fixing bugs and developing new valuable features for you :-)
What so you think IRC or Slack would be better at that the established channels are not? Because they are certainly better at keeping conversations to a topic in one place, whereas IRC and Slack are horrible at that mixing all conversations together and therefore scales very poorly IMHO.

[StErMi]

At the moment I think that most of the developers are used to Slack, so it
could be a good option.
IRC is known everywhere but I think that slack is much more versatile and
has well done client for desktop/mobile.

On Fri, Oct 2, 2015 at 1:46 PM, Brian Munkholm [email protected]
wrote:

Hi,
We are experimenting with a Slack channel in Japan at the moment. But
unless that's your language, it's likely not to much help :-)
We are considering this, but to be honest our biggest issue is setting
false expectations. We try to do close to realtime support already in many
channels (StackOverflow, github, and Google groups, twitter) - and that
already takes quite a bit of our resources. Those channels are much better
to track issues and ensure things get resolved, something IRC and Slack is
really not designed for. So I don't think it will be a good channel for
communicating with us as it sets realtime expectations which really is hard
with a 24 hour worldwide audience - we will never get any sleep :-) But if
we could establish the objective to connect users together, I think we
could consider that.
What so you think IRC or Slack would be better at that the established
channels are not? Because they are certainly better at keeping
conversations to a topic in one place, whereas IRC and Slack are horrible
at that mixing all conversations together and therefore scales very poorly
IMHO.

—
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub
https://github.com/realm/realm-java/issues/1517#issuecomment-144996820.

Founder e CEO di SurveyLab https://surveylab.me/

Skype: e.ricci.designfuture
Twitter: @StErMi https://twitter.com/stermi
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/emanuelericci
Google+: https://plus.google.com/u/0/+EmanueleRicci/posts
Hangout: [email protected]

[bmunkholm]

We will evaluate the experiment with our current Slack channel in Japan before we will create one for the english speaking users.

[StErMi]

OK! We will wait ;)

On Mon, Oct 5, 2015 at 10:04 AM, Brian Munkholm [email protected]
wrote:

We will evaluate the experiment with our current Slack channel in Japan
before we will create one for the english speaking users.

—
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub
https://github.com/realm/realm-java/issues/1517#issuecomment-145457670.

Founder e CEO di SurveyLab https://surveylab.me/

Skype: e.ricci.designfuture
Twitter: @StErMi https://twitter.com/stermi
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/emanuelericci
Google+: https://plus.google.com/u/0/+EmanueleRicci/posts
Hangout: [email protected]

[bmunkholm]

And do use the other channels until then :-)

[AndreasBackx]

@bmunkholm, any update on this? I feel that this could perhaps relieve some pressure from the other means you mentioned. Developers could help each other out without needing the help of a Realm contributor. People could still be forwarded to Github or Stackoverflow if there is something other than a question being asked. Questions could be answered on IRC/Slack while they only saturate the other platforms.

[Zhuinden]

Well I didn't know you guys had a slack. :open_mouth: ( https://realm-public.slack.com/messages/java/ )

[i-schuetz]

Any updates on this? The last time I checked in the slack channel (a few months ago) there were a
lot of people speaking Japanese so it seems it's still rather regional.

[Zhuinden]

If you have Realm-java specific questions you can generally ask on Stack Overflow and people will answer, the Github issues also tend to have T:HELP so you also get answers here, and if you feel like it you can private message me on AndroidChat / Android United slacks

I also tend to answer Realm related questions on Reddit. (androiddev)