Re: Is the scala list getting too busy?

On 1/29/07, Tony Morris <tmorris@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> G'day Martin,
> I think your argument is extremely valid and in fact,
> furthers supports the proposition that we should use IRC,
> which is real-time collaboration and can easily and quickly
> address most of the trivial queries quite easily.
>
> 20 more days until we can take channel ownership, but in
> the meantime, use the ##scala (TWO hashes) channel on the
> freenode network.
> irc://irc.freenode.net/##scala

[snip]

my 3 cents:

I like the idea of an IRC channel but it's not a
replacement for a mailing list. The kind of discussions
you have on a mailing list are different in length and
sometimes also content.

Email is already asynchronous and allows people from
different timezones to discuss without having to be online
at the same time. You might achieve some of that with
letting your IRC client or a bot run indefinitely waiting
for answer or post a question, log out, and try to find
an answer in the channel logs published on a website later
on. It might even be possible to help first-time users with
an IRC bot which answers trivial or frequently asked
questions.

Voice chat accompanied by a shared collaborative text
editor or shared text chat view looks to me like another
efficient and also cheap discussion method from all the
options we have right now. Don't forget that you can
create conference calls (like IRC channels) to discuss
in a group. These voice/text channels can be temporary
or permanent. Voice chat might of course not be preferred
or possible due to technical/personal reasons for everybody.
Therefore it's just another option which when it can be used
allows pretty efficient discussions due to voice being a
powerful medium and the ability to express more than with
pure text messages.

PS: I tried hard but if my post reads like I dislike IRC
believe me I don't. Text messages make it harder to express
feelings/opinions but make it easy to let your reply look
like it's 'harsh'.