We are in the process of launching Fedora’s new official chat platform, https://chat.fedoraproject.org/ (powered by Matrix). This is in a soft-launch phase now. When it’s officially launched, I think we should change “Community Discussion Channels” at the top of the page to the much shorted “Chat”.
So, we could link directly to that third section. I think that’s probably the best idea because it at least gives some direction to new users on what to expect. But, it’s also an extra hoop.
Yeah, so I guess I’m actually making two suggestions here, wrapped up in one.
The first is: change the link and shorten the name.
But the second part is: simplify what we’re pointing to just be Chat, and leaving complicated topics like IRC and mailing lists for more advanced users to discover in other ways.
So it’s really the second thing I think we need to discuss. My thinking is:
The top bar is very prominent, and very valuable real-estate. We should tailor its contents specifically to things that will be frequently useful to the audience of this Ask Fedora site.
I think when someone looks to get more deeply involved, they’ll find out about all of those other channels, but users looking for help, and who are looking for interactive, immediate assistance rather than the async, in-depth, long-term answers we provide here, would most benefit from Chat in specific.
I’m not quite sure I understand what you’re saying, but I think you asking if I think that sending people to a chat forum where they can get personal assistance immediately will make this site less useful. Is that right?
Assuming that that’s the question, my answer is “not really”. For some people, it’s a matter of preference … a forum post may be less intimidating than real-time interaction. Or, for others, the informality of chat may seem less scary. It’s also the case that chat depends on having the right person with the right experience right away, whereas here someone in another timezone or busy at work or whatever might come later and see and help. (In fact, I think we should put a link back here in that chat room via a pinned widget, explaining exactly that.)
I also think that making that immediate channel available will be an outlet for the occasional poster we get here who writes a question, the responds thirty minutes later with “Help me please!” and then again shortly after with “Can anyone help?” and so on.
Overall, I think the two approaches — sync and async — compliment each other. We could even say “Hey, could you hop over to Chat so we can hash out some details?” for some situations here where both asker and helper are online at the same time and high-bandwidth communication would be more useful. (And then come back and post the summary and solution, of course.)