Hi everyone,
I thought it might be useful to create a Slack channel for LilyPond,
particularly with the advent of another Google Summer of Code term.
Most GSoC orgs encourage some sort of IRC or other chat protocol for
students / mentors / admins to interact, but of course the downside is
that these aren't usually public spaces. However, this paradigm for
faster (and probably more casual) communication could be a good way of
maintaining students' enthusiasm, productivity, and general *bonding*
with each other and the more interested community members.
GSoC students shouldn't ever use the channel to ask questions that
should be answered by the general community, but it might be the place
to ask quick questions that really don't need a whole email dedicated
to them. Also, people can arrange times to meet and chat this way,
similar to Skype or whatever.
So I'd like to know general thoughts about the use of such a system in
the first place, for GSoC, but also if people might see a use for it
outside of the scope of LilyPond. Other than the tradeoff between
(potential) pace/efficiency and permanence/archivability, the only
other tricky part of Slack is the way that new members are invited to
the channel.
Admins for a channel can individually invite anyone, and can also
allow anyone whose email belongs to a certain domain (such as
address@hidden) to find and request to join the channel. But the upside to
that is that it is easy to curate membership and to even have private
threads (created by admins) within the channel.
If you want to have a look and try it out, I'd be happy to invite
individuals. Please just let me know - it takes two seconds to send
the invitation, and I am hopeful that this is something others are
interested in. The Slack channel is: https://lilypond.slack.com/
Looking forward to your thoughts.
Best,
Jeffery