[OWW-Discuss] Chat (was: Hello list! (I'm new))

[Bryan Bishop]

On Sunday 10 February 2008, "Bill F" <bill.altmail at gmail.com> wrote:
> This is a good suggestion but we currently have no Internet support
> for any protocols besides HTTP on our server. In other words, we run
> with a pretty well locked-down firewall.

That's okay. Another temporary service can be used, such as freenode, 
which hosts IRC channels for example. You mention Jabber and other chat 
services, and unfortunately I can't cite any free chat hosting services 
there (and I don't remember if Jabber allows for chatrooms - I'm sure 
it does. I'll go ask jer.)

> When we recently opened up a tiny hole to allow people to send
> feedback messages, we were immediately beset with spam. Supporting a
> new protocol like IRC would have to be a decision we'd make as a
> group and not on the spur of the moment.

Freenode has configuration settings that lets them avoid lots of spam, 
and for the most part websites do not tend to get a lot of spam. 
There's a way that we can run some bots in the background to kick 
spammers out, and if necessary I'll nominate myself to set up such a 
bot and run it from one of my servers.

> Our current chat is javascript and browser-based; it really consumes
> a lot of resources. I agree that moving away from it is a good idea.

Woah. :)

> I'm also personally reluctant to embrace IRC when so many people seem
> to be moving to more sophisticated chat servers and services. As a

IRC is just generally a good idea. Also, I do not mind if it's not an 
official chat medium. Anybody that wants to join me for chat can log on 
to irc.freenode.net channel #openwetware.  (Heh. Looks like Dan is 
already there.)

> matter of fact, I'd suspect that most of our users, not generally
> being of the computer science variety, would favor something like
> Jabber, something that's compatible with Google Talk, Apple iChat,
> and IBM's SameTime. It's also supported by many other chat clients.

Re: Jabber. Looks like there's an extra service-daemon to download.
http://www.jabber.org/user/userguide/#groupchat
-- but at least Jabber lets you hook in other IM protocols. :)

> The Jabber and XMPP specs are the only real "standards" out there. I

True.

> know that IRC is pretty open but there's no major network that
> directly supports it. XMPP and Jabber are  pretty much the same
> protocol at this point and therefore the most likely to be with us in
> the future. There's  good deal of work going on to merge voice, text,
> and video chat via XMPP. I'd love to be convinced otherwise. Show us
> the data and the context of the data and we can evaluate it.

It does indeed seem to be the emerging open way of doing communication.

- Bryan
________________________________________
Bryan Bishop
http://heybryan.org/