Suggestion: IRC Channel

[mattykins]

I was talking with some people on IRC today and I thought that maybe Indie-Resource could benefit from an IRC Channel. Just a suggestion :

[SpiritWebb]

I believe there was a topic about this already, and I cannot seem to find it.

[Jackolantern]

It has been suggested several times, and even tried, I believe. There are 2 issues: first, there is no recording of any solutions people get online, and people are likely to go there for the fastest help possible. That goes against one of our goals to create an archive of support and help here in the forums. Second, we don't quite have the traffic to support a well-used chat feature. What is good traffic and nice activity for a forum, there is a quiet chat room due to non-persistence of conversations.

[hallsofvallhalla]

Yep I had a IRC room up and was the only one ever in it

[Sharlenwar]

IRC still exits?

I personally don't use it, but since you can get an App for it then I would consider using it. I have never really had the amount of time available to hang out in IRC or to waste my moments chatting with someone when I should be working on a game.

[Jackolantern]

I just like that things are recorded and forever searchable later by others who may have the same question when asked in the forum. At least there is a chance people can use the Search function when a question comes up that has been asked several times, whereas the answer is always lost in IRC. Plus, typing code into IRC doesn't work very well lol.

[mattykins]

I actually forgot about this thread sorry. Lol here is my input though:

I'm on IRC the majority of the day so i would probably be in there, also I could write a bot for you that logged every message sent and people could search the log for answers and the bot could pastebin a section of the log for people to see and review etc. So i could make things said in IRC archived and searchable.

Also codepad is a very nice website for sharing code over IRC, you simply upload, choose a syntax highlighting and share the link. So it is highly possible an IRC channel could work here, the community has grown quite a bit since i joined like 6 months ago.

[Foofighter]

I dont think that it makes sense,
first of all reasons there wouldnt be many users on (which also means the chance that someone can help at every problem are low),
and the second reason is, if the knowledge is there in the IRC , how can other users that dont use IRC can profit from it, i just dont like the idea of the "splitted knowledge". I hope u don't take it bad.

regards

[mattykins]

I understand what you mean, the knowledge would only be avaliable to some.

I could write the bot based on a support ticket system. So that when you opened a ticket, all messages between the person who opened the ticket and anyone helping you would be logged up untill you closed the ticket, Then that ticket would be automatically uploaded to a section of the forums. Its just an idea because i think IRC is a great way for fast help.

But like you said there is still the problem of not many users being online.