<story><title>Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server</title><url>http://exple.tive.org/blarg/2019/04/26/synchronous-text/?s</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>TheSwordsman</author><text>As an admin helping out the Go Slack workspace, which is about to cross 39,500 registered users, they would be ill-advised to go with Slack if moderation is one of their goals. Full disclosure: our Workspakce does have some sort of agreement with Slack, so our space isn&amp;#x27;t a free space (we have full history), and even then we aren&amp;#x27;t able to get them to provide support around moderation of users.&lt;p&gt;There is no mechanism to ignore a user, mute a user, or temporarily suspend a user if they need a timeout. The first two are completely impossible, while the latter today is manual &amp;#x2F; mostly possible using undocumented APIs and mechanizing of HTTP requests. Users reporting spam is done by them sending a message to an admin, or in the admin channel, and requires someone to manually intervene and moderate the message. So we effectively need to aim for follow-the-sun moderator coverage, which is a bit painful.&lt;p&gt;In terms of usability and accessibility, some of the things Slack does (e.g., threads) are not super-inclusive or accessible to users who use screen readers. Today, based on feedback I&amp;#x27;ve gotten, IRC is still superior for users who rely on screen readers due to some form of visual impairment.&lt;p&gt;Whichever product they go with, it&amp;#x27;d be nice if they provided an authenticated IRC gateway which would allow this class of user to have a better experience using the platform as they could use one of the text-based IRC clients that has served them well.&lt;p&gt;For everyone who is saying they hope Slack isn&amp;#x27;t the choice, I&amp;#x27;m fairly confident with these issues today they won&amp;#x27;t pursue Slack. If anyone from Mozilla, or any other org, would like to discuss some of the challenges we&amp;#x27;ve had using Slack as an open community I&amp;#x27;m more than happy to schedule time. I&amp;#x27;d like to help you provide the best experience and community for your users.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>vertis</author><text>I can&amp;#x27;t fathom open source projects and communities using slack as a communication platform. I like slack, it&amp;#x27;s a great product for business, where you can pay $X for each user in your org.&lt;p&gt;However, OS and non-profit communities quickly run into the history issue. There is no way that some of the communities I&amp;#x27;m part of on Slack could pay for all the users.  For example, the &amp;quot;Maker&amp;#x27;s Kitchen&amp;quot; slack has 1500-2000 people.&lt;p&gt;How much information and knowledge is lost and questions re-asked?</text></comment>
<story><title>Mozilla is giving up on their IRC server</title><url>http://exple.tive.org/blarg/2019/04/26/synchronous-text/?s</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>TheSwordsman</author><text>As an admin helping out the Go Slack workspace, which is about to cross 39,500 registered users, they would be ill-advised to go with Slack if moderation is one of their goals. Full disclosure: our Workspakce does have some sort of agreement with Slack, so our space isn&amp;#x27;t a free space (we have full history), and even then we aren&amp;#x27;t able to get them to provide support around moderation of users.&lt;p&gt;There is no mechanism to ignore a user, mute a user, or temporarily suspend a user if they need a timeout. The first two are completely impossible, while the latter today is manual &amp;#x2F; mostly possible using undocumented APIs and mechanizing of HTTP requests. Users reporting spam is done by them sending a message to an admin, or in the admin channel, and requires someone to manually intervene and moderate the message. So we effectively need to aim for follow-the-sun moderator coverage, which is a bit painful.&lt;p&gt;In terms of usability and accessibility, some of the things Slack does (e.g., threads) are not super-inclusive or accessible to users who use screen readers. Today, based on feedback I&amp;#x27;ve gotten, IRC is still superior for users who rely on screen readers due to some form of visual impairment.&lt;p&gt;Whichever product they go with, it&amp;#x27;d be nice if they provided an authenticated IRC gateway which would allow this class of user to have a better experience using the platform as they could use one of the text-based IRC clients that has served them well.&lt;p&gt;For everyone who is saying they hope Slack isn&amp;#x27;t the choice, I&amp;#x27;m fairly confident with these issues today they won&amp;#x27;t pursue Slack. If anyone from Mozilla, or any other org, would like to discuss some of the challenges we&amp;#x27;ve had using Slack as an open community I&amp;#x27;m more than happy to schedule time. I&amp;#x27;d like to help you provide the best experience and community for your users.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>BenTheElder</author><text>Kubernetes also had (has?) pretty major issues with these, but a community member built some tools using what APIs they do have to make the moderation aspects easier at least: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;github.com&amp;#x2F;kubernetes-sigs&amp;#x2F;slack-infra&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;github.com&amp;#x2F;kubernetes-sigs&amp;#x2F;slack-infra&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;E.G. Reporting:
&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;twitter.com&amp;#x2F;KatharineBerry&amp;#x2F;status&amp;#x2F;1105941470723235840&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;twitter.com&amp;#x2F;KatharineBerry&amp;#x2F;status&amp;#x2F;110594147072323584...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Bulk-Deletion &amp;#x2F; banning:
&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;twitter.com&amp;#x2F;KatharineBerry&amp;#x2F;status&amp;#x2F;1113101191032889344&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;twitter.com&amp;#x2F;KatharineBerry&amp;#x2F;status&amp;#x2F;111310119103288934...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;They&amp;#x27;ve been really helpful, but Slack still seems _far_ from ideal for this.</text></comment>