On 8/14/06, Geir Magnusson Jr <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Eelco Hillenius wrote: > Public IRC, free for anyone to join, at a channel that is 'officially' > published/ promoted however, does. No it doesn't. It's exclusionary in that email allows timezone independent participation, and IMO, reading an IRC chat after the fact is far different than being there. It's like reading a musical score - far different than being there.
My concern with IRC is that people don't necessarily have egalitarian access to IRC, whether it be because of time zone differences or for other reasons. For example, I have worked at places where IRC access was prohibited or restricted. If a great deal of community bonding occurs through IRC, then some people do not have the ability to participate, and that doesn't seem to be very egalitarian to me. An analogy would be that face to face interactions are also far more marginally beneficial towards building relationships between people. However, we'd never advocate that face to face meetings be a suggested method towards encouraging project communication. It's great when it happens, but it should never supplant the main means of communications. Susan
