On Wed, Apr 11, 2007 at 08:27:41AM +0100, Nik Butler wrote: > There are plenty of other > channels for meetings such as Skype, Talkshoe and Flashmeeting
All nice closed applications there. In addition to which for me ( someone who *does* participate and *does* use IRC ) they don't fit the bill for realtime communication with a large number of people from anywhere using any device. I can participate in a meeting from my PDA via Wifi, my mobile phone via GPRS, my laptop via wifi with an SSH client and so on. The barrier to entry on IRC is stunningly low. The barrier to entry for all the methods you mention are quite high (no skype client for my pda or phone, no flash player also, high bandwidth requirements for voice). I appreciate you were just listing a bunch of examples of "other ways" in which to communicate, but I really don't see how any of them can "beat" IRC. Especially now Ubuntu has IRC clients (GAIM/Pidgin) which are now familiar to people who use instant messengers. None of those technologies would be useful for a large number of people who need to communicate in real time. There are only two technologies I can think of that do, IRC and Jabber, both open, well documented technologies. > I do however understand not using IRC I find it at times to be very high > in geek level utilisation and it comes with yet another group of > etiquette and "learned rules" which for many is just one more thing too far. > That kind of implies that there are no "learned rules" or "etiquette" on the other systems. This clearly isn't the case. There is etiquette on the mailing list (preference for bottom posting, stripping and quoting correctly) and there would be on Skype (for example) too. If you held a meeting on Skype for example and I came online with Jono Bacon Style music blearing out in the background you'd disconnect me (either due to the content or presentation :) ). Etiquette and "learned rules" are things that people just have to damn well learn or they become difficult to tolerate in a community. This has nothing to do with mailing lists, forums, irc, skype or any other technology, but it's about people. People having respect for other members of their community. It's also about the way in which people are told. People can be informed how the community runs, and they can choose to adapt their behaviour to integrate with that community or they can continue to do whatever their poor-etiquette manifests as. Guess who is more likely to be listened to, respected and accepted? Cheers, Al. -- [email protected] https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.kubuntu.org/UKTeam/
