Possibility of news.yc chatroom or IRC channel?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17711

by kyro • 19 years ago

17 19 19 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

kyro• 19 years ago

Seeing as there are many people who come and visit news.yc who have great insight and beliefs, I think it'd be great for users to have a venue where they can chat in real time and share said opinions. If people are new, have questions, or just want to help out others trying to make it, having a news.yc chat room could be a fantastic resource. Upvote, and be heard!!!

jlf• 19 years ago

Great idea! I vote for IRC.

jey2• 19 years ago

I'm now in #news.yc on EFnet.

http://www.efnet.org/?module=servers

davidw2• 19 years ago

Anyone up for a freenode one? Reason: that's where the other channels I visit are.

lupin_sansei• 19 years ago

I just joined #news.yc on freenode

ed5• 19 years ago

Personally, I don't have the time for a chat room. From my perspective building a chat room would put me at a disadvantage because I would lose out on discussions taking place in the chat room (discussion which would normally be taking place in thread comments).

I believe that YNews is supposed to be a place to quickly catch up on the latest thoughts in the start-up community. It should serve the interests of the busy start-uper and minimize the amount of time needed to get informed -- a chat room does not do this.

Additionally, chat room discussions are disorganized and difficult to properly archive. They represent a step back from threaded discussions; however, chat rooms offer real-time communication. That's their sole advantage.

I think if that's what we as a community want, we should propose some features to accomplish those goals without losing the advantages of threaded, archived discussion. How about features like thread subscriptions, reply alerts, the ability to reply to a child comment via text message, thread organization tools (some distinction between link threads and discussion threads), etc... There's no need to cannibalize the existing community system when better alternatives exist.

nostrademons2• 19 years ago

"Personally, I don't have the time for a chat room."

I don't really either. But I lurk anyway, because then I'm caught-up on all the discussions and can jump in when I'm taking a break from coding.

Personally, I like chatrooms because they're much better for networking. I'm much more inclined to visit the startup of someone I converse with (as opposed to comment with), I'm more likely to make introductions for them, recommend them for jobs, etc. Basically, I could consider someone that I spend a fair amount of time chatting with a "friend", while someone who I only talk to on message boards is a "professional acquaintance".

This is mostly because of everything you dislike about chatrooms: they're disorganized, they tend to veer off-topic, they devolve into social chitchat, they're spontaneous, and they take up lots of time. You don't really know a person until you see how they behave spontaneously, when they aren't thinking out their response. Hell, I probably seem significantly less intelligent in chats than on here. But it's that vulnerability that makes me trust folks I chat with real-time more than folks I discuss with on a message board.

BTW, I'm also in #news.yc on EFnet, along with Jey. Kinda quiet there at the moment (I think we're both working on startups), but that's just because it hasn't reached critical mass.

ed5• 19 years ago

If social interaction is really your goal then let's organize a meet-up. I'm located in Boston, right across the Charles from all the Y guys, and would love to get to know some of the YNews posters.

It's a frustration of mine when people propose technological solutions to social problems. Facebook, twitter, et al. are absolutely horrible substitutes for real human interaction. Real-life interaction can be intimidating for some but are a very real necessity. We're built to read body language and receive a strong, low-level, satisfaction from doing so.

How does this sound? I'd love to see this forum act as a networking spring-board; maybe YCombinator Cambridge would be so kind as to provide space for a meet-up?

Leonidas• 19 years ago

I like the idea of IRC. You don't have to continuously chat there, you could just sit IDLE in there and chime in whenever.

I'm a huge Gamer and because of IRC, I got to know a lot of good gamers. So lets do a Y Comb IRC. It's a good way to get to know people, especially if you're not in the Boston Area. You really have nothing to lose as you will always have the Y Comb threads to read. For those who aren't interested, you don't need to join IRC..purely optional.

So lets pick a channel..jey's channel?

Possibility of news.yc chatroom or IRC channel?

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