[Talk-us] Slack: Do we need an Alternative (was Planning an import in Price George...)

[Bryan Housel]

> I'm also interested in how others feel about Slack. Is it good for the community or should we look elsewhere?

Glad you asked!  I think Slack has changed the way I work for the better.

Here are some advantages..
* lower barrier to entry for less technical folks
* great mobile experience
* good for sharing files / screenshots
* works well for both sync and async chat
* emoji reactions, can be used to both cut down on noise comments but also mark things as read (like our welcome users feed)
* integration with basically everything (GitHub, Stripe, RSS anything you want really)
* easy to start focused public or private channels and pull a few people in to a discussion
* ability to mute and set availability times
* user profiles
* decent search
* everyone is on it

I really can’t imagine going back to something else.  I’d happily pay for it if they asked me to.

Anyway, I felt it important to speak up because I’ve noticed a very common situation when asking for people’s opinion about something, the people who are happy will stay silent, and the few who have a problem will be the ones who respond.

There are currently over 800 people on the OSM-US Slack, and over 3000 on the GIS Spatial Community Slack.  I have no idea how many people are subscribed to the talk-us mailing list.  

I don’t think we should get rid of mailing lists.  We should still copy things to the talk-us mailing that affect the entire US community.

Just my thoughts
Thanks, Bryan