Before this turns into a war and goes to the open list forum.
Again we can be a little more respectful then to blast someone's work to
help us
have a real-time conversation. Also I do not know that your back ground on
IRC is
how ever I can tell you that I have used IRC for over 8 years. Times have
changed.
Linux.com has IRC chat server so does Slashdot and OSDN and The Linux show
to make it work takes a few things. As to the fact of someone being rude
that is one thing
hard to impose unless we have the person who set this up make the SLUG
officers OP's
so if we are on we can kick and suspend the people who are acting up. This
is not hard.
I use to be a SYSOP for a BBS that had over 120 user not a hard thing.
Yes most of us have to work and we can not do this while working however
IRC works 24-7 so it is not hard to drop in to the channel when you have
time or at the
house. If you have a question then 3 seconds to bring up IRC if no on is one
then post it to the list.
Next if someone is new they can drop in the channel and see if they can get
answers and a chance
to chat live. Trust me IRC gets busy after 6:30pm till midnight. Next again
we all should put on our
best behavior while represent our selves and slug to others. Even in here
again this is not the
page to start shredding on people take 3 deep breaths all is fine.
Any ways back to the IRC about the following
>1) People don't have the time
Perhaps after work or on the weekend they do and maybe some do not know yet
how to use IRC or
do not know we have this.
>2) People don't get to really know one another like they do at meetings
Not true if someone is planning to move in our area or hits our pages before
a meeting then they can drop in IRC and chat.
>3) Email is much easier and faster
Umm Not true If you have to bring up your email create a topic then post the
message then send it then wait till it is read.
IRC once the settings are in place for the channel and server click open and
chat and get real time answers not delay to hit
a server and wait to get answers. However there is some other advantages to
e-mail. However this statement is not 100% true.
>4) A vast majority of people like to lurk and that is harder to do in IRC
Umm you never been on Linux.COM's IRC then have you with over 70+ channels
with over 100+ on the debian channel alone 24-7.
>5) And personally, I'm less likely to expose my little brother to people
cursing and acting like idiots if I bring him to a meeting instead of
getting him on IRC.
That is something a little bit of courtesy can fix however again though it
gets nasty sometimes on here and we
have to tell them take it to the politics and open war list.
>6) Emails can be saved into a searchable archive unlike IRC where you end
up answering the same question over and over again.
You can cut and paste the chat in IRC I have done this for years and paste
it in to a text editor and save it.
You can for instance save how do you change the background in KDE take the
answer and save it in the text editor as KDE backgrounds.txt or rtf. and you
can open it and cut paste the answer or dcc the file to the person asking
the question.
That's a few ways to make this work as I have replied to these situations. I
can say that thanks to IRC and yes especially our list I get answers and
knowledge. IRC just allows us to do this live rather then 30 and 40 minutes
later a lot of times. With our talent in SLUG we can make this yet another
way to make IRC work for us. How we use it well only you can control your
self. I would also like to add that our special guest Robin ROBLIMO Miller
from Slashdot has done IRC chats live with Lugs. So perhaps we can get
special guest to chat with us if they can not be present at our meetings
perhaps we could launch a live IRC conversation with them and type and ask
questions. Think about it. This can be a good tool
and yes it can be abused too. I ask this of the people who are going to get
on there please let's all act with respect. I know most of our people and
even the younger ones can act very well. We need not bash age , knowledge ,
or anything else. We are better then this.
Thanks
Bill Preece
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