Hi James -
Thanks for your comments and questions. I'll try to answer as best I can. We absolutely agree that asynchronous communication is critical and often advantageous. We are simply thinking about the new sorts of interactions that might occur when synchronous communication opportunities are layered in as well.
Our platform really serves a different purpose than IRC. I guess you might say that our aim is to build something that connects "ordinary" Wikipedia users with each other even if they aren't part of the core group that writes articles and visits the IRC channels. Our current feed chat system communicates directly with our backend and doesn't run on an IRC server. As you probably know, IRC on it's own doesn't have very good support to authenticate users. Users just choose their own nickname and are relatively anonymous. Most of the IRC servers have layered on authentication, but it's a techie process. This isn't something the average user will understand how to do, and it's not designed to integrate with a web application's user base. Our approach to Wikipedia would be to provide instant chat rooms that are contextual to the specific topic or area that the user is browsing, meaning we'd have thousands of such channels. IRC provides no UI to navigate these. Also, IRC doesn't support additional kinds of interactions. No audio or video.
That being said, there's an interesting possible use case to try and connect users on the regular site with IRC channels to the core group of contributors. We could run an IRC client through our chrome extension that automatically joins users to channels on certain topics when they are on that Wikipedia page. Users on the same page would be on the same IRC channel and be able to chat. If anyone wants to use their own IRC tool, they could also join that IRC channel.
Our workspace uses a Etherpad rather than Hackpad as a shared text editor. Hackpad makes a lot of sense to collaborate inside a team or amongst all the attendees at a conference, but we don't see Hackpad as a great mechanism to connect public users between each other.
All audio chats in our feed use Twilio, which records every conversation. These are retrievable as standard MP3 files.
In summary, I'd say that our solution is meant to connect a broader audience on top of Wikipedia alongside the existing pool of Wikipedia authors.
Hope this is responsive.
Best,
Jeff
Hi Jeff,
One of the advantages of wikis is their asynchronous nature, allowing
advantages for telecommuting, time-shifting, and distance education.
Is your collaboration platform compatible with IRC? How would you compare
it to Hackpad?
Does it offer the capability to transmit and and store audio recordings for
listening later? If so, from which platforms and in what formats?
Best regards,
James Salsman
On Apr 5, 2014 6:36 AM, "Jeff Levy" <jeff at o10s.com> wrote:
> We are very interested in bringing real-time discussion to Wikipedia.
> We'd like to use our Online Collaboration Platform (acutally a modified,
> Open-Source variant) to enable the creation of a community of
> "Wikistructors" - experts who are available to speak with (or text with)
> anyone who is on Wikipedia and wants to talk. We can also enable people to
> connect with others who are on the same page or who have recently been on
> that page (assuming all parties wish to be contacted of course). These
> connections would enable on-demand live chat, audio and/or video
> conversation.
>
> I'm throwing this out there for comments/questions/thoughts.
>
> Thanks!
>
> Jeff