We set up a page in 2011 for coordinating IRC meetings and used to
have  #wikimedia-uk-board for the community to be able to raise
discussion directly with Trustees, so questions could be raised live
during our meetings and there could be discussion about chapter
affairs away from the main channel. See
https://wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/Community_IRC_meetings, there was some
discussion about choosing the best communication channels for the
chapter that you can probably find in the board minutes for that time;
the issues are no different today. The transient nature of IRC, and
it's public openness, is a benefit for some users, while the
persistence of posts to Facebook groups along with privacy and closed
groups is preferred by others.

The most successful past use of the wikimedia-uk channel was when it
was used as live support for edit-a-thons. It was an excellent way to
offer advice for remote contributors, including on-project sysop
support without having to permanently publish questions on-wiki, and
was something we could point to as evidence of not expecting
volunteers to travel across the country for events.

You may want to update the wiki page for online meetings. I or another
IRC op can add it back to the channel notice if it starts to get
maintained or another page does.

Keep in mind that similar to this email list, the IRC channel is for
the UK community of Wikimedians, rather than only for Chapter matters
and events. It's worth also noting that it may take a day for someone
to notice a question or comment on IRC, so be prepared for
significantly asynchronous chat and it's worth staying logged in for
days at a time if you expect to have a discussion.

Thanks,
Fae

On 22 August 2016 at 18:04, John Lubbock <john.lubbock@wikimedia.org.uk> wrote:
> So I plan to start using the IRC channel freenode/wikimedia-uk to post some
> announcements and see what kind of engagement there is there. Everybody's
> welcome to join. I'll have it open during office hours.
>
> John
>
> On 20 August 2016 at 23:03, Rex X <rexx@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:
>>
>> Gosh, I'd didn't realise how difficult preference voting was on twitter. I
>> had
>> to log on as 6 different IPs to vote for my third preference once, my
>> second
>> preference twice, and my first preference three times.
>>
>> --
>> Rexx
>>
>>
>> > On 20 August 2016 at 20:08 Gordon Joly <gordon.joly@pobox.com> wrote:
>> >
>> >
>> > On 19/08/16 19:53, John Lubbock wrote:
>> > > . So I've put a poll on Twitter
>> > > <https://twitter.com/wikimediauk/status/766703544275767297> with some
>> > > options for communications channels. I couldn't put more than four
>> > > options, so I chose Facebook, the Water Cooler, Slack and the Mailing
>> > > List.
>> >
>> >
>> > It is clear that one choice is already out in front!
>> >
>> > :-)
>> >
>> > Facebook is a very poor medium. Never heard of Slack.
>> >
>> > https://slack.com/
>> >
>> > How about Discourse?
>> >
>> > http://www.discourse.org/
>> >
>> > "Civilized Discussion"
>> >
>> > Gordo
>> >
>> >
>> > _______________________________________________
>> > Wikimedia UK mailing list
>> > wikimediauk-l@wikimedia.org
>> > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l
>> > WMUK: https://wikimedia.org.uk
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Wikimedia UK mailing list
>> wikimediauk-l@wikimedia.org
>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l
>> WMUK: https://wikimedia.org.uk
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikimedia UK mailing list
> wikimediauk-l@wikimedia.org
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l
> WMUK: https://wikimedia.org.uk

--
faewik@gmail.com https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae

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