Ok, we have three opinions in this short discussion:
- Discourse has a chat beta plugin. Enabling it and disabling it takes five minutes. Should we try it?
- Wikimedians are already using a myriad of chat tools and adding one more is pointless if it is not clearly superior.
- If chat is important, we should invest in the development of a MediaWiki extension to be deployed on Meta.
From the three options, here and now we only can choose between 1 and 2. @Tgr makes a very compelling point, so I will keep this discussion open a few days more just in case anyone has anything else to say and then close it.
Also, a general comment about the spirit of experimentation. The story of this chat plugin suggestion goes like this:
- @Zblace shares an idea at What goals should be set to consider this forum successful? - #11 by Zblace
- @NPhan_WMF moves it to Using this forum in the context of events (Wikimania, the Summit...)
- @SOyeyele_WMF mentions real-time chats at Using this forum in the context of events (Wikimania, the Summit...) - #8 by SOyeyele_WMF
- @Qgil-WMF takes this thought and suggests Test the Discourse Chat beta plugin in this forum.
All this happens in 48 hours through a few comments and actions that take a few minutes to produce. Then here we discuss it here also in a few comments, zero votes, and reach a conclusion in 24 hours: no, we won’t enable this plugin for good reasons.
That’s it. It’s the beauty of experimentation and collaboration where it is ok to share new ideas, also bad ones. Wikipedia and Wikimedia were born precisely thanks to this spirit, and it is important to keep it fresh. Even more in the context of Movement Strategy where experimentation is a necessity. Even more in a community review where the point is to discuss possibilities and try out things.