Discourse per-thread chat rooms

Meta Moderation
1

I was searching for a discourse plugin where I could launch per-discussion matrix rooms on the fly. I have a sense that in some higher stake discussions an appropriate space for synchronous meta-chat is in order.

Ideally, there would be a fully integrated little chat client so participants have all tools at hand to quickly iron out any friction.

I beleive in our context, and with the recent move to matrix, this could help a lot to improve the quality of discussions here on discourse.

Imagine:

  • A: “Dude, what do you mean? I read ‘so and so’ into your statment.”
  • B: “Oh, damn. I definitly want to reformulate.”

If any such thing already exists, a pointer would be great. Thx!

2

For your example, wouldn’t a private message be a good way to do that?

For ‘public’ conversations, TBQH I think having both a chat and a forum discussion ‘together’ would make it harder to follow, not easier, especially for “higher stake” (i.e. likely longer with many aspects and points of view?) discussions.

8 Likes
3

I think a private discussion could go some way to address that, indeed.

However, I don’t have the feeling its “practical” enough. Few people (who probably could have done so) have ever started a private discussion topic specific for meta chat and non has started a private “group chat” where I have been involved.

I’ve done that recently for the guix release announcement (which was in the reddit-style link section, so presumably no in-depth discussion allowed) and the positive dynamic that ensued was quite impressive.

I guess a little synchronous back-and-forth so that people can then “record” conclusions (after having polished mostly noisy friction) and discussion on the discourse thread would make this medium much more productive.

Actually this idea came up in my mind after a private discussion with a prominent community member regarding modes and media of communication.

4

I’d recommend Discourse messages for that, too. It’s a bit “slower” than a Matrix-based chat but knowing the proper keyboard shortcuts gives you almost chat-like experience :wink:

Replying via personal messages is easy here, for those who haven’t seen the reply menu in the editor:

image
image852×398 30.7 KB

I’m going to explore integrations between Matrix and Discourse more. We already have the discourse-chat-integration plugin here but it only supports notifications to existing Matrix rooms.

1 Like
5

IIRC Matrix is supposed to get zulip-style threads eventually.

1 Like
6

Exciting! Today I did a manual implementation in spirit at the occasion of a github PR (comment).

The outcome was amazing!!