[note: I’ve cross-posted this to CMX on FB. I see different faces and different types of responses in both places. @HAWK please feel free to mod down if you don’t want it in both.]
I mentioned that I was thinking about this topic in a “What are you working on” thread a couple of weeks ago. It’s now formulated itself enough to have a question for the community that’s outside my head.
I have been thinking about the overlap of “forums" and “chat". Specifically, as I start the process of a discussions platform upgrade/replacement for my day job and using Slack for a class chat at night, I find myself wondering if there is a good middle ground that implements the powers of both. Here are the advantages and disadvantages as I see them (note, there are many others, these pertain to this particular discussion around user experience):
Forums (classic style subject/topic + responses): Positives: ability to have specific topics or a collection of comments around a specific thing, easy scanning. Negatives: Not “real time”, more work to navigate between topics.
Chat (Yammer, IRC, Slack, etc): Positives: "real-time”. Negatives: loss of semantics and collected historical data.
So, I wonder if anyone has seen a platform that somehow combines these two ideas well?
In my research, I’ve seen Zulip and Ryver, but haven’t used either so I don’t know how well it works (but I’m dubious of both as a good meld - they seem to be more “chat"). Stack overflow has an interesting take, but it resolves this tension in a specific way that works for their audience/goals.
Anyone seen anything like this? If not, do you think it would be interesting/useful (I’m not offering to build it, just validating my thought patterns)?