Chat for developers

[fnielsen]

We want a chat facility for private group chat for Scholia developers.

1. Skype no longer works for us.
2. Preferably works without a smartphone and telephone number
3. We know where the data are and comfortable with it.

Options:

1. Wikimedia chat at https://chat.wmcloud.org/ does currently not work. Verifying email does not work for some reason. Seems to be a personal project rather than a Wikimedia Foundation-supported project.
2. Telegram. Requires phone. Not clear where the data are.
3. Signal. Requires phone. Not clear where the data are.

[fnielsen]

I tried with two different mail accounts. Wikimedia Chat does not send any verification email to any of the two accounts.

See also https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T335471

[fnielsen]

I have reopened "Wikimedia-based (federated) instant messaging" https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T335349

[Daniel-Mietchen]

Thanks for looking into this. Other potential options are Zulip, Rocketchat, Mattermost or Matrix, which (as far as I can tell) could be self-hosted and do not require phone numbers. Never hosted one of these myself though.

[carlinmack]

Zulip is nice :)

https://gitter.im has risen as the main place for developers to talk. No endorsement from me, but worth research it and its alternatives

[egonw]

Zulip is nice :)

We still have a Scholia Zulip.

[WolfgangFahl]

The WMF people use IRC https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki_on_IRC