I asked this question on Slack (ironically) and (Ironically) I was asked to post here as the post on slack would be removed soon as part of the non-paid-for TOS.

Here is the link to the original question over there:

https://embercommunity.slack.com/archives/C0451CN7N/p1522751893000343

And here is the text - as it will be lost soon!

I just realized that slack doesn’t store the history for OS projects like Ember - this pretty much makes our use of it defunkt. Is anyone looking into moving the project onto another platform? The reason I think this is important is that if you search SO for ember help it’s pretty much all 2 yrs old as the questions are being asked here and consequently lost into the ether. This gives the impression that ember is a dead project - is anyone looking into this?

36 replies oskar [2 hours ago] @wayne-oo https://embercommunity.slack.com/archives/C0451CN7N/p1522697903000228 Matt McManus I’m not sure the best place is to discuss this, so I’ll just drop this tweet here. The TLDR is that ghost is dropping their public slack community in favor of discourse. I would support an equivalent decision for ember. https://twitter.com/JohnONolan/status/980872508395188224 From a thread in #generalYesterday at 8:38 PM

wayne-oo [2 hours ago] completely agree with this - I read that earlier and didn’t actually think about it before posting this - but it’s a good bolster to my point - slack seems to be useless atm for emberjs

oskar [2 hours ago] https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-and-slack-or-other-group-chat-apps-like-irc-hipchat-gitter-etc/39630 (edited)

chrismou [2 hours ago] Totally agree. Its a lack of visibility - if I hadn’t stumbled across this slack, I’d think no-one was talking about Ember at all. At least compared to the other big 3 frameworks

oskar [2 hours ago] I wouldn’t say it’s useless but it’s important to consider all the disadvantages. So much info is lost.

oskar [2 hours ago] On the other hand, many people who post in the chat wouldn’t be posting in a forum

wayne-oo [2 hours ago] IMO it does more harm than good

chrismou [2 hours ago] When you’re starting out, you want to know you can get support if you’re stuck. It doesn’t feel like that for Ember right now, unless you go looking for the slack. But again, if you’re starting out and you see React/Vue being talked about everywhere, why would you keep looking? Feels like the Slack walled garden could be stopping a lot of people from even considering Ember

oskar [2 hours ago] Yea possibly. In any case, Slack is not open source and their focus is not on communities. So it’s a dead end unless something radical in their roadmap changes

oskar [2 hours ago] @chrismou i think that’s the important benefit of having a chat. it’s really fast and great for finding help

oskar [2 hours ago] buuuut then we’re back where we started as the information will be lost in a couple of days on slack

wayne-oo [2 hours ago] there’s alternatives where you don’t lose history - I feel like this should be high up on the priorities for emberjs

chrismou [2 hours ago] @oskar Agreed, its invaluable. Though I’d be interested to know how many people want a permanent source of help vs how many people are stuck on one thing and are searching Google for a solution. And how many of the latter even discover that this slack exists in the process

chrismou [2 hours ago] But like you say, it’s a dead end. If these chats were searchable, a lot of the issues would be solved. But OSS isn’t a money maker for them right now.

runspired [2 hours ago] This comes up from time to time and I’ll rehash my same points

wayne-oo [2 hours ago] is this a recent change? I thought slack allowed OSS for free?

runspired [2 hours ago] For starters, there isn’t a comparable replacement (yet).

runspired [2 hours ago] But more importantly, on the question of history, while I wish it were 3-6 months instead of roughly 1-2 weeks, I would rather have answers vanish to be given again than live on past their relevance

runspired [2 hours ago] Answers here get to live and evolve with the community, unlike SO, blog posts, and forum posts that go stale

wayne-oo [2 hours ago] OK that’s a good point - but maybe the slack needs to be more front and center on the ember-js docs/website etc?

runspired [2 hours ago] As for “Has there been a recent change”. No. Slack has limited us like this since the beginning.

parry [2 hours ago] @runspired I agree but I can’t see many people thinking oh there must be a slack for that I’ll have look. They’ll simple google/SO the answer and a lot of questions there are old and outdated.

runspired [2 hours ago] Unfortunately yes, but that’s why we plaster the join slack message everywhere even when answering questions on other platforms

chrismou [2 hours ago] unlike SO, blog posts, and forum posts that go stale – yes, but those posts still exists, they’re still going stale, and they’re not being replaced by anything current

wayne-oo [2 hours ago] @chrismou valid point

parry [2 hours ago] I do feel though that early adopters will get discouraged by what seems to be the lack of use or community support if they don’t find the slack

chrismou [2 hours ago] So now we’ve gone full circle or looking like no-one is talking about Ember, which has to be affecting peoples decision of what framework to use

parry [2 hours ago] Keep the slack and encourage people to post questions on SO? Seems double edged though as it’s twice the work.

wayne-oo [2 hours ago] there’s also the discourse

acorncom [21 minutes ago] @wayne-oo would you be willing to out to Discourse about this so we can hash it out as a community there? this discussion is something that comes up regularly and is something both the learning team and the core team wrestle with regularly. But the conclusions have been discussed on Slack and are now gone …

chrismou [21 minutes ago] haha ah the irony

wayne-oo [16 minutes ago] lol - yeah I can get a conversation started there

oskar [12 minutes ago] @acorncom that sums up the issue pretty well haha

wayne-oo [5 minutes ago] I would post a link to this thread in the discourse conversation but it will be deleted before anyone gets to read it

acorncom [4 minutes ago] Post it anyway, we’ll all be able to chime in and reference it for a while

acorncom [4 minutes ago] And I’ll ask some core team folks to post their thoughts as well so it’s not all one-sided