Hi,
This is a follow up mail to the discussion we started in the meeting on Tuesday, for the benefit of those who couldn't attend the meeting where the idea was proposed, about whether we should have an Env and Stacks irc channel on Freenode for informal discussion and interactions.
A few thoughts on it so far:
Pros - should allow more real-time interactions between all interested parties - would make it easy to see and catch up on conversions - would be quiet enough to chat even with longer response lags
Cons - one more channel: #fedora-devel is enough.. - hard to find a good short name (my client config seems unable to restore channel names longer than ~15 chars;) - could distract from email communication - channel could be very quiet... - timezones
Personally I think it is worth having a channel. I am usually connected to freenode and having a channel specific to Env and Stacks would make it easy to see conversations as they happen or afterwards.
For the name I might suggest #fedora-env or #fedora-stacks to keep it short.
Jens
ps It might be good to post topics/proposals like this for discussion to the mailing-list ahead of the meeting so they can be added to the agenda, though I guess it is also fine to bring them up at the end: using trac for tracking meeting topics/proposals might also be good, and could make it easier for non-members to make suggestions/proposals for discussion. This time I just remembered the idea spontaneously during the meeting discussion.