Idea: Replace current webchat with Slack

philk · Ensign Joined: May 01, 2004 Posts: 43

Have you (the admins) thought about a transition of the chat widget to https://slack.com?

Whenever I chat in the current chat I miss a lot of modern chat features, like easy addressing of users, edit last sent line, quotes.

Slack comes with all that and more:

The channels could all feature commands and a SST Bot (that I would start to code as an open source project hosted on GitHub):
* Display the current played song (with optional cover image)
* Request a track using "/request [album name] [Track number]" ie: "/request Peter Pan Track 1"
The bot would request additional information if the request was ambiguous
* Display the current queue with links, amazon link etc
* Vote for the current track "/vote [1-5]"
* endless more Smile

And the best thing: streamingsoundtracks team name is still available

I'd volunteer to code the slack channel bot that prints the current song into the channel (with optional cover image) if the admins would provide me with a (push/webhook) API to get the currently played song.

What you guys think?

GalFin · Posted: Tue Nov 08, 2016 2:37 pm Post subject:

This does not appear to be a free software, right? If that is true then I vote no.

Also, I'm not sure that we need all these features, and would this remove the chat from the web SST page? (I know current chat can also be unlocked but still.) I'm thinking that chat and 'team communication' is not the main feature of the SST, just a bit of an extra add-on.

If slack is free and members (and JERIC) want it and it can be integrated with a way that it does not reduce SST experience then maybe...

philk · Ensign Joined: May 01, 2004 Posts: 43

Slack has a free plan. Its not Free Software.

For personal development skills I'll go ahead and implement a Slack-Bot for SST which allows any slack user to request songs, get quotes from the movie of the current played album, allows to vote for the current album etc.

And then we can see if someone likes it and could imagine using it.

Caliburn · Guest

You have to register to slack with another account and is not integrated in the website. I agree it would be nice to have some new options in the chat we have now. Or replace it with a more advanced one.

Dragonel · Posted: Wed Nov 09, 2016 12:49 pm Post subject:

GalFin · Posted: Wed Nov 09, 2016 2:09 pm Post subject:

I would look at the free and open source software possibilities. There probably exists one that has enough of users and an active developer community so that it has also longer term support. (Sorry, I don't have time to search for possibilities atm.)