Tech help

[Diane CBPFC]

I am wondering if there is such a thing a free hosting company for a group chat - were you type rather than video talk. (Yes, I googled but it looks more a case of joining someone else's chat room).

I run a community board for my town/area with over 3300 people - we had to make it no discussion and only for notices and such because people get quite mean and threatening to each other. However, during covid, the two other admins and myself are going to try to do 2 two-hour chats weekly - one Thursday afternoon and one Friday night. So far I just have them as events and people could talk under the event in threads if need be. Just wondering if any of you clever people knew anything better?

Obviously nothing too complicated.

[Roger Kettle]

Needless to say, I know how to do it but I'll let someone else take the glory.

[The Peepmaster]

Not sure if this is too complicated, but Slack seems like it might fit the bill with the free version.

https://slack.com/intl/en-gb/

[Mince]

If you want to use your mobile phone as well:

https://www.whatsapp.com/

https://signal.org/

https://www.skype.com/

https://about.riot.im/

https://www.viber.com/

Alternatively, if you want something more permanent, how about a forum (like Camedung)? I don't mind setting one up for your group today.

[Mince]

Here are some others like slack:

https://hangouts.google.com/

https://discordapp.com/

https://mattermost.com/

https://zulipchat.com/

https://rocket.chat/

[Mince]

Needless to say, I know how to do it but I'll let someone else take the glory.

Roger, I believe Diane will find the technical API-driven solution you use too complicated: paperandpen.com

[Diane CBPFC]

Oh my - I really do appreciate all those links Mince & Peepmaster. Only 3 people so far have responded to the group "event", so for this week I think I will just let the event posts be the chatting area and only look into something bigger if (1) more people join in and (2) they are nice to each other

I checked out two of the links - for small numbers the nice thing about just using the events is that everyone is already registered.

[Max]

Diane, our angling club (Pike Anglers Alliance Scotland - Glasgow branch) are having our first online meeting tomorrow night. The app they are recommending is Zoom which works on Apple or Android and Mac/Windows. Seems a lot of folk are using it for meetings now.

https://zoom.us/support/download

[Diane CBPFC]

Well only three ladies stopped in to chat (one of them was a friend supporting the idea) so it's not going to be a weekly group feature during covid after all. It was worth a try.

It was almost as sad - actually the same amount of sad as when I tried to orgonise a doorstep clap for support workers - three ladies supported that too. With 3300+ people you would expect at least 20 to participate in these things. The posts that get the most attention are theft notices - people like to be angry. 

I will look into zoom for a family chat Max - got some birthdays coming up soon - we could set a time to meet up for those.