(2005-11-28) Wiki Irc Group Forming

Lion Kimbro noted (over at Community Wiki:RiotsInFrance) an experience of there were a few points, where, on the "Recent Visitors page," I could see that you, me, and Helmut were all here at the same exact time. It's like: "Yrrrrgnh!" Just: total frustration! Because I know you're there, I know you're interested, I know we'd have an interesting conversation. These seems like a Wiki And IRC Group Forming opportunity...

For Team Work centered around a single TeamWiki, you could just have the best practice of having an IRC space that everyone logs into at the start of the day, etc.

• problems with this? annoyance over threads that don't relate to you... though if your IRC client has a good sound control that can be set to beep only if someone sends you a private/direct message, then maybe that's not an issue...

But as Wiki Proliferation spreads, this is not realistic. So you want a way to make it easy to ask someone who's "in" the same space at the moment whether they'd be open to some Real Time communication....

• you could "promote" a certain IRC channel on every page of your wiki (whether it's a channel specific to the site, or maybe just a related-topic channel...), but how many people are going to bother going there, just in case someone wants to ping them?

• Lion Kimbro suggests at Community Wiki:Wiki And IRC showing (Java Applet?) the last few messages in the "associated" IRC channel at the top of each wiki page - so maybe you could say "yo Charlie!" and they'd notice it up there. But I wouldn't count on it.

• do many people even put their Instant Messaging handles online? Or are they avoiding the SpamWars? If their local person-page (linked from Recent Visitors) links to a page holding their handle, then maybe they're just 3 clicks away...