What chat service should we switch to, or should we stay on Skype?

[Vector]

We've been talking here and there about moving the community off of Skype onto a more flexible platform that is easier to work with and has better features the community will enjoy using.

More information below on each service (except Skype, it's fairly straight-forward):

https://support.discordapp.com/hc/en-us
https://www.teamspeak.com/getstarted
https://slack.com/is

This poll will last until September 13, 2016, 11:21:49 AM.

[ryanteck]

I personally prefer skype but on the basis of what it is teamspeak is slightly easier to drop in and out.

Discord is the new hipster one isn't it?

[Skye]

Discord without question. Much easier to use than Skype in terms of in and out contact and insanely better than TeamSpeak for text communication.

[wolfshond7]

I think we should use a platform like:
WhatsApp,
Telegram,
Facebook Messenger

More phone based. All the platforms you used in the poll are unknown to me (except for Skype). We could rather use more mainstream messengers like the ones I just listed above.

[ryanteck]

Telegram maybe. Whatsapp and Facebook are eww and much up phone battery.

I think on the basis of audio a server based one is best and discord looks suited well.

[CanadianR]

I'm still a skype person, but if you guys get discord I may get an account for myself...

But I'll still probably be on Skype a lot. I have like....65 contacts from Innectis and elsewhere...

[Skye]

I think we should use a platform like:
WhatsApp,
Telegram,
Facebook Messenger

More phone based. All the platforms you used in the poll are unknown to me (except for Skype). We could rather use more mainstream messengers like the ones I just listed above.

Discord has a free mobile app that functions better than all three of those.

[Caaaaarrrrlll]

Slack over Discord for me. It's more professional and has tons of integrations. It also has a free desktop, mobile, and web app, all of which are cross-platform to Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, iOS, and I believe even Blackberry and/or Windows Phone.

The voice chat is the only con as I see it; Slack's voice chat is akin to Skype but with better quality, whereas Discord's is akin to TeamSpeak with worse quality. On Slack, you have to actively join a call like you do with Skype, but on Discord you can join and leave a channel like you can on TeamSpeak.

There's a ton of reasons why I believe Slack is better. A lot of them come down to personal preference, though. One example off the top of my head is when posting a link such as YouTube, Slack makes better use of the chat space than Discord does. It also makes better use of the space on the right-side of the chat, whereas Discord does not. I also have troubles with Discord when opening it on the web browser where it'll autofocus a chat and make everything mark as read. I don't like that. I like to come back where I left off and read everything I've missed. Slack does this perfectly, without autofocusing onto a chat, so I can come back and read where I left off. When I have Discord open in my web browser, I can't tell what team or chat I'm focused on, yet with Slack it's right there in the tab's title, very easy to tell.

Discord also publicly claims they stole Slack's design, or as they call it, were "inspired by" it. To each their own. I see it as plagiarism or willful copyright infringement.

TeamSpeak is good, I don't see why everyone hates it. The voice quality is far superior to that of Slack, Discord, or Skype. The permissions system is highly customizable. It has a desktop and mobile app, no web app though. It's cross-platform. The only real con is its text chat, where it's reminiscent of MSN/Windows Live messenger.

Edit: This is the order I'd go with, with Slack being my first choice: Slack, TeamSpeak, Discord, Skype. Although I must say, if Discord wins, I won't be present 95% of the time. As ryanteck pointed out, it's very hipster and is the current fad of communication software.

Also, you could apply for a TeamSpeak Non-Profit License, and if granted, you could have up to 512 users on your TeamSpeak for free. You simply download the TeamSpeak server software from their website, host it on Innectis, copy the license file they give you to the TeamSpeak server directory, and you get 512 users for free, no monthly charge or anything. This is what I do for my own TeamSpeak. I've had my TeamSpeak NPL for over a year now and it's been extremely helpful. With self-hosting, you also can control hardware and bandwidth a lot better than you can with say Slack, Discord, or Skype. If you're depending on any of these for voice communication, you're at the whim of the company's bandwidth to be able to support your usage, whereas with TeamSpeak you can ensure the bandwidth is available a lot easier.

Also, Innectis already has a Slack, but it's not used and currently has sign-ups disabled (I was invited to it over a year ago when Innectis was unofficially demoing it): https://innectis.slack.com/signup

[Vector]

A month will be a long enough time getting enough people voting to decide the next social platform to be used with Innectis.

Honestly, if Discord wins I'll probably go with Slack for the staff. Still, it's a preliminary thought since these are only just ideas, but we still need to decide as a staff team where we want to go. This poll is largely about the community in general.

[mercilessdegree]

Personally I feel we shouldn't focus much on voice communications. We've had a skype group for years and rarely has anyone actually gone and tried to call at all, and as far as I know, no one is really interested in it too much. Teamspeak is focused almost entirely on organised voice calling and from my use not only is discord fairly bad at it compared to skype, the calls have always dropped and/or lost good signal mid-call. Discord (like sykpe) is also far less controllable than a platform like teamspeak as you don't have direct control over the server like you would with hosting your own from your PC, and if you wanted to ban people from it for some reason it would also be more difficult. Another thing is that most people in the group aren't even active any longer so actually getting enough people into a new group in the likes of TS or discord would be a hassle and probably wouldn't end up enough to make it worthwhile.

I believe that right now we need to focus more on getting the community back together than trying to move or control them at once. Like herding sheep, you should get them all in one place before trying to move them or they will end up confused and scattered, possibly losing you a large portion of that group; so perhaps this change if any could be postponed to when everyone is collected and interacting rather than going out on a whim.

*EDIT* Discord claims that their "core functionality" will remain free, however have disclosed no information on what this is, so entrusting our communication to a currently in-testing platform that may become paid or even subscription based, that could also change in any number of ways with no warning may not be a great idea

I personally prefer skype but on the basis of what it is teamspeak is slightly easier to drop in and out.

Discord is the new hipster one isn't it?

And yes Ryan. Yes it is.

I think we should use a platform like:
WhatsApp,
Telegram,
Facebook Messenger

More phone based. All the platforms you used in the poll are unknown to me (except for Skype). We could rather use more mainstream messengers like the ones I just listed above.

Discord has a free mobile app that functions better than all three of those.

Someone sounds like a discord fanboy/fangirl (Apologies for my horrible memory)
If I recall skype has a mobile app that whilst buggy, has satisfied most people for a multitude of years.

[Caaaaarrrrlll]

I whole heartedly agree with mercilessdegree on all points.

You already have this forum software that everyone knows about and probably has an account on. Steering everyone away to a new platform could disrupt your ability to grab back the attention you so sharply desire.

And yes, Skype has an app for desktop, mobile, and web, which is cross-platform as well. I use the Skype app on my Android often enough as well to say that it has a few bugs but they're not usability bugs; I can still get effective communication done using the Skype app despite its bugs.

It does sound like Skye is a fan of Discord with the snide comment about the other three, especially with lack of fact comparison to the other three; Slack's mobile app is arguably better than the other three–it has little to no bugs, it's cross-platform (Android, iOS, etc.), it integrates well with the desktop/web clients (e.g. marking a message read on mobile will also mark it read on desktop/web, and so will marking a message as unread). You can sign in to multiple teams at once and switch through them. You can see when there's unread messages in any of the channels, direct messages, or cross-teams. It has gif support (most mobile chat software doesn't support gifs, Atlassian's HipChat software and Skype are examples that come to mind). I can go on and on.

I want to highlight a point I made in my previous post: Discord is the current fad of team communication. There are many alternatives that are tried and true and have withstood the time test, TeamSpeak 3 is one of these. It has a mobile app as well, if that's really a feature we're keen on comparing.

However, if what mercilessdegree said is true, in that:

We've had a skype group for years and rarely has anyone actually gone and tried to call at all, and as far as I know, no one is really interested in it too much.

Then it makes sense not to use TeamSpeak or Discord since these are specifically more oriented and designed to voice chat users. Slack is definitely more engaged in their text chat and integration with other services (you can get monitor alerts for when servers go down, or when a change is made in your code, as well as custom integrations you can create yourself). Slack also supports customizing emojis out of the box, if that's your forte.

I also want to point out a YouTube video shared with me just today, which highlights even bigger problems with Discord than I've described in both my previous post and this post:

[Vector]

Updated title and poll options to clarify what the goal of this poll is about.

[SGT_ADZ]

Have you thought about using one in conjunction with the other? Skype + Teamspeak would be a good combo. Good chat, and good audio respectively. I personally prefer Teamspeak over the others, but having not tried Slack or Discord, my opinion isn't relevant.

[Vector]

I derped again. Changed topic title to:

What chat service should we switch to, or should we stay on Skype?

[Vector]

Sorry for the late reply, but a few things stood in the way of us moving forward with this decision. At any rate, as the polls say mostly Discord, I have made the decision to move the community to discord. When the discord is ready I will make an announcement and a newsletter about it. As far as things go, I would like to keep the Skype operational until there is no longer any reason to have it, that way we can have a sort of transition for those who aren't yet comfortable with discord yet would like to still use Skype for the time being.