Make it easier to join Slack

[davisshaver]

Let's make Daniel's life easier by adding a button to signup folks to Slack. We could setup Slack.in for this. See here for example.

[danielbachhuber]

Good suggestion. It doesn't appear to have moderation functionality, but I've opened an issue about it: rauchg/slackin#53

[dannguyen]

Is there a current need to have moderation of who can join? I'm asking that as a Slack beginner, if using slack.in results in userspambots. I noticed that chat.18f.gov uses slack.in. It'd be great to be able to direct people to a link to join...not just for them but to save the mods some manual work.

[davisshaver]

@dannguyen Good question. I have no reason to suspect spam. So another reason to ask this: Is there any one we would reject at this point?

[danielbachhuber]

Is there a current need to have moderation of who can join?

I like moderation for the time being.

[jtannenwald]

I don't trust spambots to stay away?

[davisshaver]

@daniel can you expand on why? I think that requiring people ask to join is a bit exclusive, even though our mods are a diverse bunch.

[danielbachhuber]

I think that requiring people ask to join is a bit exclusive, even though our mods are a diverse bunch.

That's the intention — people like the feeling of being a part of a club. The feeling of exclusivity is fine when pragmatically you're inclusive.

[davisshaver]

If we're just trying to act exclusive, I don't see the upside at all. There are going to be people turned away from the pretension of exclusivity if they expect that they wouldn't make the cut. I'm going on record against this policy as I think it's counter-productive to having a diverse news nerdery.

[danielbachhuber]

I'm going on record against this policy as I think it's counter-productive to having a diverse news nerdery.

That's fine.

[juruwolfe]

Yeah, I'd like to second Davis's point. I do think the appearance of exclusivity, even if we don't mean it to, keeps certain people/voices at bay. Not sure that cost is worth potentially being more alluring for voices that want to be part of the cool club.