Open a Gitter channel

[seanpoulter]

In #403 @nasreddineskandrani suggested we open a Gitter channel. Is there interested in that?

[seanpoulter]

Hey team! 👋 I'm looking for some consensus if we should open a Gitter channel. It's not something I've got the bandwidth to pay much attention to these days but based on our open Issues and PRs we need a little boost to build the community and encourage contributions. What do ya say? Yes?

[connectdotz]

A Gitter might reduce some of the "question-like" issues, but only if someone is actively watching it... personally, I don't use Gitter all that much.

I wonder instead of creating yet another channel for communication, we would be better off to improve this one... such as maybe having a "primary watcher" rotation each week to monitor/reply unanswered issues, in case everybody else is busy? Or we could have a regular (monthly?) internal conference/chat to discuss urgent issues, high priority PR etc?

Maybe we should start auto closing issues and actively tagging duplicates so they won't shadow the real issues...?

[stephtr]

At first I'm sorry that I was basically unavailable for the last two months, since I'm currently working (more than) full-time. I currently hope, that this will change at least a bit in about two months.

Since I am probably not the only one having this issue, I agree with @connectdotz. I have no experience with Gitter, but I could imagine that this could increase the overall number of questions with more people asking before reading the docs, outweighing the advantageous effect of such a community. But it's also possible that I'm wrong.
I'm not sure whether having a rotating "primary watcher" is the solution we are looking for, since it again boils down to most of us having too little time, even though I have an open mind on trying that (since the current status is definitely suboptimal). I had the idea of selecting one week every (other) month for actively triaging, commenting or closing stalled issues and PRs as a team, but that is quite similar to @connectdotz's ideas.