Is there a live communication element to Discourse? More like IRC than forum

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AI-generated summary

The discussion revolves around whether Discourse supports live or private communication akin to IRC or chat platforms. Greg11 initiates the query, and TechnoBear responds by mentioning personal messages and private categories as available options. steko provides links to related resources, including a meta discussion on integrating Discourse with Slack or other chat apps, and a plugin called Babble. codinghorror elaborates that while Discourse integrates tightly with chat tools, it is fundamentally different — its unit of work is the sentence or paragraph, not the word, reflecting a different communication rhythm. In a later post, codinghorror notes that Discourse is actively developing live chat features for version 2.9. Decorbuz speculates the topic was bumped due to the upcoming Discourse Chat feature, but codinghorror clarifies that bumps are random and not tied to specific updates. Decorbuz acknowledges the coincidence with a lighthearted tone. Overall, the thread confirms that while Discourse isn’t designed as a chat platform, it supports private messaging, integrates with external chat tools, and is actively expanding real-time communication capabilities.

1

Is there a live or private communication element to Discourse? More like IRC or chat than forum?

2

There are personal messages (which can have multiple participants, if required) - or you can set up private categories.

3

See also:

(as suggested in another topic related topic)

or have a look at Babble:

https://meta.discourse.org/t/babble-a-chat-plugin/31753

5

There’s a recent blog post from our very own @erlend_sh that goes into detail here.

TL;DR we integrate tightly with chat, but we aren’t chat. The unit of work in the chat is the word. the unit of work in Discourse is the sentence and ideally the paragraph. Different beats.

7

Yes, we are building this now for 2.9. Timely bump.. :stopwatch:

8

I assume it was bumped because of Discourse Chat?

9

No, it was a random bump. All the bumps are random (as long as the topic is open, and old enough / hasn’t been bumped in long enough).

10

Oh, so it was just a coincidence then. Never mind… :thinking: