Wire, Threema, or Signal? What am I going to recommend to friends and family on WhatsApp? I leaning towards Wire right now even though I used Threema in the past.
I managed to move a small group onto matrix/riot with little or no friction. It's been working well for us, and the group is largely comprised of non-technical users on a combination of mobile and laptops.
@RussSharek One concern I have with Riot is that some of these people are teenagers in my RPG group and when I use Riot I'm confronted with a huge list of public rooms and I'd like to avoid that.
A valid concern.
I've noticed none of my users have discovered the public rooms. They really see it as just another chat app.
Which is ideal for my purposes.
Perhaps you could set up a private server for your use? I almost went to the trouble.
@RussSharek Yeah. But then I think XMPP might be the way to go? I'm still dreaming of them just using IRC, haha. I already have an IRC server running! It would be great! But you need to be online to chat and that's not what a messenger does. This makes me sad. Soon I'll be pondering messengers, drinking whiskey and watching sad Wong Kar Wai movies at the rate this is going. 😂
It's a dark path for sure.
Xmpp with some extensions might do what you want.
Have you looked at rocketchat or zulipchat? I almost went that direction
@RussSharek @kensanata Oh yes, if you're doing this specifically for an organisation, RocketChat works well. We self-host it in our student union, and there it's heavily used amongst volunteers to organise events, etc.
However, if it's just for some general purpose, for various people, you want to be looking at something else. Because with RC, you can only talk to people on the same server :(
(okay there might be some bridges, but that's extra work)
@Nuntius @RussSharek Well, it's three RPG campaigns with their chatrooms, possibly more, but also my stepmom, my dad, coworkers from the office that I want to reach privately, all sorts of things. Right now I'm looking at the #prosody config and wondering whether I need a separate subdomain to chatrooms and I find that definitely annoying. I guess rocketchat is out, then. Never heard of zulipchat.
I thought rocketchat could federate.
That said, private chat wasn't usecase mentioned
@RussSharek @kensanata Sure, it even has 1:1 chats and OTR support. But I mean, RocketChat servers don't federate, which makes them only useful within organizations/groups.