# Low rate of opt-in for the Discourse Bridge on the Slack Help Desk

**URL:** https://discourse.julialang.org/t/low-rate-of-opt-in-for-the-discourse-bridge-on-the-slack-help-desk/60529
**Category:** Community
**Created:** [May 4, 2021, 4:43pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/low-rate-of-opt-in-for-the-discourse-bridge-on-the-slack-help-desk/60529 "2021-05-04T16:43:36Z")
**Posts on this page:** 5
**Page:** 1

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### Author: ![samerb](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/samerb/32/9242_2.png) [@samerb](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/samerb)
#### Post date: [May 4, 2021, 4:43pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/low-rate-of-opt-in-for-the-discourse-bridge-on-the-slack-help-desk/60529/1 "2021-05-04T16:43:36Z")

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According to what someone said earlier, the largest volume of Julia questions anywhere occurs on slack. Someone [said](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/ive-heard-a-number-of-people-say-julia-is-not-mainstream-because-it-doesnt-have-many-stackoverflow-questions-answered-but-they-dont-know-about-discourse/53168/2) 100:1 Slack:Discourse though a cursory look at slack now suggests that’s a big over estimate (correct?). I believe someone created an opt-in bridge so that those questions could be stored and made public and googlable on Discourse. But based on a cursory look at the list of questions when I click on [HelpDesk-Bridged](https://discourse.julialang.org/c/helpdesk-bridged/54) on Discourse, it looks like only a very small percentage of people on Slack are actually opting-in.

I must be missing something because that history shows no questions for the month of April, but for March it looks like ~6 questions per day. If these statistics and my calculations are correct, that would be a very low percentage of people opting-in! Probably this could be checked somehow on Slack but I’m not familiar with that. Probably I’m missing something, but still:

But I think permanence and searchability/googlability are very important to making Julia easier to learn and spreading the word about it. Is there a way to encourage or require more people to opt-in? The bridged questions are fully anonymous–not even linked to the asking user’s profile which itself is also probably anonymous. Barring unusual circumstances it seems there is no good reason to not opt-in.

I’m new to Julia and Discourse and basically never used Slack, so just raising this concern. Hopefully people with more knowledge can weigh in. Thanks.

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### Author: ![ToucheSir](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/touchesir/32/14411_2.png) [@ToucheSir](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/ToucheSir)
#### Post date: [May 4, 2021, 4:49pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/low-rate-of-opt-in-for-the-discourse-bridge-on-the-slack-help-desk/60529/2 "2021-05-04T16:49:08Z")

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ICYMI, the bridge has been offline for over a month now: [Bridging Slack's #Helpdesk and Discourse (Proposal, feedback welcome!) - #44 by logankilpatrick](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/bridging-slacks-helpdesk-and-discourse-proposal-feedback-welcome/53554/44)

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### Author: ![logankilpatrick](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/logankilpatrick/32/38123_2.png) [@logankilpatrick](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/logankilpatrick)
#### Post date: [May 5, 2021, 3:27am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/low-rate-of-opt-in-for-the-discourse-bridge-on-the-slack-help-desk/60529/3 "2021-05-05T03:27:12Z")

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Agreed it’s an issue. See the other linked posts above, folks are against this so for now, the status quo lives on.

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### Author: ![kristoffer.carlsson](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/kristoffer.carlsson/32/22_2.png) [@kristoffer.carlsson](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/kristoffer.carlsson)
#### Post date: [May 5, 2021, 6:50am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/low-rate-of-opt-in-for-the-discourse-bridge-on-the-slack-help-desk/60529/4 "2021-05-05T06:50:02Z")

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> [@samerb](#):
>
> But I think permanence and searchability/googlability are very important to making Julia easier to learn and spreading the word about it.

I agree and the number of low-quality questions and the high rate of questions with no answer in the bridged topic probably makes it much harder for a search engine to find relevant stuff for a user.

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### Author: ![Tamas\_Papp](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/tamas_papp/32/25949_2.png) [@Tamas\_Papp](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Tamas_Papp)
#### Post date: [May 5, 2021, 6:56am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/low-rate-of-opt-in-for-the-discourse-bridge-on-the-slack-help-desk/60529/5 "2021-05-05T06:56:20Z")

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> [@samerb](#):
>
> there is no good reason to not opt-in

I would take this one step further: there is no good reason for a Julia user looking for help not just to use Discourse directly, as is.
