New BridgeBot, are answers bridged back?

[oheil]

When a question is bridged from slack to discourd like e.g. this one:

Hello got a quick question.. I am using `walkdir` to scan the file system for file

I am using walkdir to scan the file system for files. I am running into an error where everything craps the bed at the first sign of a file that has too high of permissions. I see that walkdir accepts onerror=throws. What would I need to do to modify throws or to write my own function to handle the permissions issues. I just want it to skip over them. (Original message )

What happens to the answer? Does it also appear on slack?

[carstenbauer]

(I assume you meant to say “does it also appear on discourse”)

At this point, not automatically. The idea is that, after a discussion, someone posts the answer here.

[oheil]

A question on Slack appears through BridgeBot here on Discourse.
If I answer here on Discourse does this answer automatically is copied to Slack?

[carstenbauer]

No (and I don’t think this has been considered so far).

[Tamas_Papp]

I am not sure I understand the purpose of BridgeBot in this form.

If I don’t answer on Slack, then the OP will not see my answer, so there is little point in writing one. But if I already use Slack, I could just follow there — duplicating the feed on Discourse is not necessary.

Sorry if I am missing something.

[mcabbott]

I think the hope is that people, perhaps the OP, will post a tidied-up summary answer here, for posterity / google. Whether this catches on, or not, we’ll see.

[Henrique_Becker]

I do not use slack and I will just answer the bridge bot posts and expect the user to go check the Discourse counterpart or someone to notify them the question is already answered in Discourse.

[oheil]

@Henrique_Becker

expect the user to go check the Discourse counterpart or someone to notify them the question is already answered in Discourse.

This was my intention to ask here, how the connections to each other system are.

My conclusion is, that it doesn’t make too much sense to answer those Slack questions here. But maybe this conclusion is wrong, I have to look into Slack how this all shows up there, but it only let me login using Google or creating a new account. Both challenges I couldn’t tackle so far

[oheil]

Now, as I tackled it, I see that I have been there 2018

[carstenbauer]

To first order, I view this as an archive system. Ideally questions and answers on slack should be archived here such that the knowledge is preserved. Currently we only bridge the question. IMO there should at some point be an option in slack to mark an answer as “please bridge this as the solution” as well.

[oheil]

After clicking around a bit on Slack (resisted to install the desktop application) I am afraid that I would now change the topic of this thread to “Do we need Slack, what are the benefits”. I only can see some (or one) disadvantages, like that it seems to be closed and not visible for unregistered readers. But I am sure this has already been discussed and probably the reasoning is to have as much as possible channels open for Julia, which is fine or could be a problem for people just searching for already solved questions.
For me I am sure, that I will have some time in future where I see a question here bridged from Slack without an answer here and I am (again) forced to login to Slack to see if any answers are given. And again I will be surprised that I have been there 2 years ago. Well than I have to remember that I should assemble an answer into Discourse for open availability and with that necroing an old thread… I stop this now.

Well for now I will just observe how this will develop and perhaps I will do some summaries here, but I am afraid that this is not so easy in the most cases.

[oheil]

I see this has been added:

Note that the poster on Slack cannot see your response here on Discourse. Consider answering the question there or pinging the poster here on Discourse so they see the reponse.

Good idea, Well done!

[logankilpatrick]

@oheil

Do we need Slack, what are the benefits”.

A topic for another thread and a well debated one at that.

@mcabbott

I think the hope is that people, perhaps the OP, will post a tidied-up summary answer here, for posterity / google. Whether this catches on, or not, we’ll see.

Spot on. Ideally they would, we’ll see how it plays out over the next few weeks/months.

@Henrique_Becker

I do not use slack and I will just answer the bridge bot posts and expect the user to go check the Discourse counterpart or someone to notify them the question is already answered in Discourse.

This is perfectly valid. As mentioned in the thread above, we point out on Slack that the user should keep an eye on discourse as someone may post an answer there.

As aforementioned (perhaps not on discourse yet), this is V0.1 of the bridge system and it’s definitely a big WIP. I have a few issues and such open here: GitHub - JuliaCommunity/SlackBridge and will be tackling those over the next few days/weeks.

[Tamas_Papp]

@carstenbauer

To first order, I view this as an archive system.

I am not convinced that everything needs to be archived — if the quality of questions/answers is not higher than the median on Discourse, they just decrease the signal/noise ratio, discouraging searching the existing topics further.

[pdeffebach]

I agree. I kind of like that there is a “definitive” answer given on more threads as a result of this.

[lmiq]

@carstenbauer

The idea is that, after a discussion, someone posts the answer here.

Would it be possible on slack to suggest that, instead of suggesting that the question only was bridged? It seems that it is not working as expected, and Discourse is being polluted with unanswered questions. Also it is somewhat unpleasant to see a question, think about it, to find out that 20 answers were already given in slack.

[Skoffer]

Yes, this is the only category on discourse, that I completely muted, since it generated too much noise and it made no sense to even try to answer posts there. I consider it as /dev/null Random messages that appear out of nowhere on their road to oblivion.

[oheil]

A rant from @anon67531922 brought this issue up again, see

Slack is your productivity platform

I said:

Why are about 50% of the bridged posts in discourse without answer? Because there is often not a single answer which is the solution. The solution is often the sum of several posts. Creating a solution post on discourse is therefor quite some work.

There are some ideas and suggestions in there too.

[oheil]

Is it switched off now?

[giordano]

Bridging Slack's #Helpdesk and Discourse (Proposal, feedback welcome!)

Update, bridge has been shut down indefinitely.