Furry Writers' Guild Forum

FWG Slack

Miscellany
#1

So, I’ve created a Furry Writers’ Guild Slack “team.”

What’s Slack? It’s a real-time chat system, similar to the shoutbox (although more like IRC). It supports multiple “channels” for different topics, direct messages between users, and has a lot of other interesting features. You can use it in a web interface or through a mobile app.

Oh, God, another place to be? What’s wrong with the shoutbox? Well, first and foremost, it’s entirely optional. The primary rationale was that the shoutbox’s lack of channels means there’s no way for people to “break off” and have discussions about adult writing, or for that matter just to segregate topics in any way.

So you’re going to just talk about smut? Only on the adult channel(s).

Is this just for FWG members? And “future members,” whatever they may eventually be called.

How do I sign up? Go to this URL:

https://fwg-chat.herokuapp.com

Please do not share this URL with folks who aren’t active on the FWG forums or shoutbox. The invitation process is currently automatic, because it makes life easier for me–but keeping it that way requires us to keep the URL under our collective hats.

Once you’re invited to the team, its name is fwg-chat (accessible at fwg-chat.slack.com, or your Slack app of choice).

I don’t wanna join something else! Again, totally optional, and I’m not encouraging anyone to abandon the shoutbox (I won’t be). But I think this has the potential to be a useful adjunct.

#2

They’ll likely continue to be called “future members” for at least the rest of my term, unless someone suggests the perfect alternative.

First off, thanks to Chipotle for creating this. It’s great to see members taking initiative and creating more ways for members and supporters to participate.

That said, from here on out, I would really appreciate it if you guys would give me a heads-up before you create social media groups using the FWG name. At the risk of sounding pompous, I do feel like, as president, I’m called on to act as something of a steward of the guild name, so just as a professional courtesy, I’d like to be kept in the loop about how it’s being used online, and this is now the third FWG group/outlet that’s been created with me finding out about it after it’s already up and running. In hindsight, I should have said something along these lines back when the Goodreads and Telegram groups were created, and I didn’t, so that’s my fault – but again, in the future, I’d appreciate people touching base with me beforehand just so I know what’s going on. (Nine times out of ten, there’ll be no problem and I’m sure I’ll just say “hey, yeah, go for it,” but I’m trying to plan ahead for that tenth time if it ever happens.)

#3

Yeah, I thought about the name issue last night, after it was already created – it really should have had some kind of official blessing to carry the name. Sorry about that. I’m glad you’re okay with it being created somewhat haphazardly. (If you aren’t I can switch the name to something else.)

#4

It’s okay. In this case, this is one of those nine times. :slight_smile: (Also made this a sticky thread, so that’s what the modification to the original post was.)

#5

Heyo, would it be possible to have that head’s up in the announcements or something of the sort? That way there’ll be less risk of it happening in the future for folks who aren’t interested in Slack and won’t bother seeing this thread :-/

#6

As a note, when/if you sign up for the FWG Slack, please use the same name and email address that you’re registered with on the FWG Forums (or at the very least one that’s obviously connectable back with you). Since it’s possible for anyone to sign up if they have the invitation URL, if someone joins that I don’t recognize, I’m going to check the email address and username they signed up with on Slack against the member directory here, and if there’s no matches I’m likely to disable the account.

#7

We’re trying something new-ish: Tuesday coffeehouse chats run on Slack, in the #coffeehouse channel. Some members have long expressed a preference for Slack over the shoutbox; with the original Tuesday chats ending due to scheduling issues, I thought it’d be a good opportunity to run this as an experiment.

This does not affect the Thursday coffeehouse chats. Those will still take place in the shoutbox.

So, two chats:

Tuesdays, 7 PM Eastern / 4 PM Pacific, in #coffeehouse on the FWG Slack (moved!)
Thursdays, Noon Eastern / 9 AM Pacific, in the Shoutbox (the same!)