Public vs private rooms - Allow users to freely join a room

[schiessle]

I had this idea while using Talk. With "public rooms" I don't mean rooms I share by a public link. I want to make a different distinction here.

We have two types of rooms at the moment:

1. 1-1 chat rooms
2. group chat rooms

Both have one in common, you have to invite your chat partner(s). Think about a larger setup of an organization, your sports club, etc. Every time someone new joins your organization you have to add them to the relevant rooms manually. If someone leaves you have to remove them again. A lot of manual work with a high risk to make mistakes.

That's where my idea of "private vs public" rooms starts.

I would define private rooms as rooms where the users in the room decide who can join and who not, by inviting users, sending links around, etc. Basically what we have now.

Public rooms would be rooms someone creates and which are then open to join for everyone. Users could search for public rooms on the left hand sidebar like they search for users and groups today. They can join any of this rooms and participate in the discussion. A bit like I can join a IRC server, look around which channels exists and join the one I'm interested in.

Opinions?

[sunjam]

Circles integration is a possibility for helping add this functionality since you can create your own "groups" of users as public, private, closed, or secret circles. Once conversations can be started with a circle, it will be possible to start group discussions.

[jancborchardt]

Totally agree! This could also be useful for guests, where you then have the AppNavigation shown with all the conversations specifically set to "Public". In our case all the public team channels.