Why Your Project Should Use Mibbit

For the last couple of days I've been spending time in the Linux Mint IRC support channel at irc.spotchat.org #linuxmint helping out where I can. I will continue to do this. It's a friendly place to be, with a lot of new users (both to Linux Mint and Linux in general) asking questions. What this did was made me appreciate (again) how much native English speakers take for granted on the internet, as most forums, irc channels, blog posts etc are in English. So how do you try to ensure that understanding English is not a barrier?

There are a lot of translation options for things like wiki's but I never thought of a real time one in IRC until Mibbit. For those who don't know IRC (Internet Relay Chat) is the common real time "chat room" support service for FOSS projects. In most cases they tend to be on irc.freenode.net. There you'll find projects from Ubuntu, Debian, Drupal, PHP and a whole lot more. It's not just the support channels either, it's development channels, off-topic channels etc too. IRC has been around for a long, long time. It's an open protocol that you can connect to via any client. There are 100's of IRC clients, so you will be able to find (at least) one for your OS that you like, be that Windows, OSX, Linux or BSD. I happen to like XChat a lot.

IRC does seem to be strong on the Linux / UNIX side of things and something Windows and OSX users have to actually seek out, which is one reason to use Mibbit on your project. Mibbit is an IRC client which runs inside a web browser. You can create a Mibbit widget and embed it onto your project's home site so that people don't need to understand what IRC is, or have an IRC client installed can simply click on a link and they will have a window or tab open up with an IRC session started.

This reduces the barrier to entry quite significantly and gives a more welcoming impression of your project. It send the signal to the visitor that you want them to pop in and chat, which implies that they'll be welcomed when they get there. This type of approach will likely endear them to your project more than a static forum / article / wiki / blog etc on it's own. FOSS projects are all about the communities they serve feeling that it's their project, that they have a stake in it.

At one point I saw a Spanish user come into the IRC looking for help, but I only know a little Spanish. I tried learning it a few years back which started great and got very complicated, very quickly. I could hold a very basic conversation in Spanish, but nothing technical and I'd be picking out words here and there, trying to guess at the gaps. I watched for a little while and nobody else seemed able to communicate with this user as he didn't speak English. For some reason I got curious are the number of different people coming in with the spotchat.org url in their IP address and went to look on the site and try their embedded client, only to find a real time language translator.

This is not to be underestimated. You select the language you want to speak in, and the language you want to listen in, it translates via Google and shows both native and translated text. This is not perfect as it is a machine doing the translation but the point is to help people who have a question. A little patience and the desire of both parties to communicate and you'll be fine. Think what it's like when you go on holiday and don't speak a word of the native language or that of your fellow holiday makers; you adapt. This works both ways, it allows you to quickly jump into the channel with Mibbit set to their language and help them, as well as allowing them to set their output to English. As I found out, the Spanish it produces is much, much, much more fluent than I could ever hope to produce, not only that but it avoids the steam coming from my ears as my brain tries to find the right words.

Often when you're trying to help a user with a problem it's because whatever they're trying to do has produced an error. You need to find out what that error is. In some cases that could be an error log, or some config file. These can be very long, and you don't want the user pasting that log into the channel where it disrupts the flow. There are services like Pastebin for that, where the user can paste the log, then post the link to the log into the IRC channel for the helpers to go look at and try to figure out the problem and how to fix it. This is often a new concept to new Linux users. By having a Pastebin option right there on the widget in front of them it further reduces the barrier to entry. An example of the embedded Mibbit widget IRC client, complete with Pastebin and language translation can be found on the spotchat.org site, home of the Linux Mint support channel. For five minutes work setting up the widget and embedding it, you will make your project significantly more welcoming to new users. In other words you can't go wrong. So what are you waiting for? Go embed it now!