If anyone is down for a chat group, the easiest way I can think of is Discord.
No costs/fees, unlimited messaging, solid voice chat if there’s a super emergency that necessitates it. It’s the Slack of gaming and pretty much bumped the old gaming specific services (teamspeak, mumble, etc) out of the market. Also, the app is amazing.
I can set up the group tonight if there’s interest!
The only bummer about this from my perspective is that I already have at least two dozen realtime chat channels / apps, and I would much rather be reducing that number than adding to it. So from that perspective I would vastly prefer Slack since I already use it extensively.
I think our local pinball slack is set up by employees of slack so maybe it’s free and could just add a channel? I can ask
There’s a 10K message limit on archiving/searching, but I don’t think that would really matter for something like this. You can send as many messages as you want on free Slack. Just to be clear.
Yep. And anything worth preserving can be exported to a google doc or something.
Slack or bust.
Thanks for clarifying that point. I’m all in favor of Slack.
Unless @genex can get us the hookup, I have set up a Slack channel that we can use. I’ll pass out the link once we’re sure this is the way forward.
Any app will work just fine. As others have mentioned, the only downside to a Slack team is the 10K message archive limit, but for back-and-forth talk like this I can’t see that being a problem. You’ll get the biggest advantage using an app that people are already using (like @gdd I’m unlikely to install yet-another-chat-app – it’s already too much!)
I’d love to get in on this group once it’s created. I’ve never used Slack before but I love continuing to broaden my knowledge of rules and rulings and all the lovely gray areas that exist and happy to help when I’ve been there/done that.
Same here. I have no idea what slack is, but would love to contribute.
You can use Slack to get match notifications for free from Match Play (no need to pay for text messages). So really, you should be creating a Slack team for your local pinball community anyway 
It seems he thread has gone a different way than originally planned.
I think it is an excellent idea to have a quick and easy way to be able to ask for help/ruling from the community at large.
I do have a few thoughts though.
It took less than 5 minutes for 3 responses to come in to my original query. This was with no notifications set up, purely from people being on the website.
I’m not familiar with “slack” or any other number of chat apps (FB or WhatsApp for me).
I would like to know what experience the person answering had; what qualified them to give a response. Or the quality of their previous answers.
There becomes less usefulness, if there are wide varieties of answers. (As what happened in the original query).
It is clear from the number of topics regarding rulings that their are very few queries which have a single definitive answer.
I am on Quora.com. Not only does it send me an email notification when there is a question on a specific topic, it also allows people to rate the quality of the answer. It also keeps track on my profile as to the quality of my answers, number of questions answers etc.
I think if a topic of “Pinball” could be added it would be very simple for people to use this, it’s an established site so no need for any of us to have to worry about setting up or maintaining any archives.
I’d love to see an app set up which a user could go to and not only enter a question and get a near instant response but you could also search previous questions and answers (not necessarily for a definitive answer, but see how other tournaments dealt with a problem).
However I’m guessing that that will require too much time and/or funding to make it practical?
For those unfamiliar or worried about ‘another app’
tools like slack have mobile apps that support notifications. So every time you think of “checking the website” or “getting an email” - imagine instead the query just came right to you.
Just like here you tag someone… tag them in the slack channel and they’ll get a notification on their phone, their watch, whatever… and they can choose to reply or not.
The message storage limit is no biggie… You aren’t going to be going back to search and archive in this tool. It’s entire point is real time communications that are readily accessible and easier to interact with each other. It’s temporal by nature.
Created a quick group.
Join the group and turn notifications on. Have a question ask. Should get real time responses. I know I’m always up for giving advice and trying to help other TDs
Could someone create a simple app that has a big red button that calls @pinwizj cell phone first and if he fails to answers then dials his landline? I don’t see how that can be too hard to code…
Why stop there? Landline, cell, facebook, twitter, slack, IRC… hell, we can set up a shortwave rig in his living room “just in case…”
this invite link has expired
I’ll try to fix that tomorrow.
And here I thought we were only allowed to call Josh for SCS. Now that I know we can call him anytime…