[DIVx0]

I have a project within my corp where we need to collaborate with other companies on a shared project. We want to do this privately and right now run our own rocketchat stuff to do this. However we are open to hosted solutions.

I was unaware of this product until now, I figured I'd give it a spin to see what was available now and hope for some cool github integration in the future.

However the public-by-default stuff is a bummer. I know there are ways to make things private and perhaps its just me not spending enough time with the product but even if I make a private community it always has a _public_ general thread that I can't delete.

The public general thread is the default for any new thread or conversation so I can see that it will be easy to unintentionally create a thread that was intended to be private as public.

I understand why you want public-by-default, to increase engagement and community building but there are many businesses using Github and could use this tool if they were sure that they could keep stuff buttoned down.

So perhaps you guys could add a "business" or "private first" context that could be used for folks like me to ensure that while operating in that context I am operating as private-by-default.

Also, can you give any hints to what integrations might come?

[brianlovin]

Hey there - if you selected 'private' during the community creation flow, everything in that community will be private. However, there will still exist the concept of "public" and "private" channels, however those scopes are still constrained by the community settings. For example, a private community with a public general channel means everyone who has access to the community can see those conversations. But if you have a private channel in a private community, only a subset of authorized community members will be able to see those threads.

[DIVx0]

Ok, then this text in the "general" channel settings is very confusing:

Anyone on Spectrum can join this channel, post threads and messages, and will be able to see other members. If you want to create private channels, get in touch.

Also, it would be helpful if i could tell at a glance which communities I was in were private vs public. I can't even tell from the communities setting page if I selected private or not on creation (I did, but i'd still like to see that noted)

Thanks, looking forward to seeing how this gets integrated

*I'd love to see documents/media added to threads added to the repos (optionally perhaps)

[paulryanrogers]

Maybe instead of 'public' [to community] it should use a phrases like "whole community" and "only invited". To me 'public' implies The entire world.