It’s just so much fun to say “deprecation” but it’s not so much fun to say something that you use is deprecated. That’s not what’s being announced here though. Sort of.
As of now, the original domain we used, chinwag.im, now redirects to the new chinwag.au web site. We used the IM domain back at the start when Chinwag was just an XMPP messaging service. We haven’t “just” been that for quite some time now. Consider that domain deprecated.
If you’re observant though, you’d notice there’s no mention of that service on the front page now. If you’re thinking about that and the word “deprecation” you might think you’ve figured something out. Well, kinda. Not really.
The standalone chinwag.im messaging service is overdue for a refresh, and the usage isn’t high anyway. This might well be cause and effect in one, but even so it’s a pretty low resource service and it’s not exactly a huge burden. It’s likely going to stay up for those who need it, but it’s not going to be strongly advertised or anything.
You get a full-featured chinwag.org XMPP service for free with your Chinwag Social account anyway!
The main reason we’re de-emphasising the service though, is a lack of good, reliable client software. There are some decent ones out there, but a good cross-platform option, even a web-based one, would be good and there’s nothing we want to recommend right now. We’re watching Prose really closely though!
So anyway – the upshot is that you won’t see chinwag.im mentioned much anywhere, but if you’re a user of that then you won’t see any changes in a hurry, but it’s not going anywhere. There is an overdue update to the backend that is coming soon-ish, and if a fantastic new client launches we’ll be trying it out for sure.