[Agda] On IRC, Slack, Gitter, Discord, and Zulip (re: Hanging out with the Lean crowd)

[Jesper Cockx]

>
> A wild thought that might seem impossible to some, but is much in line
> with the proposal: Get rid of the mailing list as well in the long run.
> I'd consider mailing lists to be quite an arcane, unscalable, closed,
> poorly searchable medium. Of course, a technologically superior
> alternative such as Discourse or Zulip would have to be installed and
> stabilised first, and ongoing discussions (and possibly the mailing list
> history) moved there.
>

I agree that email is an outdated technology, however it is too entrenched
to just get rid of it (unlike, say, the current Slack or Discord servers).
If we have a clear alternative that works better, then conversations will
naturally move over to there.


> Although I agree with the intent, I suspect that trying to convince the
> entirety of the community to consolidate on a single platform is bound to
> fail.
> For example, the #agda freenode channel is not going anywhere soon.
> Another example that I only became aware of: the functional-programming
> slack (functionalprogramming.slack.com) has an #agda channel with 400
> members, and is also on zulip (
> https://funprog.zulipchat.com/login/#narrow/stream/215389-Agda).
>

I (obviously) don't want to ban any kind of conversation on Agda in other
places, this is more about having an "official" channel that we can link to
from the website and use for things like helping people with their code and
online Agda meetings.

For IRC specifically, there is a bidirectional integration of IRC to Zulip,
so it can continue to exist (and perhaps there will even be more people
reading the messages on it via Zulip).

Personally, I'd like to vouch for Discord---but am not against Zulip perse,
> since I have no experience with it.
> Communities like https://discord.com/invite/reasonml are extremely easy
> access and heavily used by programmers.
> Slack is slow and tedious nowadays.
>

Two advantages of Zulip over Discord are (1) it supports better integration
with Github, and (2) open source communities get access to all features for
free. OTOH Discord has integrated audio/video chat and screensharing, so
there's a tradeoff.

-- Jesper

On Fri, Aug 21, 2020 at 1:38 PM a.j.rouvoet <a.j.rouvoet at gmail.com> wrote:

> Although I agree with the intent, I suspect that trying to convince the
> entirety of the community to consolidate on a single platform is bound to
> fail.
> For example, the #agda freenode channel is not going anywhere soon.
> Another example that I only became aware of: the functional-programming
> slack (functionalprogramming.slack.com) has an #agda channel with 400
> members, and is also on zulip (
> https://funprog.zulipchat.com/login/#narrow/stream/215389-Agda).
>
> That being said, you can certainly ensure that the Agda website etc. picks
> one solid medium that can be used for all casual communications besides the
> mailing list and the issue tracker. Do not just spawn a new one; make sure
> you move the conversation and kill off the ones managed by the Agda team
> that are then deprecated (slack, gitter, ...).
>
> Personally, I'd like to vouch for Discord---but am not against Zulip
> perse, since I have no experience with it.
> Communities like https://discord.com/invite/reasonml are extremely easy
> access and heavily used by programmers.
> Slack is slow and tedious nowadays.
>
> (Sorry Jesper, I intended to reply to the list)
> On 8/21/20 1:23 PM, Jesper Cockx wrote:
>
> Dear Agdakkers,
>
> In his recent mail, Jacques raised an important point that got lost in the
> rest of the conversation:
>
> > - the community ought to pick a single communication system (Slack,
> Discord, Zulip, gitter, whatever, but just one!)
>
> I wholeheartedly agree with this! Github does a reasonable job of keeping
> track of issues and feature requests, and this mailing list works well for
> broadcasting messages to the broader community, so these two we should
> definitely keep. But it would be nice to consolidate all other discussions
> and questions on a single platform.
>
> Here are some of the current options with my opinion on them:
>
> - IRC: An open system but based on archaic technology. I'm having a hard
> time browsing the history of a channel when I'm not always connected.
> - Slack: Seems to be the de facto standard for many people and we used it
> successfully during the latest Agda meeting. However, it is commercial
> software and keeping a full history is not free.
> - Gitter: Is well integrated with Github but feels otherwise quite
> barebones compared to Slack.
> - Discord: Many features are more aimed at gamers than programmers. Some
> people used it for screensharing during the Agda meeting. It is commercial
> software and we'd have to pay for certain features
> - Zulip: Has a nice threaded interface to conversations that can take a
> while to get used to. It is 100% open source software and is explicitly
> aimed at open source communities (https://zulipchat.com/for/open-source/).
> The HoTT community also seems to be using it quite effectively.
> - MatterMost, RocketChat, Matrix.org, ...: These are other open source
> alternatives to Slack, but they seem to be less popular than Zulip in the
> type theory / formalized math circles.
>
> My personal preference would be to centralize all communication (other
> than Github and the mailing list) on Zulip. But since this is an important
> decision, I would very much like to hear other opinions as well before we
> decide on anything.
>
> Cheers,
> Jesper
>
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