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

a.j.rouvoet a.j.rouvoet at gmail.com
Fri Aug 21 13:57:50 CEST 2020


 > I (obviously) don't want to ban any kind of conversation on Agda in 
other places

Good! But yes, I guess I just wanted to hint at the fact that spawning 
any new channel might just turn out to fragment the community /more/ 
(insert relevant xkcd here).

 > For IRC specifically, there is a bidirectional integration of IRC to 
Zulip

Neat!

 > 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.

Also neat.

Arjen

On 8/21/20 1:52 PM, Jesper Cockx wrote:
>
>     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 I agree that email is an outdated technology, however it is too 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
>     <http://functionalprogramming.slack.com>) has an #agda channel
>     with 400 members, and is also on zulip
>     (https://funprog.zulipchat.com/login/#narrow/stream/215389-Agda
>     <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
>     <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 
> <mailto: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
>     <http://functionalprogramming.slack.com>) has an #agda channel
>     with 400 members, and is also on zulip
>     (https://funprog.zulipchat.com/login/#narrow/stream/215389-Agda
>     <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
>     <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/
>>     <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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