[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 I agree that email is an outdated technology, however it is too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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