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

[James Wood]

We also have the /r/agda subreddit. I think Reddit is in ways similar to
IRC, in that people know that if they type in “reddit.com/r/<foo>” or
“/join #<foo>”, then they'll be able to get help about Foo. This doesn't
necessarily mean that Reddit and IRC have to be *the* places where
questions get asked and answered, but people who arrive there should be
fast-tracked to wherever this happens (possibly via a bridge where
appropriate).

I'll refrain from making any more judgements on communication technology
for now.

James

On 21/08/2020 12:23, 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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