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

[James Wood]

This brings up basically the only problem I have with Zulip: it does
Slack-style, rather than Discord-style, account management. I.e, you
need a new account for each new group you join. In effect, this makes
joining new groups more difficult than it needs to be, which is quite a
negative if we want to be open to beginners and dabblers.

James

On 26/08/2020 13:31, Jesper Louis Andersen wrote:
> On Fri, Aug 21, 2020 at 1:23 PM Jesper Cockx <Jesper at sikanda.be
> <mailto:Jesper at sikanda.be>> wrote:
> 
>     - 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.
> 
> 
> IRC is a weapon from a more civilized age.
>  
> 
>     - 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.
> 
> 
> Slack has one big disadvantage: it silos you, and having multiple slack
> systems open isn't that useful in the long run. It completely fails to
> accept cross-interaction between different communities.
> 
>     - Gitter: Is well integrated with Github but feels otherwise quite
>     barebones compared to Slack.
> 
> 
> Skipping this one, never tried it.
> 
>     - 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
> 
> 
> Discord is in many ways the spiritual successor to IRC. It allows a
> single account to be a member of multiple servers, ie., the hierarchy is
> Server->Channel->Message, whereas the Slack hierarchy is missing the
> "Server" part.
> 
>     - 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.
> 
> 
> Skipping this one as well, since I've never tried it. Seems to get a lot
> of traction however.
> You usually want:
> 
> * Async communication, since people live all over the world and they
> don't always have time, so catching up with older discussions are important.
> * Low latency communication. Email is acceptable for high-latency.
> * Since this is Agda: probably unicode support and also support for
> going fully bazonk on notation hell should be built in.
> * Threading/Topic'ing. Because they tend to form and go on a tangent.
> * Ability to be part of multiple communities at the same time.
> Otherwise, people end up having to make a choice, which silos people and
> slashes through cross-community building.
> * Search indexing which work(tm). Slack has had a long history of being
> weak in this regard.
> 
> 
> -- 
> J.
> 
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