Moving chat platforms
Kat Marchán (they/she)
Public
Seen by 32
This community started off with a casually-created Discord, which currently has around 115+ people. That said, Discord doesn't feel like the right platform to have a lot of the conversations we're having. Conversation threads are all mixed together, context gets lost in history, and anyone joining a conversation has a hard time figuring out what we're particularly talking about right now.
Poll Created Fri 30 Apr 2021 3:14AM
Try Out Zulip for a week! Closed Sat 1 May 2021 3:03AM
Looks like we're going to be trying Zulip for a week! As a reminder, here's the join link: https://lilredcoop.zulipchat.com/join/e2evagcx4qmd3jqt36pdiccu/
To fix this, I'd like us to try moving to a different platform. After considering the pros and cons of various alternatives, I've settled on proposing Zulip, largely because of its excellent threading and context support. I believe this platform will be the right mix of realtime + context that we need from a chat application.
I've already created a Zulip (invite link) that we can start trying out right away.
This proposal is NOT a final decision on whether we'll stay in Zulip, but only whether we're willing to try it out.
What say you? :)
Results
| Results | Option | % of points | Voters | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
|
Agree | 78.9% | 15 | |
| Abstain | 21.1% | 4 | ||
| Disagree | 0.0% | 0 | ||
| Block | 0.0% | 0 | ||
| Undecided | 0% | 0 |
19 of 19 people have participated (100%)
Anonymous
Fri 30 Apr 2021 3:14AM
I mean it's my idea and I actually really like Zulip for this sort of thing. I'm really excited to try it out!
Anonymous
Fri 30 Apr 2021 3:14AM
Don't like Discord's "one identity everywhere" policy, topics will make things easier (discord doesn't even have threads) [Also I'd rather not have Matrix for the same "too many chat platforms" reason as one of the other votes]
Anonymous
Fri 30 Apr 2021 3:14AM
More than happy to try it out. I would prefer we use Matrix so I don't end up on a billionth chat platform, but nothing against Zulip itself...
Anonymous
Fri 30 Apr 2021 3:14AM
Always worth trying out different platforms. And Zulip looks really cool at first glance
Anonymous
Fri 30 Apr 2021 3:14AM
I'm definitely interested in moving away from anything proprietary and towards software that we could self-host, even if we don't do that right away. Zulip looks promising.
Anonymous
Fri 30 Apr 2021 3:14AM
Trying new things is good, especially before we get too entrenched in a proprietary platform that actively inhibits data portabality (lookin at you, Discord).
Also, the opt-in model for channels seems...far surperior to the entire-server-in-your-inbox-at-all-times model.
...my sole complaint so far is the lack of a non-Gravatar (aka wordpress) method to set profile pics.
jak Fri 30 Apr 2021 5:57PM
Would like to mention that Matrix, while theoretically "more secure", is an absolute pain to sysadmin, and the data portability is really poor. I'm all for reducing the number of chat platforms in use...but unless data security is the main sticking point (per the Discord convo, it's kinda not), Matrix's usability (vs something like Zulip) make it a poor candidate for coordinating and communicating inside a group of any significant size.
Woozalia Hypertwin Sun 2 May 2021 7:05PM
I'm installing Zulip right now. It makes a number of unwarranted assumptions of various degrees of problematicity:
1. assumes it can just set up its own userspace, rather than using one you set up for it
2. is happiest getting its own SSL certs with certbot; does not know how to deal with an existing certbot... but does have instrux for using your SSL certs instead of getting its own.
3. assumes you are willing to use nginix... but the install continued after giving a bunch of errors about this. Will it work? ...nnno, the install failed. I'll have to see if there are instrux for using it with Apache.
4. uses postgresql, which is annoying to me because the GUI tool for that still doesn't work well over ssh.
Woozalia Hypertwin · Fri 30 Apr 2021 3:37PM
Zulip's install instructions look Not Super Difficult, so I've got that on my to-do list to try out. That would, as I understand it, give us access to more features without a monthly fee.