Hello Noé, Noé Lopez <[email protected]> writes:
> Personally not a fan of Zulip, though I wouldn’t block it. > > Are we also considering Matrix? Which seems to me more usual in its ways > of communication. I’ve had good experience with the Matrix channels for > GNOME. The main reason why Zulip was proposed instead of Matrix is for the kind of workflow that it enforces. Matrix is like any other chatting app, you have rooms where different conversations happen, all together, in the same room. This is problematic for a project as diverse as Guix, there are many unrelated topics to cover, and many of the people that participate on those conversations are from different time zones. With the standard messaging app workflow, people from different time zones are excluded from the conversations because by the time they enter the room, many messages, likely from different topics, already swarmed the chat. Yes, it's possible to scroll back and reply to those messages (given that you manage to find them), but then the conversation has already died and sparking interest again can be difficult. In particular, because those involved in the conversation will likely follow the same process you just did, once they enter the room they need to search the message and start the fire again. I would attribute the problem I just described to a tool that encourages a synchronous workflow. That being standard messaging apps such as XMPP, Matrix, IRC... The other tool we are used to is email. This one is a better fit for the kind of asynchronous conversations I was exemplifying. Now, this tool also has its drawback, it's unfamiliar for newcomers, requires configuration, it's extremely brittle (eg: a miss-configured client breaks the thread for everyone), it's difficult to search past conversations; and more importantly, it excludes people that came late, you are relegated to searching the archives and it's unlikely you will know how to do a proper response that will not break the thread from there. > One advantage of Matrix is that people can use their existing Matrix > accounts to interact with the Guix channel, and we could provide > @guix.gnu.org addresses for committers to speak on external channels. With all of it's drawbacks, email serves us well, and many of us have comfortable setups integrated in Emacs. This is why we need a tool that makes our community more inclusive, but also allows people that are used to a particular workflow to continue to participate from the comfort of their setup. One tool that seems to fit the bill is Zulip and it's mail integration. We still need to try it more in depth to know for sure but it's a good start. > Also an obligatory XMPP mention, but I don’t know enough about it to > suggest it correctly. I'm not familiar with it, I think it does not provide the sync/async hybrid workflow that Zulip does. Also, it should be possible to bridge IRC to Zulip, so those who value a more traditional chatting flow can still participate. > I think a good first step would be (as you said) to define the expected > communication from committers and teams. Then we can choose a good tool > that can meet these needs. Yes, that would be great. Best regards, Sergio
