Stream: Miscellaneous

Topic: Advice for a new Zulip chat?

Gabriel Scherer (Mar 03 2021 at 13:53):

Hi everyone. I'm about to create a Zulip for types-list, as an experiment. I have never created/moderated a large-ish Zulip chat before, do you have advice? (cc @Théo Zimmermann, a person who has advice)

In particular:

• By default Zulip chats are invite-only, I don't like how this works for category-theory so I am planning to make it open to anyone like Coq. Let me know if this is a horrible mistake.
• I looked at the "stream" structure for the Lean, Coq and category-theory Zulips; did you decide on streams from the start or dynamically? When do you create a new stream? (It looks like category-theory tried to classify things from the start, Lean evolved organically, and Coq uses a couple general streams and then streams specific to sub-communities, which makes a lot of sense.) It seems hard to add existing users to a new stream, am I missing something?
• Have you had moderation trouble? Am I walking into a shitshow? (@Paolo Giarrusso , would you want to co-moderate?)
• I haven't found a pointer to a Zulip Archive for Coq. Is it an intentional choice not to?
• Anything else?

Thanks!

Théo Zimmermann (Mar 03 2021 at 13:56):

Moderating this Zulip is not a burden: we get zero spam (so much less to review than in Discourse, despite there being more activity). Though, it's kind of disappointing that there is no moderator role, only an administrator role (so we are only two, with @Cyril Cohen to do this).

Théo Zimmermann (Mar 03 2021 at 13:57):

So our actual admin activities have more to do with renaming streams and changing descriptions (but anyone is allowed to create a stream).

Théo Zimmermann (Mar 03 2021 at 13:58):

And also with moving topics across streams.

Théo Zimmermann (Mar 03 2021 at 13:59):

About streams, it's important not to create too many because putting a discussion in a stream with fewer subscribers is going to make it less visible and less answered.

Théo Zimmermann (Mar 03 2021 at 13:59):

And topics for organizing (and even muting) discussions work just fine.

Théo Zimmermann (Mar 03 2021 at 13:59):

Streams for communities (and specific events) seem like a good fit.

Théo Zimmermann (Mar 03 2021 at 14:00):

We didn't create them all from the start. We created a bunch and left it to project maintainers to add a stream for their project.

Théo Zimmermann (Mar 03 2021 at 14:02):

As an admin, I'm alerted when I mention a user who is not subscribed to the current stream and I can subscribe them. However, I don't think that's the case for normal users (not sure though).

Théo Zimmermann (Mar 03 2021 at 14:03):

We didn't invest the effort (which may be relatively little) to create a Zulip Archive but we definitely wanted to do this.

Gabriel Scherer (Mar 03 2021 at 14:05):

(I should point out that the idea of creating a Zulip for types was suggested to me by @Philipp G. Haselwarter, who then promptly disappeared in the woods to avoid having to work on it. Thanks Philipp!)

Cyril Cohen (Mar 03 2021 at 14:20):

We kicked off this Zulip channel by porting former (separate) gitter channels (https://gitter.im/coq/coq and the like) to streams on this server, as well as the users. That's basically how we inherited the current streams.

Cyril Cohen (Mar 03 2021 at 14:21):

@Théo Zimmermann regularly redirects peoples from there to here.

Gabriel Scherer (Mar 03 2021 at 14:21):

Yes, my understanding is that you found Zulip better than gitter.

Gabriel Scherer (Mar 03 2021 at 14:22):

(We don't have a Discuss forum for types, so it was clear to me that a more-structured chat like Zulip would be a better choice anyway.)

Cyril Cohen (Mar 03 2021 at 14:25):

After almost 1 year on zulip, I think we can claim it improved the quality of the discussion and followup

Gabriel Scherer (Mar 03 2021 at 14:29):

My main issue with these chat platforms is that I spend way too much time in the emoji-picker, looking for the perfect choice :snail:

Cyril Cohen (Mar 03 2021 at 14:31):

Gabriel Scherer said:

My main issue with these chat platforms is that I spend way too much time in the emoji-picker, looking for the perfect choice :snail:

That's too bad, I have a personal strategy for that: I usually stick to cat emojis... :cat: I just type "cat" and I have a limited choice to pick from

Philipp G. Haselwarter (Mar 03 2021 at 16:04):

I got as far as creating types.zulipchat.com, and then decided I'd come back to it when I have a free moment

Cyril Cohen (Mar 03 2021 at 16:12):

Did you notice this: https://zulip.com/for/open-source/

Emilio Jesús Gallego Arias (Mar 03 2021 at 16:16):

An interesting resource would be actually compiling a list of all the chat channels, it is getting a bit "crazy" with discord, discuss, zulip, gitter, IRC, etc...

Emilio Jesús Gallego Arias (Mar 03 2021 at 16:16):

slacks

Emilio Jesús Gallego Arias (Mar 03 2021 at 16:17):

OCaml has at least a discord, a discuss, a mailing list,

Emilio Jesús Gallego Arias (Mar 03 2021 at 16:17):

I feel like writing all the sites down would be a first steps towards maybe consolidation

Last updated: Jun 10 2023 at 06:31 UTC