Stream: Miscellaneous

Topic: web public streams

Karl Palmskog (Mar 15 2022 at 20:36):

Zulip is now beta testing something called web public streams. The Lean Zulip started using this recently.

Web-public streams can be viewed by anyone on the Internet without creating an account in your organization.

Is this something we want to use for streams like #Coq users? Maybe even for #Coq devs & plugin devs?

Gaëtan Gilbert (Mar 15 2022 at 21:27):

for all the streams

Karl Palmskog (Mar 15 2022 at 21:29):

I don't think we want the special "event streams", like for hackathon/CUDW to be web public by default. The organizers should decide.

Gaëtan Gilbert (Mar 15 2022 at 21:31):

why not? aren't they public in https://coq.gitlab.io/zulip-archive/ anyway?

Karl Palmskog (Mar 15 2022 at 21:32):

the difference to me is "real time public" vs. "publicly archived with X hours of delay"

Karl Palmskog (Mar 15 2022 at 21:33):

given the web public option, we may even want to deprecate the HTML archive

Gaëtan Gilbert (Mar 15 2022 at 21:34):

Karl Palmskog said:

the difference to me is "real time public" vs. "publicly archived with X hours of delay"

how does that matter?

Enrico Tassi (Mar 15 2022 at 21:34):

is google indexing public streams well?

Karl Palmskog (Mar 15 2022 at 21:35):

timing matters because of editing. People routinely edit their posts, but usually shortly after posting them

Gaëtan Gilbert (Mar 15 2022 at 21:35):

the archive doesn't handle edits well

Karl Palmskog (Mar 15 2022 at 21:36):

but to my knowledge it does a batch snapshot. So most posts will already be edited by then (since edits were done just after posting)

Karl Palmskog (Mar 15 2022 at 21:37):

Enrico Tassi said:

is google indexing public streams well?

they currently hide the "view without login" behind a submit button, not sure spiders follow that

Paolo Giarrusso (Mar 15 2022 at 21:45):

please remember to notify (or ask!) users of changes on this front — we learned recently that some care quite a bit :-)

Théo Zimmermann (Mar 16 2022 at 09:01):

If we have the option to make some streams public and some not, then it makes sense to me to leave the option to the people who create / manage the streams. As for removing the Zulip archive, this was the hope, but I guess it depends on whether it serves a purpose that would not be covered by making streams public.

Théo Zimmermann (Mar 16 2022 at 14:49):

After reading the doc, here are some quoted caveat:

Only users in trusted roles like Moderators can be given permission to create web-public streams. This is intended to make it hard for an attacker to host malicious content in an unadvertised web-public stream in a legitimate organization.

Web-public streams do not yet support search engine indexing. You can use zulip-archive to create an archive of a Zulip organization that can be indexed by search engines.

The web-public view is not yet integrated with Zulip's live-update system. As a result, a visitor will not see new messages that are sent to a topic they are currently viewing without reloading the browser window.

Théo Zimmermann (Mar 16 2022 at 14:50):

This means that new streams created by non-moderators will need to be made web-public by moderators afterward.

Théo Zimmermann (Mar 16 2022 at 14:51):

We can set process by which after each new public stream is created, a moderator or admin will go to the stream and ask if it's OK to make it web-public, giving the opportunity to, e.g., organizers of events, to express a different preference.

Théo Zimmermann (Mar 16 2022 at 14:53):

cc @Cyril Cohen BTW (do you want to take care of reaching out to support@zulip.com to activate the feature?)

Karl Palmskog (Mar 16 2022 at 14:54):

bottom line to me is that the main use of web public for now is that links to specific conversations become usable out-of-the-box. This potentially means we don't have to double post information in GitHub issues, we can just link to Zulip.

Cyril Cohen (Mar 16 2022 at 15:41):

Théo Zimmermann said:

cc Cyril Cohen BTW (do you want to take care of reaching out to support@zulip.com to activate the feature?)

Sure I could send a mail to activate the feature

Cyril Cohen (Mar 16 2022 at 15:42):

Paolo Giarrusso said:

please remember to notify (or ask!) users of changes on this front — we learned recently that some care quite a bit :-)

I'm not sure how we can ask. (If one stream member refuses, does it mean we cannot make the stream public??)

Cyril Cohen (Mar 16 2022 at 15:44):

Anyway the conversations are already made public through https://coq.gitlab.io/zulip-archive/ only the way to access conversations changes.
Hence I think we merely need to notify each stream before making them public

Cyril Cohen (Mar 16 2022 at 15:55):

Cyril Cohen said:

Théo Zimmermann said:

cc Cyril Cohen BTW (do you want to take care of reaching out to support@zulip.com to activate the feature?)

Sure I could send a mail to activate the feature

done

Notification Bot (Mar 16 2022 at 15:56):

This topic was moved here from #Coq devs & plugin devs > web public streams by Cyril Cohen.

Théo Zimmermann (Jul 10 2023 at 13:37):

@Emilio Jesús Gallego Arias @Bas Spitters @Yannick Zakowski You have created at least one stream (among #Sabancı Coq Course - Sept 2022, #ConCert, #SSProve, #Interaction Trees) since we turned all the public streams to web-public (which means that users can browse them without being logged in). Any concern about me making these streams web-public as well? (This is an operation that only Zulip admins can do.)

Yannick Zakowski (Jul 10 2023 at 13:38):

Not at all, on the contrary. Thanks!

Bas Spitters (Jul 10 2023 at 13:43):

They can be made public

Emilio Jesús Gallego Arias (Jul 10 2023 at 13:46):

@Théo Zimmermann I wonder what to do with the Sabancı stream, it was only used for the course so maybe should be archived instead

Théo Zimmermann (Jul 10 2023 at 13:50):

I am not aware of an archival feature for Zulip streams. We can restrict who can post to them, but I'm not sure whether this would really bring any benefit. FWIW, all past CUDW, Coq workshop streams, and #FMIE are all web-public, although some streams from other events are private, so YMMV.

Théo Zimmermann (Jul 10 2023 at 13:58):

It looks like a bunch of other streams which I had meant to make web-public (#CertiCoq, #FreeSpec dev & users, #GraphTheory, #hs-to-coq devs & users, #Mtac2, #Proof General devs, #PyCoq) are not, and this might be just me forgetting to "save" after changing the settings. So I'll go over these and make them web-public soon if nobody opposes.

Emilio Jesús Gallego Arias (Jul 10 2023 at 14:16):

I have no idea what is best in the Sabanci workshop stream, the stream had very little traffic in the end. Feel free to do whatever you think is more convenient

Last updated: Dec 07 2023 at 04:02 UTC