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I love the idea of this, but I’m trying to move my team away from synchronous communication. That tends to put us back in email, though that has its own problem

by timwis 6y ago

I love the idea of this, but I’m trying to move my team away from synchronous communication. That tends to put us back in email, though that has its own problems. What is the asynchronous version of zulip? Forums?

price 6y ago
The asynchronous version of Zulip is Zulip. :-) A thing I really like about how Zulip works is that a conversation can happen asynchronously just like email, as well as synchronously. And the same conversation can shift smoothly from one to the other and back. I work on Zulip, and we basically don't use email at all - it's all either in Zulip or on a GitHub thread. (And the interesting discussions, I increasingly try to make sure to do on Zulip because GitHub is such a frustrating place to have a conversation.)
- molsongolden 6y ago
  Adding on to +1 this. Zulip is great for async communication because it surfaces unread messages in an easy to skim and non-overwhelming way. After a day of not checking Zulip, the user can then open the chat and (before seeing any actual messages) see: 1) which streams have had activity. 2) which threads/topics within those streams have had activity. then choose which topics to read in a "relevant to me, not relevant to me" quick skim. Having the topics within streams also allows those topic discussions to persist over time without being lost in the deluge of other messages. There might be thousands of other chat messages between when I ask a question in #frontend > supercool.js but a teammate will skim later, see #frontend > supercool.js [1] and think "hey I know about supercool.js, what's up?" then respond. I can also search to see if there's already a supercool.js topic thread and catch up on what we've discussed in the past.
wott 6y ago
> That tends to put us back in email, though that has its own problems. What is the asynchronous version of zulip? Forums? Newsgroups (NNTP)? (I don't know Zulip and I don't know what problems you have with e-mail, so that's just a guess.)
c17r 6y ago
There’s twist https://twist.com/ https://twist.com/ from the makers of ToDoist
nikisweeting 6y ago
Zulip is awesome because it's async-first, I would argue that it's a chat platform only incidentally. It's primarily a forum / knowledgebase for us. https://monadical.com/posts/how-to-make-remote-work-part-two-zulip.html https://monadical.com/posts/how-to-make-remote-work-part-two...
ci5er 6y ago
What are the problems with email? For me, it seems that having internal mailing lists that anyone can subscribe to (sometimes needing approval, like ceo-staff@) allows for structured topical threaded discussions that are archive able and searchable. Other than one-off q&as, I don't understand why email isn't still the best thing we have?

by timwis 6y ago

price 6y ago

The asynchronous version of Zulip is Zulip. :-) A thing I really like about how Zulip works is that a conversation can happen asynchronously just like email, as well as synchronously. And the same conversation can shift smoothly from one to the other and back. I work on Zulip, and we basically don't use email at all - it's all either in Zulip or on a GitHub thread. (And the interesting discussions, I increasingly try to make sure to do on Zulip because GitHub is such a frustrating place to have a conversation.)

molsongolden 6y ago
Adding on to +1 this. Zulip is great for async communication because it surfaces unread messages in an easy to skim and non-overwhelming way. After a day of not checking Zulip, the user can then open the chat and (before seeing any actual messages) see: 1) which streams have had activity. 2) which threads/topics within those streams have had activity. then choose which topics to read in a "relevant to me, not relevant to me" quick skim. Having the topics within streams also allows those topic discussions to persist over time without being lost in the deluge of other messages. There might be thousands of other chat messages between when I ask a question in #frontend > supercool.js but a teammate will skim later, see #frontend > supercool.js [1] and think "hey I know about supercool.js, what's up?" then respond. I can also search to see if there's already a supercool.js topic thread and catch up on what we've discussed in the past.

wott 6y ago

> That tends to put us back in email, though that has its own problems. What is the asynchronous version of zulip? Forums? Newsgroups (NNTP)? (I don't know Zulip and I don't know what problems you have with e-mail, so that's just a guess.)

c17r 6y ago

There’s twist https://twist.com/ https://twist.com/ from the makers of ToDoist

nikisweeting 6y ago

Zulip is awesome because it's async-first, I would argue that it's a chat platform only incidentally. It's primarily a forum / knowledgebase for us. https://monadical.com/posts/how-to-make-remote-work-part-two-zulip.html https://monadical.com/posts/how-to-make-remote-work-part-two...

ci5er 6y ago

What are the problems with email? For me, it seems that having internal mailing lists that anyone can subscribe to (sometimes needing approval, like ceo-staff@) allows for structured topical threaded discussions that are archive able and searchable. Other than one-off q&as, I don't understand why email isn't still the best thing we have?