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the Show HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33248488 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33248488 and there was another thread last year for their main d

the Show HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33248488 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33248488 and there was another thread last year for their main domain https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31494908 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31494908 I wish all the locked away Slack communities would use Linen[1] because there are so many nuggets of bug-fixery buried in Slack that will age off or never be found in the horrors of Slack search 1: I really wish they'd just stop using Slack entirely since Zulip is open source and bundles this "allow search engine indexing" built-in, but I think that ship has sailed

tomrod 4y ago
Tell me more about Zulip?
- ctvo 4y ago
  https://www.google.com/search?q=Zulip https://www.google.com/search?q=Zulip
  - tomrod 4y ago
    Hey, glad you found information that works for you! In my experience, Google search results are poor these days, prioritizing esoterica or blogspam instead of useful insights due to decades of SEO battles. I prefer to hear what folks I'm directly interacting with are saying when they make a recommendation instead of jumping to the old "LMGTFY" silliness we all smugly passed to others circa 2008 who forgot to RTFM/RTA.
    - ctvo 4y ago
      It's the first result, and has a landing page with all the information you need. Maybe you should really Google that first. Asking intelligent questions, but doing some of the legwork yourself would get better results in my experience. Wasting people's time by asking them with 0 context provided (so they know your level of expertise) often gets them to repeat to you what could have been discovered in 30 seconds. You waste your time. You waste their time. It's a selfish thing to do.
      - tomrod 4y ago
        > You waste your time. You waste their time. It's a selfish thing to do. I disagree, evidenced by the many other commentators who clearly wanted to discuss. I feel the only time wasted has been in trying to police comments on a comment thread eliciting uncurated information. Have a good day wherever you may be.
        ctvo 4y ago
        > I feel the only time wasted has been in trying to police comments on a comment thread eliciting uncurated information. I disagree. I don't think anyone has tried to police anything here. I sent you down the best path to get the information you wanted quickly, and I was the first one to reply to your question. You're welcome. Have a nice day.
- dsr_ 4y ago
  It's everything you want in a threaded chat server except federation. Web client is responsive and has good shortcuts. Easy-ish to self-host, cheap to buy hosted. Configurable privacy. Integration with all sorts of stuff, including email. A little lacking in community moderation tools. Text-mode client works acceptably well over a low-ish bandwidth connection. IOS and Android clients. Open source.
  - mdaniel 4y ago
    > Easy-ish to self-host, cheap to buy hosted. And, perhaps most relevant to my complaint, they offer hosting for open source projects (unlike Mattermost which is ... like, "send us email and we'll think about it" or something). I would guess Mattermost would feel the most comfortabe to Slack users, since I admit that Zulip has a different mental model than Slack, but I believe it is much better for ongoing thread management once one gets used to it (IOW, had they won the fight, it would be Slack that would be the "eww, what is going on with this threading model?!") --- https://github.com/zulip/zulip#readme https://github.com/zulip/zulip#readme (Apache 2!) just as a contrast to the sibling's LMGTFY comment :-(
    - ghostpepper 4y ago
      I think Slack has realised there are shortcomings in their threading as I just noticed today in the iOS app that there is an option to re-join a threaded comment back to the main channel after it's been sent to a thread.
  - ghostpepper 4y ago
    The functionality is amazing but the UX/UI is not polished to the level of a commercial product like Slack or Discord (or Twitter, which it is arguably more comparable to)
    - stavros 4y ago
      I disagree, the UX definitely is very polished, and much better than Slack. The UI, yes, I agree, though I find it very clean and functional.
- stavros 4y ago
  Unfortunately for Zulip, it's one of those things that you have to experience to understand how great it is. I can tell you all about its speed, its great UX, about how easy the threading model makes discourse, about how it's open source, about how it's a joy to navigate, etc. Nothing sounds like that big a deal unless you seriously try it in a company setting. I tried it once and there's no going back, I miss it every time I have to use Slack or Discord.
- breck 4y ago
  Recently I saw that the Rust dev community is using Zulip: https://rust-lang.zulipchat.com/ https://rust-lang.zulipchat.com/ I haven't used it yet, but in general excited by projects like Linen and Zulip. I hate Slack and Discord (I love the web, deep links, and indexability/searchability)
  - est 4y ago
    also the leanprover.zulipchat.com
pcthrowaway 4y ago
> here are so many nuggets of bug-fixery buried in Slack that will age off or never be found in the horrors of Slack search Do people consider Slack search subpar? I haven't used a chat app with a better one. Discord is abysmal by comparison
kodah 4y ago
I personally don't think Slack is a great product for open communities. While I don't think they're actively hostile to open communities it's certainly not their priority from a feature perspective. In my view, Slack is an enterprise product, and Discord is more of a commercial product. It's very difficult to be both and gain necessary market share. There's also the tangential fact that open source shouldn't be relying on proprietary communication protocols that are difficult to migrate away from or make it difficult to maintain anonymity.

tomrod 4y ago

Tell me more about Zulip?

ctvo 4y ago
https://www.google.com/search?q=Zulip https://www.google.com/search?q=Zulip
- tomrod 4y ago
  Hey, glad you found information that works for you! In my experience, Google search results are poor these days, prioritizing esoterica or blogspam instead of useful insights due to decades of SEO battles. I prefer to hear what folks I'm directly interacting with are saying when they make a recommendation instead of jumping to the old "LMGTFY" silliness we all smugly passed to others circa 2008 who forgot to RTFM/RTA.
  - ctvo 4y ago
    It's the first result, and has a landing page with all the information you need. Maybe you should really Google that first. Asking intelligent questions, but doing some of the legwork yourself would get better results in my experience. Wasting people's time by asking them with 0 context provided (so they know your level of expertise) often gets them to repeat to you what could have been discovered in 30 seconds. You waste your time. You waste their time. It's a selfish thing to do.
    - tomrod 4y ago
      > You waste your time. You waste their time. It's a selfish thing to do. I disagree, evidenced by the many other commentators who clearly wanted to discuss. I feel the only time wasted has been in trying to police comments on a comment thread eliciting uncurated information. Have a good day wherever you may be.
      - ctvo 4y ago
        > I feel the only time wasted has been in trying to police comments on a comment thread eliciting uncurated information. I disagree. I don't think anyone has tried to police anything here. I sent you down the best path to get the information you wanted quickly, and I was the first one to reply to your question. You're welcome. Have a nice day.
dsr_ 4y ago
It's everything you want in a threaded chat server except federation. Web client is responsive and has good shortcuts. Easy-ish to self-host, cheap to buy hosted. Configurable privacy. Integration with all sorts of stuff, including email. A little lacking in community moderation tools. Text-mode client works acceptably well over a low-ish bandwidth connection. IOS and Android clients. Open source.
- mdaniel 4y ago
  > Easy-ish to self-host, cheap to buy hosted. And, perhaps most relevant to my complaint, they offer hosting for open source projects (unlike Mattermost which is ... like, "send us email and we'll think about it" or something). I would guess Mattermost would feel the most comfortabe to Slack users, since I admit that Zulip has a different mental model than Slack, but I believe it is much better for ongoing thread management once one gets used to it (IOW, had they won the fight, it would be Slack that would be the "eww, what is going on with this threading model?!") --- https://github.com/zulip/zulip#readme https://github.com/zulip/zulip#readme (Apache 2!) just as a contrast to the sibling's LMGTFY comment :-(
  - ghostpepper 4y ago
    I think Slack has realised there are shortcomings in their threading as I just noticed today in the iOS app that there is an option to re-join a threaded comment back to the main channel after it's been sent to a thread.
- ghostpepper 4y ago
  The functionality is amazing but the UX/UI is not polished to the level of a commercial product like Slack or Discord (or Twitter, which it is arguably more comparable to)
  - stavros 4y ago
    I disagree, the UX definitely is very polished, and much better than Slack. The UI, yes, I agree, though I find it very clean and functional.
stavros 4y ago
Unfortunately for Zulip, it's one of those things that you have to experience to understand how great it is. I can tell you all about its speed, its great UX, about how easy the threading model makes discourse, about how it's open source, about how it's a joy to navigate, etc. Nothing sounds like that big a deal unless you seriously try it in a company setting. I tried it once and there's no going back, I miss it every time I have to use Slack or Discord.
breck 4y ago
Recently I saw that the Rust dev community is using Zulip: https://rust-lang.zulipchat.com/ https://rust-lang.zulipchat.com/ I haven't used it yet, but in general excited by projects like Linen and Zulip. I hate Slack and Discord (I love the web, deep links, and indexability/searchability)
- est 4y ago
  also the leanprover.zulipchat.com

pcthrowaway 4y ago

> here are so many nuggets of bug-fixery buried in Slack that will age off or never be found in the horrors of Slack search Do people consider Slack search subpar? I haven't used a chat app with a better one. Discord is abysmal by comparison

kodah 4y ago

I personally don't think Slack is a great product for open communities. While I don't think they're actively hostile to open communities it's certainly not their priority from a feature perspective. In my view, Slack is an enterprise product, and Discord is more of a commercial product. It's very difficult to be both and gain necessary market share. There's also the tangential fact that open source shouldn't be relying on proprietary communication protocols that are difficult to migrate away from or make it difficult to maintain anonymity.