The greatest trick the devil ever pulled ... was convincing internet communities to switch from email lists / IRC / another open standard to Slack / Discord. The latest example of a “it's only free while we say it's free" is CNCF’s / Kubernetes's Slack - https://github.com/kubernetes/community/blob/master/communication/slack-migration-faq.md - who it appears have *4 days* to backup their history (for a server with 100,000s of users)

Neither Slack nor Discord are reasonable, serious, professional, options for open community discussion. They are either too expensive, and/or involve inappropriate advertising. And who knows when Discord will start pulling this kind of behaviour, too, requiring large communities to pay?

The problem is today when anyone says "can't we just use an email list?" they are pooh-pooh'ed as being horribly out of touch. Hence why even the linked FAQ describes Discord as the only likely exit plan for Kubernetes. What a mess.

@mikebroberts
I don't get why #Zulip is not used more often in "forums", for support work and for general community building. IMO, it's got modern UI and it's purpose-built to organize communities and help with asynchronous communication that can be searched later. Plus, it's entirely free and open source software and there are both self hosting and paid hosting options.

No other solution I know comes close, especially not the ones that focus on #VoiceChat or try to mimic #Discord, e.g. #Revolt.

@tynstar @mikebroberts documentation is also among the best I have seen, and consistently so

@mikebroberts @hrbrmstr agree that slack nor discord are appropriate, but I think you're overselling the capability of IRC and email lists, which are both UI disasters

There is no adequate solution, which is why people choose slack and discord

@llimllib Define "adequate"

/cc @mikebroberts @hrbrmstr

@heiglandreas I mean I'm not sure if you're trolling, obviously that's an aesthetic judgement

@llimllib The interesting thing with aesthetics and email-lists and IRC is that it is up to you which tool you are using to interact with it.

With all SaaS solutions you have to use whatever someone else thinks is adequate.

So in terms of IRC and Email being "UI Disasters" - that's solely on you (the person complaining, not necessarily YOU) for not finding tools that suit your UI requirements.

Blaming that on the protocol is ... broken to say the least...

@heiglandreas The practical, actual, user interfaces of email and IRC that exist have proven to be terrible interfaces for practical, actual humans - enough that they've chosen alternatives when given the choice, despite knowing what they were giving up

suggesting that it's their fault for holding the tools wrong doesn't make the tools any better

@llimllib

I was talking to normal non-tech people on IRC 25 years ago. If they could figure it out, what's everybody's problem now?

@heiglandreas

@llimllib @mikebroberts @hrbrmstr Zulip for chat?

@richlv

The Rust project is using Zulip, for what it's worth.

@llimllib @mikebroberts @hrbrmstr

@mikebroberts @ariadne I hate slack, discord and Telegram with enough hate to power a small village. Thankfully Matrix.org and Colanode.com exist; I also see some attempts to reboot IRC (v3 I think?).

@wolfin @mikebroberts hi i started the ircv3 project, it is 17 years old now 😂

@pj

Okay, but we're talking about Kubernetes developers and users. All of these people are programmers. If anyone can figure out how to use IRC, surely they can.

As for being cavemen, that's no excuse for giving up control. If they were self-hosting IRC, they wouldn't be getting kicked out of their own chat server with only a week's notice, and I could've warned them of the likelihood of this outcome years ago. It's why my org self-hosts everything that's critical.

@llimllib @heiglandreas

@argv_minus_one @richlv @llimllib @mikebroberts @hrbrmstr been recommending Zulip, Mattermost, and Matrix to people. Mattermost has the added benefit of tie-ins to Nextcloud. They all have self-host options, and are FOSS.