Zulip – Threaded real-time chat for distributed teams • Hacker News Board

Re: Zulip – Threaded real-time chat for distributed teams

#21

Post by aidenn0 » Tue, May 31, 2022, 6:34 PM UTC

KronisLV wrote: post #15

The carousel on the main page is very easily understandable, which is great! The whole topics (sub-channels, basically) idea seems interesting as well, though personally the solution itself seems pretty similar to two other great pieces of software out there: - Rocket.Chat https://rocket.chat/ (the Jitsi integration was especially nice) - Mattermost https://mattermost.com/ (really simple to setup) Both of those also…

I haven't used Rocket.Chat, but I've used the other two:

Threading feels bolted on in Mattermost, but is the primary feature of zulip.

Think of Zulip as a realtime version of NNTP, and Mattermost as a more modern IRC with a "reply" feature. The "right" way to use Zulip and Mattermost is quite different, though each one can be easily used as an inferior version of the other.

Re: Zulip – Threaded real-time chat for distributed teams

#22

Post by [deleted] » Tue, May 31, 2022, 6:36 PM UTC

[deleted]

Re: Zulip – Threaded real-time chat for distributed teams

#23

Post by tabbott » Tue, May 31, 2022, 6:36 PM UTC

capableweb wrote: post #9

Something I didn't see before, is that a bunch of open source communities seems to starting to use Zulip now as well. I've only seen it in a "remote software company" context before. Here are some case studies from Zulip themselves about specific organizations, how they moved to Zulip and how they are using it: - https://zulip.com/case-studies/rust/ - https://zulip.com/case-studies/asciidoctor/ - https://zulip.com/ca…

Zulip has long been popular with open source projects (https://zulip.com/for/open-source/), as well as a bunch of other non-business use cases (teaching, research, conferences, etc.). One reason folks might feel like it's new is that we recently reworked the Zulip website to discuss these other use cases for which Zulip is popular.

We have always had a practice of prioritizing feedback and feature requests from open source communities, because improving the productivity of the global open source community is an important part of our mission as an organization.

One of the largest such investments has been the native public access option (no account required!) that we released earlier this month:

https://blog.zulip.com/2022/05/05/public-access-option/

(I lead the Zulip project)

Re: Zulip – Threaded real-time chat for distributed teams

#24

Post by tabbott » Tue, May 31, 2022, 6:40 PM UTC

mherdeg wrote: post #14

What happened to Gale? That was the other IM system I saw that felt like it had the complexity and internal self-consistency of Zephyr and it feels like it just kind of fell of the face of the earth.

Howdy mherdeg!

I don't think I've heard of Gale, nor can I find it now that you mention the name... Which I guess is consistent with your "fell off the face of the Earth" theory. If you or anyone else can find a link, I'd love to read about it :).

Re: Zulip – Threaded real-time chat for distributed teams

#25

Post by tiffanyh » Tue, May 31, 2022, 6:41 PM UTC

ChrisSD wrote: post #19

capableweb wrote: post #9

Something I didn't see before, is that a bunch of open source communities seems to starting to use Zulip now as well. I've only seen it in a "remote software company" context before. Here are some case studies from Zulip themselves about specific organizations, how they moved to Zulip and how they are using it: - https://zulip.com/case-studies/rust/ - https://zulip.com/case-studies/asciidoctor/ - https://zulip.com/ca…

It does take a bit of getting used to. Zulip is kind of a cross between chat and a forum. However, once I did get used to it I think it's been great. Organizing chat into defined topics is super useful for following discussions you're interested in, filtering out those you aren't and for keeping conversations going across time zones. It's more discoverable than chat but not as rigid as an actual forum. I feel it work…

It's most akin to email list serv.

Re: Zulip – Threaded real-time chat for distributed teams

#26

Post by m00dy » Tue, May 31, 2022, 6:43 PM UTC

great marketing, but again I can't see anything related to privacy.

Re: Zulip – Threaded real-time chat for distributed teams

#27

Post by turtlebits » Tue, May 31, 2022, 6:44 PM UTC

oxff wrote: post #2

It is so bad though.

To me, the UI is unfriendly/confusing. Not sure if I'm just used to Slack, but it is very hard to use.

Simple things like stream messages only being displayed halfway down the viewport with no scrollbar making it seem like there are no earlier messages.

Re: Zulip – Threaded real-time chat for distributed teams

#28

Post by dgacmu » Tue, May 31, 2022, 6:46 PM UTC

Strom wrote: post #16

wnolens wrote: post #12

Given the 'tour', it's slack with named threads (that can be pinned). I like that feature. But it seems a pretty small thing. What are the other things that stand out about it? other than being open source.

As someone who has used Zulip for years, I consider the named threads to be the reason to use Zulip. When used properly, it makes following discussions actually possible without being drowned by other concurrent messages. I'd say Discord is superior in many other ways, but for me this one killer feature still makes me prefer Zulip for work.

Strongly agree. My small, fully remote startup uses it, and this is the big reason we switched away from slack. The name threads are simply terrific for making it a better way to manage communication.

Re: Zulip – Threaded real-time chat for distributed teams

#29

Post by samatman » Tue, May 31, 2022, 6:48 PM UTC

I hope at some point to see a federated implementation of the Zulip communication model over Matrix. https://github.com/zulip/zulip/issues/356

I'm at a point of choice fatigue with communication platforms where Zulip being siloed is more important than it being open source. I'm phasing out proprietary platforms in a way that will take years and may never complete. I don't want more apps, I don't want another user account, and I certainly don't want a bunch of user accounts on different servers.

Re: Zulip – Threaded real-time chat for distributed teams

#30

Post by mherdeg » Tue, May 31, 2022, 6:51 PM UTC

tabbott wrote: post #24

mherdeg wrote: post #14

What happened to Gale? That was the other IM system I saw that felt like it had the complexity and internal self-consistency of Zephyr and it feels like it just kind of fell of the face of the earth.

Howdy mherdeg! I don't think I've heard of Gale, nor can I find it now that you mention the name... Which I guess is consistent with your "fell off the face of the Earth" theory. If you or anyone else can find a link, I'd love to read about it :).