This is really cool tech. I'm using it in my "Discord meets Minecraft" app (jel.app), it's basically exactly the primitive missing to really have a multi-tenant story for these kinds of chat systems.
The Matrix Space Beta
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Re: The Matrix Space Beta
#12Once this becomes widespread, I can actually start using Matrix as a real Discord / Slack alternative (communities just weren't cutting it, unfortunately).
Once the audio chat feature is seamlessly integrated, I even consider ditching my old mumble server for it. Or not. Probably not. Our group just needs audio, with the occasional picture flood, until they get it out of their system. Since some (me include) won't use Discord due to privacy concerns, I still hope for a good and reliable self hosted alternative. A more modern user interface sure would be nice.
Re: The Matrix Space Beta
#13Once this becomes widespread, I can actually start using Matrix as a real Discord / Slack alternative (communities just weren't cutting it, unfortunately).
Once the audio chat feature is seamlessly integrated, I even consider ditching my old mumble server for it. Or not. Probably not. Our group just needs audio, with the occasional picture flood, until they get it out of their system. Since some (me include) won't use Discord due to privacy concerns, I still hope for a good and reliable self hosted alternative. A more modern user interface sure would be nice.
voice/video rooms are planned for June.
Re: The Matrix Space Beta
#14Earlier quoted context omitted.
Once the audio chat feature is seamlessly integrated, I even consider ditching my old mumble server for it. Or not. Probably not. Our group just needs audio, with the occasional picture flood, until they get it out of their system. Since some (me include) won't use Discord due to privacy concerns, I still hope for a good and reliable self hosted alternative. A more modern user interface sure would be nice.
voice/video rooms are planned for June.
Great to hear! I'd love to be able to recommend Matrix/Element as a Discord alternative.
However, actually competing with Discord will require a tonne of hard work in Element. The little things like automatic voice activation, echo cancellation and volume normalization are the reasons Discord are as fantastic as it is, so Element will need to be excellent with those to compete.
Re: The Matrix Space Beta
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
voice/video rooms are planned for June.
Great to hear! I'd love to be able to recommend Matrix/Element as a Discord alternative. However, actually competing with Discord will require a tonne of hard work in Element. The little things like automatic voice activation, echo cancellation and volume normalization are the reasons Discord are as fantastic as it is, so Element will need to be excellent with those to compete.
The first cut will be using Jitsi as the engine, albeit with more appropriate UI, which gives you AEC (echo cancellation) from WebRTC and some level of AGC (normalisation). But we have plans to go far beyond that, and are very aware it’s hard work. However, pre-Matrix, the core team professionally built VoIP stacks, so we have some experience here (and our own WebRTC implementation should we need it :)
Re: The Matrix Space Beta
#16For what it’s worth, the thing I find most exciting about Spaces is that they provide a decentralised hierarchical namespace with decentralised access controls for every room (ie pubsub topic) in Matrix. So it’s like we’ve sprouted an openly federated global hierarchical filing system for freeform realtime data streams of all flavours - where people can go crazy defining their own trees, applying their own curation i…
> Discord style communities
Boring and obvious, but this is probably what most people would want. Now that we've seen how good and usable the Discord model is, it's pretty much the baseline now for public chat rooms.
Re: The Matrix Space Beta
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
Once the audio chat feature is seamlessly integrated, I even consider ditching my old mumble server for it. Or not. Probably not. Our group just needs audio, with the occasional picture flood, until they get it out of their system. Since some (me include) won't use Discord due to privacy concerns, I still hope for a good and reliable self hosted alternative. A more modern user interface sure would be nice.
voice/video rooms are planned for June.
That's amazing! This is such a smash-hit feature from Discord that no other messenger has gotten right yet.
Feels like a needed step for community-building after having used Discord for so long. You are doing awesome work.
Re: The Matrix Space Beta
#18Wohoo! Thanks to Spaces, I feel comfortable using Cactus comments for blog posts (e.g: https://viccuad.me/blog/enabling-cactus-comments ), as I could create a private space containing all the rooms for each blog post comment chain. To me it shows the snowballing effect of features. Also, Matrix's Spaces (even in Beta) seem more flexible and thought out than the second best implementation I know, in Slack.
Definitely check out Zulip for a pretty sweet threaded model also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27149123
Matrix’s threading model has been designed to support Zulip (we’ve chatted a bunch to Tim about linking them up) - the only catch is that it’s not implemented in any clients other than Cerulean so far. Element should add support soon now Spaces are out though.
Re: The Matrix Space Beta
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
Great to hear! I'd love to be able to recommend Matrix/Element as a Discord alternative. However, actually competing with Discord will require a tonne of hard work in Element. The little things like automatic voice activation, echo cancellation and volume normalization are the reasons Discord are as fantastic as it is, so Element will need to be excellent with those to compete.
The first cut will be using Jitsi as the engine, albeit with more appropriate UI, which gives you AEC (echo cancellation) from WebRTC and some level of AGC (normalisation). But we have plans to go far beyond that, and are very aware it’s hard work. However, pre-Matrix, the core team professionally built VoIP stacks, so we have some experience here (and our own WebRTC implementation should we need it :)
I would love to see you use Jitsi and contribute back, where possible.
Also, if you move on for reasons that aren't bike-shedding then I'd love to know what the architectural/technical reasoning is.
Re: The Matrix Space Beta
#20> As many know, over the years we've experimented with how to let users locate and curate sets of users and rooms in Matrix. Back in Nov 2017 we added 'groups' (aka 'communities') as a custom mechanism for this - introducing identifiers beginning with a + symbol to represent sets of rooms and users, like +matrix:matrix.org.
We already have a universal notation for identifying resources on the Web. Why not use that?