torpid spire
@hollow epoch brought up a good point in our admin channel: this is the de facto "Zig community" despite other communities existing.
Is it related to the scale of this server? Does this server cover too many topics and thus funnel everyone in? Is that even a bad thing?
Splitting topic channels into their own communities may be an option (see the Zig Embedded Group, for example), but that only works when those topics are large enough.
hollow epoch
contrasting with rust: theres the official rust discord (acts more like zig-help / compiler-devl), the rust community discord (acts more like a larger-topic prog-disc / zig category / social-disc), the rust reddit (cursed), and various sub-communities on like twitter
torpid spire
It's still pretty centralized tbh
those two discords are the Discords
having two central communities that everyone joins is not decentralization :P
hollow epoch
nah, theres also the Rust zulip which is like a middle ground between the official discord and the community discord. Its where the working-groups are
its def not decentralized, but theres more varied places to go to than there in for zig atm
i.e. leaders in one arent also leaders in another, and theres different vibes
torpid spire
is this the loris thing again lol
note that loris literally does nothing here (no offense but it is true :P)
hollow epoch
its more so the andrew & even us thing
torpid spire
right
are you propsoing that the Zig Internals move to their own server?
that seems reasonable
hollow epoch
like, those in mods here are prob also in known positions in other communities
torpid spire
right
hollow epoch
no proposed changes atm. im still thinking
upper gull
it's expected to some extent that those who participate actively in the language will also take part in the moderation of its communication hubs
i think the community is still too small to expect splinters that don't die off
torpid spire
definitely
upper gull
we have at least two separate zig-related discord servers that are listed in the community list which are ghost towns
network effect is, sadly, a thing
torpid spire
even if splitting per-topic or splitting zig internals off were to happen, well the mods would be the same
xq and matt are (members and thus) mods of the ZEG for example
upper gull
not many people want to be janitors
torpid spire
^
Zig community is small, people who use Zig a lot is small, people who actually want to spend time moderating is even smaller
upper gull
there are lots of reasons the current zig discord is the way it is, which is not great because getting banned from it means losing access to the zig community right now
hollow epoch
i dont think theres a shortage of potential/willing mods in any of the zig communities
upper gull
yes, because the current zig communities are small enough
if we splinter into 10 different communities you might not be able to say the same
not everyone who is interested in a particular zig-adjacent topic is interested in moderating a discord for it
hollow epoch
i think id still agree, as mods are per community (not necessarily bound to discord)
upper gull
regardless, the option exists for those who do want to maintain their community outside of zigcord. it's just that we haven't hit the critical mass where it's viable
exceptions like ZEG exist
torpid spire
but that requires critical mass
ZEG is growing large enough that it's becoming its own community
hollow epoch
oh, i havent joined there yet
once the lang hits 1.0, what do you think will happen to the communities?
upper gull
something like the rust split might happen
the "official line" vs "community lounge" thing
torpid spire
i personally don't think that'll happen; the ZSF is super hands off when it comes to community so it feels unlikely that they'd make an "official" community
unless the decentralization thing changes or something in this server changes i think nothing crazy will happen at 1.0
hollow epoch
hm yea starting to realize its a lot to do with size
frigid ravine
It's a lot to do with size and intended effects. Although Loris is a moderator, and this is the defacto discord for zig dev & zig help, ZSF interests exerts relatively little control over the zigcord. ZSF interests are in, well, making zig, while ours is in maintaining a community around the thing they're making. The size of the entire ecosystem is small compared to other projects, so the interests do align most of the time, but that doesn't mean they're from the same point of origin
If our interests very extremely disaligned, e.g. centred making an alternative to zig, the team making zig would likely just find a different space, and the interests would simply be more visibly different
as far as I'm concerned, there's no perverse incentive structure at play here
torpid spire
and there's simply no reason for them to split off as InK said; by staying here, they get the ~10k people already here who could be contributors and they get moderation for free
and "in return" we get core team members and a sense that this server is "more official," though that's not true
that's the only "incentive structure" i could possibly see
but even then, it doesn't make us act differently in any way
upper gull
win-win
torpid spire
yeah 🤷♂️
frigid ravine
btw making this a meta thread was a good idea lol, nice way to get these thoughts into the public sphere
torpid spire
rare #1023341806810837086 W :^)
(jk i think meta is actually a great way to get community input)
but yeah my POV is that the community is indeed not decentralized and that at the moment that's fine, but as the communty grows it'll slowly fan out
btw, for me the statistic that actually matters is active users in different servers. note that most users here are inactive. if in 3 years this server's at like 1k DAU and the second most active is at like 25 then yeah that'd be concerning, but tbh we're pretty ok atm
upper gull
but yeah my POV is that the community is indeed not decentralized and that at th...
-not
hollow epoch
It's a lot to do with size and intended effects. Although Loris is a moderator, ...
IME, its more than that. There's little incentive structure for ZSF as an organization like you said (apart from keeping a good enough image to not scare away potential donors) but loris (since hes does more community-outreach stuff than andrew) has his grubby little connections in all the major zig source aggregates (reddit, ziggit, here) and is able to influence decisions somewhat like crossbans / retroactive "sus"ing out misbehavors from another zig community
People follow andrew, and consequently the places he endorses. The side effects of a BDFL project. Theres not such thing in the rust space for comparison and im just a bit jelly.
torpid spire
well yeah of course loris has his connections
hollow epoch
edited
torpid spire
should we just ignore loris? :P
also note that "crossbans" happen maybe once a year and only if we agree with them, which we don't most of the time
upper gull
kristoff's gonna walk the plank at this rate 
torpid spire
i don't get it though, why is listening to loris bad?
it's not like im executing everything loris has ever said 1-for-1 no questions asked lol
his feedback is as valid as any other community member's
upper gull
don't mind me i'm shitposting
torpid spire
yeah not you agni lol
frigid ravine
IME, its more than that. There's little incentive structure for ZSF as an organi...
Loris' interests as a ZSF member obviously align with the ZSF, however the organization isn't a homogenous mass of one mind, it's a bunch of very intelligent people which have their own individual interests. Loris, being the sort of community guy of the ZSF has interests in cultivating the kind of community the ZSF, and of course that he himself, would want around Zig. And community cultivating is important, and is not an exclusive feature of centralized communities - in fact, the best decentralized communities tend to have prominent people that do such things, and culminate the essence of what makes a community feel like a good community
hollow epoch
80% memeing, 10% because he runs communities in ways that filters out those who arent contributing to the zig project itself (somewhat explicitly stated in the hms talk & recent hornyposting video). I believe this works for growing the project short term (which checks out for ZSF incentives) but long term reduces the set of people possibly using and marketing zig the language
torpid spire
sure, maybe he does, but we don't
don't get me wrong, someone joining the server and never writing a single line of Zig for 3 years is a point we consider when executing moderation actions for example (and you could argue this is influenced by Loris), but it's not like im out here banning random people in #social-discussion because they don't have one PR a month in the Zig repo or smth :P
to me, Loris' influence in our day-to-day is pretty much non-existent
frigid ravine
well, no more than anyone else's if he actively participated - he's just been very hands-off, which is kind of to the ZSF's credit, and in opposition to the idea that the ZSF is secretly centralizing the communities :P
torpid spire
definitely
to be honest, whenever these conversations appear we go back to the exact same points:
as i've said before, no
upper gull
blink twice if loris is with you right now
torpid spire
LMAO
torpid spire
to be honest, whenever these conversations appear we go back to the exact same p...
in fact, it'd be way more nefarious if loris were secretly influencing me in DMs or something and I was doing things behind your backs to affect this server, but as you know I'm transparent and ask for your opinions on changes in #root, and that same policy applies to Loris (in fact he has no power here, he has to ask either Felix or me to change things if it's anything beyond a kick or ban, which are things he doesn't use anyways)
frigid ravine
I'd also just like to add this perspective, that one of two things can happen wrt to where the core team "officially" designates their space to converse about the development of zig:
hollow epoch
don't get me wrong, someone joining the server and never writing a single line o...
to be clear, these arent digs at you or mods here specifically. But instead the structure thats been replicated here and elsewhere w.r.t. aligning (or more accurately, compromising) for ZSF incetives due to housing ZSF members. Loris was just a good practical example
torpid spire
yes i know king :P but i just think that there is no "compromising" happening
frigid ravine
I'd also just like to add this perspective, that one of two things can happen wr...
unless there's some other third option I'm not seeing, I think we've hit the good balance
torpid spire
what compromises do you see? no offtopic? i agree with that. no politics? i agree with that.
if #compiler-devel moved to some other server tomorrow, nothing would change
upper gull
i would be sad
torpid spire
yes but beyond that nothing would change :P
hollow epoch
when someone does too much of a meme in the more "official/zig-oriented" channels, the first deterring incentive is that its cringe (fair) but the second is that it can drive away people considered to be working on zig: #zig message
uneven prism
what does "de facto" mean in this context if the zig community has been donned decentralized?
just user count/growth rate?
its the biggest presence on discord for sure but does that mean anything else
frigid ravine
when someone does too much of a meme in the more "official/zig-oriented" channel...
I'd say it's a factor, but honestly whether or not Andrew actively participates in #zig is more of a concern for the community. The event you're pointing at shouldn't have happened, not because andrew didn't like it, but because it's just not the atmosphere I (or I believe most others on the mod team) want to cultivate
hollow epoch
does the issue tracker count as a community
superposition IMO - one one hand, people communicate there. On the other, its more about problem solving and reporting rather than discussion
hollow epoch
I'd say it's a factor, but honestly whether or not Andrew actively participates ...
what about having something similar for prog-disc?
frigid ravine
wdym?
hollow epoch
as in, why not try to keep the same atmosphere for that channel as well
frigid ravine
that's what I would like to do
reason it probably isn't is mostly just because we don't look at it nearly as much as #zig
hollow epoch
i mean, ill have to 
on that one
torpid spire
i actually think it's pretty okay, it's definitely less serious than #zig but it's still pretty productive minus a few offenders
in fact, as the "replacement" for offtopic i think keeping it one layer below #zig in terms of seriousness is fine
hollow epoch
something actionable that could come out of this could be being more rigid on the vibe check being done for those channels, even if it seens unnecessarily strict
torpid spire
yk this sounds a lot like a loris-esque idea... :^)
hollow epoch
Im ok with prog-disc as it is, I was just wondering why that was allowed in the precense of the other zig channels according to the ruleset above
hollow epoch
see the trick is to still have a channel that doesnt have that
torpid spire
Im ok with prog-disc as it is, I was just wondering why that was allowed in the ...
as the "replacement" for offtopic
is the big thing
it's an offtopic place for programming discussions to occur
which is why it exists
frigid ravine
i mean, ill have to <:doubt:1158157054117159012> on that one
when I see excessive memage, I usually try to call it out regardless of whether I'm in prog-disc or zig
torpid spire
to me it encourages offtopic conversation but it's still pretty productive
frigid ravine
Just usually when I look at prog-disc the memage has happened 6 hours ago
so it's you muricans that gotta clean up the act
hollow epoch
when I see excessive memage, I usually try to call it out regardless of whether ...
yea, but that hasnt been a standard set yet so other mods dont replicate. Excessive has been a bit loosy goosey in terms of def, so I let some things slide more than others for example
frigid ravine
my own definition is, if it's about to take up a screen of discussion, it's probably excessive
but yeah, that's a fair point
torpid spire
gonna head out for a run for like an hr brb, but yeah i think standard setting is good
how bout we open-source all our rules and standards :^)
dark dome
one thing I've wondered though is why non-zig in on top of the zig category in a zig discord
torpid spire
because it's shorter (and putting it at the bottom would obscure it, but it is true that this is a zig server)
we can move it down tho
that's a good point
frigid ravine
didn't someone already talk about this at one point lol
I can't remember who brought it up or if there was a conclusion
but I remember this discussion
dark dome
I think it makes sense, usually people put offtopic channels below the main ones
but it doesn't matter too much
crude spoke
there are lots of reasons the current zig discord is the way it is, which is not...
Well, Telegram do exist and we ban people slowly to a lot of people dismay
I think the zig community is decentralized, the thing is that smaller channels will have smaller trafic and you can't do anything about it
"Oh, we are affecting the zig community by" no
Communities exists, people can be funelled to those, this is the most popular one
but eventually people will get tired for one reason and the other and create splinters
and that's fine, this is how it happened in a few gaming discord I was in
hollow epoch
maybe this whoe thing has just been sampling bias
crude spoke
I mean, could be
For example, I am in at least 5 serious zig communities in discord, and 1 in telegram
Maybe we could open to more native language once that's a thing
but that would require a decent amount of X lang speakers to do for example
I only know at least 3 or 4 other zig users with spanish and have seen less than 10 in total
I do agree that the fact that a ban here means that you are out of the largest community is indeed worrying but hopefully as the language grows it will self correct
torpid leaf
this is the de facto "Zig community" despite other communities existing.
The humblest of threads I see
Jokes aside, don't count on the core team stuff to be on discord forever. At some point Discord will do something stupid that will trigger Andrew and when that happens current discord-based coordination will move somewhere else.
honestly, we should just build our own version of this stuff.
crude spoke
Too much work
not like it's not praiseworthy
but at that point just IRC voice stuff
People on each platform will bitch and moan against the decision (Discord people won't like if it moves, Telegram people already mad at creating a discord account if they didn't have it, between other) So any solution will upset the community, staying, moving, whatever
lol
Whatever communication medium one uses, should be just that. Any in between politics is just dumb to argue much about
Because sometimes the more productive thing is to use whatever there is already there and continue
My external view is that ZSF can't afford going in tangents as the org (If some member or someone in the community wants to create something, cool!)
But ofc, I am overanalizing just a random comment and not a statement
Eventually might be a cool project lmao, Zig in production: Code meeting tool
torpid leaf
I think I might tackle it at some point. For now a static site generator is enough of a yak shave for me, but in the future who knows.
crude spoke
Yeah, that's cool
torpid leaf
It does feel good when you get to get rid of flawed tools that you are forced to use daily though.
crude spoke
Oh, fucking yea, the whole reason I want to go away from my job is because google toolset is flawed af
torpid spire
> this is the de facto "Zig community" despite other communities existing.
The ...
it is true though :P
crude spoke
I mean, is the biggest, sheep goes with the herd
torpid spire
good luck with the alternative rewrite, discord is indeed slowly enshittifying
crude spoke
Tbh, my major problem is UI/YX
frigid ravine
slowly is generous
crude spoke
It's been always shit tho lol
Just that is the one where all the communities I care are
frigid ravine
we need for Discord what Zig does for C
crude spoke
Sincerely, all chat apps are bad since messenger smh
Telegram is trying with their now groups have topics things
the UI is shit and group calls are messy
All Zig Software Foundation stuff will happen using OBS, OBS Ninja and IRC Voice and IRC
dark dome
mumble is good
vocal crow
I would say that centralization is not inherently bad for communities. I for one want a large community and people are more likely to find people with matching interests in larger communities. However, I will say that I think Discord is a bad place for centralization to happen. Information effectively black holed and you need to have an account to even see what is going on. This is fine for casual chats but as @torpid spire said, #1019652020308824145 is the best place for getting help atm. A lot of people contribute and help out in the channel and this information is not visible to outsiders (this was really frustrating when i was just starting out and there wasn't much info when searching). So, for questions, I really do want to see the community move towards a more open option(maybe ziggit).
crude spoke
I would say that centralization is not inherently bad for communities. I for one...
for now https://zig-help.occluder.space/
vocal crow
for now https://zig-help.occluder.space/
cool, didn't know about it!
prisma anchor
All Zig Software Foundation stuff will happen using OBS, OBS Ninja and IRC Voice...
Moving to IRC would require IRC to have an easily available log of past messages imho
uneven prism
irc is getting there but clients are definitely way behind
novel cove
My unsolicited two cents - either be a technical discord, or be a social one. Devs are allowed to have banter and be human, but that's separate from maintaing a greater open social forum. It's extra maintenance, and unsustainable long term. As it grows, people will push the envelope...
Getting banned from this server or Discord in general means losing access to the Zig communications channel.
The most immediately obvious measure I can think of is, use a platform that someone can still read from if they're banned. Discord is ok at denying spam, but it's not so good for freely distributing information. If this is important, you can maybe mirror information, find migration paths, or mitigate this with a "shadowban" role so users can still read the chats.
It's expected to some extent that those who participate actively in the language will also take part in the moderation of its communication hubs.
I think moderators should be vetted by good faith and trust alone, I don't feel anyone should be obligated to participate in moderating, if that's what you're saying - I'm really not sure. I would prefer nepotism to a technocratic precedence, if this is something you're alluding to...
Also I want to say that artificially "decentralizing" a community for the sake of diversity, especially if they still share the same common denominator, seems counter productive. What is true is that communities are allowed to evolve - projects written in Rust don't establish themselves in the Rust Discord, they're encouraged to make their own communities, which you could ultimately apply to a handful of channels under the appropriately named Zig category. I feel showcase is exactly best for bite-sized threads that can nicely outgrow this server
For most of what I'm saying - I felt this way pretty much since I joined, though I do think the server is very well handled and this is not an issue I notcied.
crude spoke
My unsolicited two cents - either be a technical discord, or be a social one. De...
You can be both without leaving the technical side
uneven prism
Getting banned from this Discord means losing access to the Zig communications channel.
i dont think this is true nor a bad thing if it were
novel cove
You can be both without leaving the technical side
I don't think it's sustainable long term, and it's more easy for maintenance to focus on either-or
novel cove
I'm not sure what are good alternatives if you need them but I seem to like Zulip. Also I'm happy to volunteer with any need
torpid spire
My unsolicited two cents - either be a technical discord, or be a social one. De...
either be a technical discord, or be a social one
In my opinion social stuff being here is fine, we have a reasonable set of rules that we enforce in #social-discussion as we everywhere else. I've noted this in the past, but if you want a "free speech" community or something like that, you're better off joining another server / making a server for your group of friends. I think this is a perfectly reasonable approach in general because I imagine most people communicate with friends in one way and in large public forums in another, and we can only accomodate the latter.
I think moderators should be vetted by good faith and trust alone
They are; it's just that people who contribute to the language build significant amounts of faith and trust and are better integrated into the community.
projects written in Rust don't establish themselves in the Rust Discord, they're encouraged to make their own communities
This is already the case; see the ZLS Discord, Mach Discord, ZEG Discord, etc...
torpid spire
I'm not sure what are good alternatives if you need them but I seem to like Zuli...
You can always start your own community, it's not like you need anyone's approval or anything :)
novel cove
Maybe I'm lost in translation...
languid path
bro left 
languid path
oh
bronze garden