Meetings On Discord?

[Lokathor]

At today's Google Hangouts meeting it was mentioned that people just can't always make it to a Google Hangouts meeting simply because of the audio discussion format.

However, we already have at least one additional accepted communication format: the discord!

The proposal is to try having some "meetings" in the #wg-gamedev channel of the official Rust discord. It's just normal Discord chat, text only, but since we've all agreed to show up around the same time the communication is near-real-time instead of getting a ping and then a reply happens hours later.

As a proposal for the initial time just to throw something out there: Wednesday Jan 15th (that is, a week that doesn't have a Hangouts meeting) at the usual meeting time (18:00 UTC, whatever that is in your time zone).

• Does this sound like a good idea at all?
  • The wg-gamedev channel gets low traffic other than beginners asking questions once a week and being told that the channel is too low traffic and they should ask for help elsewhere, so it's not like we'd be talking over a usual discussion.
• Do enough people use Discord (or would be willing to get a Discord)? I know that @kvark seems to resist using Discord, perhaps others have strong feelings.
  • We could probably get a Zulip stream, if folks think Zulip is better.
• Is this a time of day that works for enough people?
  • We could pick another time
  • We could pick another day
  • If we wanted to get really crazy, we could even pick another time on another day!

To be clear: the proposal is not to replace the Hangouts meetings. This would be a new, additional point of communication, not a replacement. Composing your thoughts while speaking and listening are different skills from when typing and reading. They each serve different types of people, so I think we should support both.

[kvark]

FWIW, Mozilla has finally settled on a system to replace IRC - the Matrix protocol. It also hosts such Rust gamedev-related communities as gfx-rs/wgpu and winit/glutin. It's only fare to request that our WG meets there.

[Lokathor]

Those links did not work for me using the Riot.im android app, but I managed to find them with a global search under the names Glutin and Winit and gfx-rs/webgpu.

I'm not opposed to using Matrix for some of the meetings. It's not what I normally use, but the point here is to branch out and communicate with more people so trying a new protocol is definitely in that spirit.

I set up a Matrix room for the WG to use so we don't just have to take over someone else's space for an hour, perhaps this link will work for folks:
https://matrix.to/#/#rust-gamedev-wg:matrix.org

[Wodann]

I am open to text-based discussions, but I am not sure whether either Discord or Matrix (based on my limited experience) are good for that. I generally find it hard to respond to specific messages on Discord, as it doesn't have threads (like Slack) and it takes more effort to quote. I feel like it quickly results in a loss of overview of who is responding to whom.

I've never worked with Zulip but based on descriptions it might be more suited for discussions.

[Lokathor]

I follow zulip regularly, it's fairly nice. We could get a stream added for our working group I'm sure.

Let's try at least one meeting with Matrix though, since that was requested first.

Do people want to try chatting this Wednesday at the same time we would have used for a call? Since there's no call this week.

[Wodann]

I'm up for it.

[timokoesters]

Check out https://jitsi.org for an open source, privacy-friendly hangouts alternative as well.