I wish Zulip (and other apps) provided an inbox instead of just ephemeral notifications that disappear once a message is viewed. Lack of inbox means that I have to use unread messages as a way to manage my inbox -- because the moment I click on a notification / take a quick peek at a message there's no easy way to mark it for coming back to later.
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+100 for Zulip though; by far the sanest messaging experience for this kind of context.
That's how I know Discord has this feature! Top right corner has an @ and it's the "mentions", which is a list of every notification. I couldn't do all the managerial/administrative work on these projects without it.
The killer feature is everything is a stream/thread. I argue that is a better UX over Slack, but it takes some getting used it.
As mentioned, Slack is way more polished.
I personally can't stand it. _However_ I just learned today that it can actually be disabled, which I would do if I was deploying a zulip instance for my team. We are all very wired towards the crackhead energy of just.. a chronological chat and a competent search.
I have a theory for why some people love Slack and others love Zulip (Completers -vs- cultivators) which I shared in a sibling thread.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46960569
Curious to hear what you think.
zulip is the most solid of the open self hosted solutions so far imo. last my team tried it sometime a year ago maybe we were super turned off at the threaded topics. my entire team hates them and anyone trying to post important stuff in topics gets ignored lol we can't help it our brains just don't want them in our lives.
but now seeing that there's a way to disable that, it's possibly time to revisit zulip
Topics are necessary when you start having a huge Zulip server, 100+ people. There's so much noise --- dividing things by channel is too coarse.
I participate in several open source Zulip servers and it reminds me of a better IRC. It's a lot more ergonomic that Gitter or Discord.
I have a theory for why some people love Slack and others love Zulip (Completers -vs- cultivators) which I shared in a sibling thread.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46960569
Curious to hear what you think.
Fascinating! Can you explain why?
(My understanding is we are far from the only web app broken by Safari 26, and we're working on it).
One of the other nice features of the new design implementation is there are handy settings for font size and line spacing. It turns out that different people have very different desires for how dense content is in chat apps, and empirically there's a significant portion of users with just about every combination.
In my view, the home page should be just like a proper messaging app: show every recent thread ("topic" in Zulip nomenclature) that I'm involved in, across all my channels, with unread ones indicated using a 'dot'. Or, if you really want to be like Slack, just copy Slack more directly. In either case, the other views (Inbox, Combined Feed, DMs, etc) should be under menus, not primary actions.
The other thing is that it's often hard to figure out how to reply to a topic. In the Combined Feed, which is my preferred view for consuming updates, the UX for replying sucks -- first you have to figure out to tap the headers; and even then, you can accidentally tap into a channel instead of a topic. It's extremely non obvious when you've done this and constantly causes people to reply in the wrong topic.
I vibecoded some improved Inbox UX using Claude Code and I think it would be a big step up, but it's hard to know what the steps would be to get it shipped, since I don't have time to spin up properly on the codebase and I doubt my changes are acceptable as-is. If Zulip team wants them I'd happily share though.
I have looked at the rust Zulip forums, which are bulky. But with moderation and rules and having people on the autistic spectrum [citation needed], it perhaps is usable for large organizations. Just kidding.
We are using Zulip for 300+ members in a makerspace, and at 40 members, we were not happy. Scaling to 300 never broke not being happy, since we all hate the UI ever since.
I cannot re-open Zulip threads, which are also issues with an atomic "solved/unresolved" state, unless I have elevated access. It is not a true forum like PHP forums, where we ask people to name threads, and you might just skip reading more than the title, or locate interesting threads by activity and find stickies about important announcements in a pull, not push, way of doing things.
It instead is a chat where a thousand group chats are open, and no once wants to read any of them.
If they wanted to re-invent forums, they should have cloned the "discourse" web app/forum. Still looks like shit on every platform, mobile or desktop, but at least does not break down on mobile.
I really wish Zulip could find someone to re-design the interface around the channels/threads model to make it easier to use and more friendly to beginners. I am personally never bothered by the design and got used to its interface quite quickly, but I know many many people who got turned away by its design or uses it in a Slack/Discord way by posting everything into "general chat".
Having thought about this a bit, I propose there is an underlying dichotomy between "completers" and "cultivators"
## Completers
Prioritize "velocity" and closing open loops. Limiting context means that they can act with focus. Close tabs often. Communication appends to the task queue; each conversation is an open ticket to be closed. Anything that scrolls off screen is implicitly marked as done. The ephemerality of the stream allows them to "process" a conversation and move on. Zulip might cause anxiety because threads/discussions linger without closure.
## Cultivators
Communication as externalized cognition. Messages are nuggets to be filed / incorporated into a larger schema. Wants a "dashboard" to maintain sense of control; fears something falling through the cracks more than they fear clutter. Don't care to "finish" a chat; want to keep the context organized and accessible for deep work / future decisions.
## Problems
Zulip defaults to assuming that all chat is valuable and taxes every interaction with a little bit of up front effort. Slack assumes most chat is of ephemeral value and doesn't see the point of taxing 90% of the interactions for the 10% that might be valuable. Slack forces cultivators to become completers and Zulip nudges completors to act as cultivators.
Completers preferring who prefers Slack/Discord/etc are implicitly adopting the the fragmentation of multi-system setup -- chat for ephemeral communication, and anything longer term must move to docs/wikis/Jira/whatever (which now begs for dozens of "integrations"). Understanding the state of anything now requires forensic archeology. (cue [Charlie Pepe Silvia meme]) Complicated acrobatics in channel names such as `#team-proj-blah` are attempts at combating the fundamental entropy of treating everything ephemeral.
The challenge is that, ultimately organizing is also real work and ignoring it in a short-sighted drive for efficiency hinders longer term effectiveness.
## Potential solutions?
1. The chat platform could offer two different views: a triage flavored mode for completers, and a dashboard flavored mode for cultivators. Even one person could toggle back-and-forth between the two as necessary.
2. Better UX for organizing incrementally, eg. UX improvements for manual clustering, and AI-assisted clustering / topic naming. Wouldn't it be great if people could continue chatting in the stream but the same message would simultaneously get filed under a topic? Technology might now enable such a product experience.
3. Slack needs to stop pretending that search is an effective replacement for organization (esp when search is crappy). I haven't used Slack in a while (preferring Zulip with catchall topics as a good balance) but I get the impression that Slack [Canvas](https://slack.com/intl/en-in/features/canvas) is an attempt to combat this problem.
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[Charlie Pepe Silvia meme] https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/pepe-silvia
I don't know zulip, so I can't comment on whether it's better. The most effective org I worked for didn't use messaging: email, or in person only.
I wish there was a way to hold companies accountable for stuff like that.
On the other hand, I would love to see more tech companies being co-operatives, where their members get a say in governance. That'd be the ultimate hard-mode for a business that was dedicated to being rugpull-resistant.
> That'd be the ultimate hard-mode for a business that was dedicated to being rugpull-resistant.
Just tell me that you're waiting for the money shot and then I can take you seriously. Otherwise just F O.
1. Open source and the commitment to keep it there. 2. The continued technical excellence of the product. 3. Excellent and up-to-date documentation 4. Open to the public development effort that allows public participation (chat.zulip.org) 5. Availability of help from front line engineers and owners as well as the community. 6. Modern and organized UI with many options to tailor it to use case and environment. 7. Excellent choice of tech stack which has evolved to keep up with new technology. 8. An excellent place for aspiring developers to learn not only coding but other skills such as communication and relationship values.
I really want to like it…
and as long as it doesn't offer voice messages i keep going back to signal (or similar). for small groups i often find voice messages to be easiest (totally not for big groups, i agree!).
(EDIT: unless your reason for using Discord is PTT voice channels. Then it's not.)
