Blog - Posts in opinion

News channels in chat

2026-07-31T00:00:00+00:00

I hope we had a low threshold for sharing anything in chat, as long as the sharer puts a bit of effort into a summary. In the CodeRefinery chat, we’ve thought about how to build more interaction in our chat (even though, compared to some orgs, we think we have quite a bit. Perhaps that’s the power of Zulip). My proposal is “news channels”. The goal is like a blog or news aggregator, with the similar goal of educating ourselves and getting to know each other better.

I like seeing a wide variety of links, but time is limited. Not everyone can read every link posted, so I hope that people put their human brain into a summary (suitable for the readers) that is educational even if read alone. Not clickbait, and not “read the link for more”.

The basic idea is that we people want to blog more, but that’s a lot of work. It’s lower threshold to declare some chat channels to be “blog-like” and encourage even off-topic things to go there. Hopefully it leads to more blogging, too.

For example, I propose the CodeRefinery chat declare these as news channels:

#general: News channel for anything remotely related to scientific computing.
#random: News channel for anything else.

“News channel” does not mean that channel is for only news posts, or for things that could be blog post. It means “for things you might want to tell others about”.

This post is my personal opinion, but will be updated with the practices of the organizations I work with (CodeRefinery, Aalto Scientific Computing). You are welcome to copy and modify this. This should not be used to tell people they are doing something wrong, but only to encourage new interaction. You don’t have to do what is here.

What is clickbait?

Philosophy: Clickbait (according to wikipedia) “is designed to attract attention and to entice users to follow (“click”) that link” [note: normal clickbait is often misleading or sensationalized, and that’s not a problem in our chats.]. My main consideration is you need to click through to know the actual story.

To me, anti-clickbait means putting the main message as early as possible so that one can stop reading as early as they want and still get something:

Read the first sentence, get a 1-sentence understanding of the topic.
Read the first paragraph, get a 1-paragraph understanding of the topic.
Read the first section, get a 1-section understanding of the topic.
Apply this recursively at every level.

This requires more thought in writing, but is a service for the reader. I think we should strive more towards this [note: Does this post meet these criteria? I usually try to, but I don’t always manage.]. It’s related to Bottom-line Up Front communication <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BLUF_(communication)>__, from which I got some of these ideas.

Basics

This is my proposal:

News channels are non-work channels, and you don’t have to be subscribed. Don’t expect all your colleagues to be subscribed. If you have an announcement for a team, make sure you mention it in a work channel, too.
You can post anything within the scope, for example:
- Link to other content you have found interesting.
- Link to you blog posts or things you have created.
- Pictures you have taken.
- Original ideas that might become blog posts later.
- Things you have learned (doesn’t have to have a link), watched, etc.
- A question or thought you have (including something you might blog about later).
Put some human effort into describing it (see below). Please no bare or low-context links. Yes, people can read things themselves, but there’s too much. Our networks helps filter summaries.
There’s not a limit (yet) on the amount you can post, but in general, the more you post, the more human effort you should put into describing things. People can independently subscribe to wherever you get material from if they want everything from there.
Follow-up discussion on any content is encouraged, but not required. Don’t get discouraged if no one reacts. It might mean your description is good enough. Do react to interesting things to encourage more of that type of thing.

You are especially encouraged to post anything new you create, no matter how small it is. This is how we learn of each other’s skills.

How-to

Further thoughts, adapt as is appropriate:

Create a new topic for each new thing. Don’t worry about making too many topics, but you can always reply with more stuff for relevant old topics if it’s relevant. Topics are the way someone quickly filters through it, and remember they will “Mark all as read” once they have browsed enough. People may look through their Zulipchat inbox at topics and decide what to click or not, so make it easy for someone to know if it’s relevant to their interests.
You can use a detailed topic description, for example:
- “TIL: uv for python package installation”
- “OpenAI has acquired Astral (the company behind uv)”
- “venv-apptainer: new script for containing virtual environments”
Include a description - not just a bare link or wall of text. You should put some human effort into the description, even if only one sentence. If you can do this, we will be happy with whatever it is. The description should be enough for someone to learn some bare basics if they don’t read further (and know if they should read more).
- At minimum, an initial description that stands alone and provides some education. Not just clickbait, but a real description. Can be anywhere from a sentence or two, to a paragraph. People have a limited time and attention, so write for that.
- You are welcome to go as far in depth as you would like after that… long info is OK.
- Especially consider giving your own thoughts on the matter, if it’s by someone else. Do you agree with it? Disagree? Have further ideas? These kind of reviews make links far more interesting, because many people don’t have the full context to understand things.
Even if you wrote something elsewhere and you are linking to it, give a summary in the chat.

A reminder: Do not use this blog post to tell people they are doing something wrong. Don’t think the barrier is too high. Don’t assume this post is the best practices. We want you to do your best, and read what others do, and everyone to continually improve.

The benefits?

Does this seem like a lot of work? Well, yeah, but it’s the trade-off to engagement. In the age of generated content, we want human effort. Look at it this way: thinking about, writing, and reading these summaries is good general communication practice with people outside your field.

“Code” vs “wiki” (vs “book”) rules for project contributions

2026-07-20T00:00:00+00:00

I have sometimes said the phrases “wiki rules”. or “cade rules” about contributing to a project. What does this mean? Roughly, “code rules” is being careful and making sure everything is correct before finalizing a contribution. Wiki rules is just doing something and letting it get improved later. Both ways have their place, and I think sometimes we can get so obsessed with being “right” that we forget to get stuff done. I’ll discuss below.

Code rules

This comes from contributing to code projects, where there are often standards for a review before merging anything, exhaustive tests to make sure that everything new is correct, and there should be no possibility of regression. The basic philosophy is that an error anywhere can break things everywhere, so try to prevent errors from making it into the project.

For stable, mature projects , this makes sense. It can extend to non-code things, too, when the expectation is “do nothing wrong”: say, you are organizing a big event and you need to have a consistent message to attendees for everything you publish.

Code rules requires enough time to review and fix things up. It could be done without contribution guidelines, but then you spend more time reviewing and it can have a demotivation problem, if the review is perceived as too harsh. With extensive contribution guidelines, the barrier to contribution becomes higher.

Examples of this include:

The general idea that one should make a pull request, get it reviewed, and if it’s OK, then merge it.
CodeRefinery would sometimes pedantically teach that all code should be reviewed, even if you are the main person of a project - since it improves quality and teaches others what is going on.
Look at most mature project’s contribution guidelines and they are usually somewhat specific and include reviews. At a big scale, this is needed.
- Numpy contribution guidelines
- Extensive contribution guidelines for the book “The Turing Way”

Wiki rules

On the other hand, wikis usually operate on the idea of “press ahead”, make your change directly, and if so anything isn’t perfect, it will be iteratively improved later. If people disagree, there are ways to resolve conflicts later on. There are few, if any, checks before committing to the history. This doesn’t mean there aren’t standards and expectations, but there is tolerance if new contributors don’t do it just right in their contributions.

For a new, rapidly changing project with few contributors, this can make sense. If there are few contributors who communicate a lot, it is easy. If there are many contributors, there need to be good standards (as there is some hope of convergence) and enough contributors to converge to those standards. Wiki rules requires a strong mental model that everyone shares.

Disadvantages include the time needed to fix things up (or even notice the wrong thing…). It can also be demotivating if someone goes and makes a big change, and it gets iterated to significantly change it. (Sound similar to code rules, right?)

Examples of this include:

Wikipedia’s “Be Bold” guide page
[According to my memory,] The OpenStreetMap wiki (contributor instructions) used to have a page “Press Ahead” with a message to just add things to the best of your ability and it will be improved later. I can’t currently find the page, I presume because there’s enough maturity that stability is more important now.

New one: book rules

Added 2026-09-14: There is one more possibility, “book rules”, where there is an author who is taking overall editorial control, and there are usually not direct changes by others. There may be suggestions, by others, but usually one person listens to all the suggestions, decides the direction, and chooses the final wording. Any review may end up essentially re-writing it to get the exact phrasing the main author wants.

In this, contributions are of the form of ideas and suggestions without exact wording being provided.

Examples of this might include:

Opinion pieces such as my notes for academic supervisors.

Summary

I guess it all comes down to “don’t let the perfect become the enemy of the good”. When there are few people and you communicate often, you can iterate and improve. If you get large and stable (or people depend on complete correctness), then maybe it’s time to switch to code rules.

I think the difference is not exactly “are there strict contribution guidelines?”. The difference is if someone should contribute something possibly wrong and let it be fixed later, or strict pre-review. Every project needs to find their balance of amount of contribution guidelines, amount of prior review, amount of other contribution, and wiki/code rules.

Examples

A project could have an in-person meeting to make a plan, then switch to wiki rules to implement the plan, then a round of review and discussion followed by more iteration. After it has stabilized, moves towards code rules.

Early in planning a conference, we use wiki rules to combine all our ideas onto the website (before anyone even sees the site) and refine them, aggressively narrowing down. To avoid wasted work, it’s “first-draft” or “notes” level work at the beginning if we aren’t sure about it.

Zulipchat guide: managing too much information

2026-06-29T00:00:00+00:00

Zulip is a chat platform (open-source and self-hostable). I think it is very good, but often confusing to newcomers. This post explains how I see it and how I think others can manage all the information. This isn’t meant to be a Zulip basics guide.

I can’t recommend Zulipchat enough if you want a proper online community. I’m not paid to say this.

The fundamental contradiction of chats

I think it’s important to start with why I believe people have a problem with Zulipchat. It’s because it works. People use it to talk, and it leads to thriving chat communities. This leads to too much information. It doesn’t lead to a large number of one-to-one or group direct messages, but functioning communities.

On the other hand, it has good tools to filter things and let you focus on what you want. It takes some getting used to, but it’s possible.

So, don’t be afraid. You are joining a community which has decided to be a community, and that community is probably here to help you with that. The cost is that you need to manage your time, so read on.

Zulip basics

The main concepts are:

Channels (formerly known as “streams”) are the basic organization, like in other chat systems.
Topics are like email subjects of threads within a channel, which have no similar concept in other chat systems. This is what lets someone get a summary of what is going on and manage the flow. You can mention @topic to get just those active in a topic.
Messages are as expected, but all messages have both a channel and topic. (These days you can actually send a message without a topic and it appears as “general chat”, but I would recommend avoiding this as possible.
Your view can be narrowed to certain channels, topics, or other search terms. There are a wide variety of places to click to do this (from almost any view). Click around and see how it works - it will save you lots of time. If you click on a channel/topic name, it narrows to that channel/topic around that message.
If you click on actual messages, it opens reply boxes in that topic.

This has two major implications. First, you have to think a little bit before you start to type. This slows you down by a few seconds, but it’s not so hard and worth it to think “what am I talking about here? Is there an existing thread to join?” But don’t worry too much, a quick search is enough.

Second, once you have things sorted, you can much more easily filter and find what’s important to you. You can see more of past conversations. If you see a new interesting message, you can click on it and see all the past history. You can get notified for specific conversations and hide others.

As a newcomer, you won’t know what all has happened before, so thus may start duplicate topics. That’s OK! In all the organizations I am part of, there are some people who act as “curators” and organize topics, combining or splitting them. They may combine, split, or move yours. This isn’t bad. Just chat and let others deal with that.

Notification levels

There are three levels of following/notifications:

Following where you get notifications (sound/pop-up/email/etc.)
Default
Muted where you don’t even see the messages by default, but if you get @-mentioned then you do. You can then click on the message and see the whole topic.

In your personal settings, there are a variety of settings to make yourself auto-follow anything you interact with (send messages to) or get mentioned in.

Also, every one of these can operate per-channel or per-topic. Thus, you have lots of flexibility. (Of course this leads to the paradox of choice, where more options decrease happiness).

Zulip conventions

My organizations tend to:

Not @-mention people as much as in other places (it can be done when you need to, but if you know someone actually follows the chat, they can usually find the relevant topics). People set the auto-follow depending on their needs.
Not quote-replying that often, unless it’s not very recent in the topic or you want to emphasize it. People can always click the topic and see history, no matter when they see it.
Have fewer channels and rely more on setting topics.
Rely less on private messages.
Do make a search for any past topics and re-post to them if it’s relevant.
Do rearrange messages after they are sent, as topics diverge and converge.
Make new topics frequently, but also split/join topics often when they drift.
“Curators” who have been around a while often move/organize topics that other people start, with a low threshold (this doesn’t mean something went wrong, and it may connect you to older info). But anyone is welcome to do this.

Strategy: if you follow selectively

If you are like most people and can’t follow everything, that’s OK. When you check chat:

Check your “Inbox” view. This shows everything new and unread (and you can limit it to where you have been mentioned/where you are following).
Alternatively, check the “Recent topics” view. This will show you every topic that has been active, sorted by most recent. You can read the topics and see if there’s anything interesting. When you click on a topic, you can scroll back to all the old history, not just the unread messages.
If you want, you can scroll the “Combined feed” that shows everything if you want. This has all the messages mixed together, which will be hard to follow, but you might see something that catches your eye. Click the topic name and you will narrow to that topic and see the whole thing.
Then, and I can’t emphasize this enough, mark everything as read. It’s in the past, you won’t catch up. If something is still relevant, it will re-appear in the recent topics and you can still see all the history.

A variant of this is to go click on each channel separately on the sidebar, which makes its recent topics appear. You can then either browse the channel in chronological order or click on the relevant topics to narrow to them.

You can select “Inbox” or “Recent topics” as your default view.

Even if you try to follow everything, when you come back from a vacation or similar, do this and “mark all as read”.

Strategy: if you follow everything

Some people want to try to follow everything. In this case, set combined feed as your default home view (Personal settings > Preferences) and you will see every message in chronological order (with all the topics interleaved). This lets you quickly follow new things, but can easily become overwhelming. When you see something that is interesting, you click on its topic and see the history of that topic.

You might want to disable the auto-follow settings (in your personal settings). Since you follow everything on your own time, you don’t need to

In reality, I often combine these strategies. I’m one of the topic curators, so I tend to follow everything. Still, if I’m away from a few days it’s too much, so I click through each channel separately to catch up by-topic before going back to the combined feed.

Strategies to follow what’s important to you

For your most important channels, you can pin the to the top.
“Follow” certain topics so that you get notified. I do this for topics such as “lunch” (“where are we eating today?”)
If you don’t look often, change your personal settings to automatically follow any topic you get @-mentioned in or interact in. Un-follow them if/when your input is no longer needed.
Set up alert words (personal settings) which tag certain words as @-mentions.

Strategies to ignore what is not important to you

You can be in a channel but have it muted, so you don’t see it by default, but you can be mentioned within in (and you can see it when you click on it). If there’s a private channel, this is probably a better strategy than not being in it (since you can’t as easily re-join). This also means it’s easy to occasionally click on it to see what’s going on, while not taking up mental space on a daily basis.
Mute specific high-volume topics that are not relevant to you. I do this for some high-volume automated alerts.
Change the “followed messages count” to only include followed topics, DMs, and mentions” - so that indicator isn’t always taking your mental focus.

Emoji reactions

The organizations I am in often use Emoji reactions. This works like other places, but there are some conventions I try to use (note these are something I think, not an official policy or anything):

For expressing agreement/disagreement:

🔼 (:upvote:): Reacting to a concrete suggestion, it means “in no uncertain terms I approve of you taking that action”. I use this, and the following four, since “no one is answering, what should I do?” is a big problem with decisions via chat.
⏫ (:double_up:): I agree with you and am willing to do work to help make it possible.
↕️ (:up_down:): I’m neutral
🔽 (:downvote:): I don’t support this action
⏬ (:double_down:): I don’t support this action and am willing to do work for some other sort of solution.
👍 (:+1:): General “I agree with the sentiment” message, but perhaps less specific than the upvote arrows.
✔️ (:check_mark:) and similar: I have done whatever was in this message.
🧾 (:receipt:): I’ve read the message and acknowledge receipt but no other comment yet.
🛠️ (:working_on_it:): I’m working on this now.
Anything else means some general sentiment, usually positive, but no specific meaning to me. You can figure out some sentiments by what it is and/or how (in)frequently it’s used.

For the voting things, it’s something I once read was used in some other open source project, but I can’t find any trace of it. The system was based on a {-2, -1, 0, +1, +2} to be able to express not just “good idea” but “who has time/willingness to do something”. A human needs to do the final interpretation of the results. Maybe I should write about this elsewhere.

Summary

When you use Zulip chat, you get a ton of information, but you have ways to filter it if you need. I think this also gives good possibilities for passively following along, which is also helps with onboarding and learning things.

Blog - Posts in opinion

News channels in chat

What is clickbait?

Basics

How-to

The benefits?

“Code” vs “wiki” (vs “book”) rules for project contributions

Code rules

Wiki rules

New one: book rules

Summary

Examples

Zulipchat guide: managing too much information

The fundamental contradiction of chats

Zulip basics

Notification levels

Zulip conventions

Strategy: if you follow selectively

Strategy: if you follow everything

Strategies to follow what’s important to you

Strategies to ignore what is not important to you

Emoji reactions

Summary

See also