Re: Where to coordinate WG work?

You're not wrong about the Threadiverse. We are working on private groups but it's not there yet. 

For me, I'd prefer if substantive and concrete work is discussed in GitHub issues. That makes it easier to track decisions and progress.

Evan

On March 6, 2026 4:57:02 PM PST, Darius Kazemi <darius.kazemi@gmail.com> wrote:
>At today's WG meeting we began a discussion
><https://github.com/w3c/socialwg/blob/main/meetings/2026/2026-03-06-WG-kickoff.md#cadence-of-work>
>of where to have real-time-(ish) and ad-hoc chat related to work items. As
>there is a lot of need to get work done not just during meetings but *in
>between* meetings, we're going to need to coordinate work on the various
>projects we spin up.
>
>To be clear I am not talking about queuing comments for meetings or for
>scribing minutes. I'm talking about places to discuss ongoing working items
>in the WG.
>Some thoughts
>
>Currently there are two venues for work we are actively using:
>
>   -
>
>   This mailing list
>   -
>
>   The WG Github repository <https://github.com/w3c/socialwg>
>
>The mailing list and/or Github repo may suffice, but other options floated
>during and after the meeting include:
>
>   -
>
>   W3C Slack
>   -
>
>   W3C IRC
>   -
>
>   Zulip
>   -
>
>   Matrix
>   -
>
>   "Threadiverse group <https://activitypub.space/post/1459>"
>   ActivityPub-native discussion
>
>I proposed the W3C Community Slack as a pre-existing tool but it's a
>non-starter since it doesn't retain records indefinitely.
>
>The W3C IRC server is configured to retain records, but I witnessed
>firsthand at TPAC that many many people found the IRC impenetrable and
>difficult to use, and simply did not bother. In general I think IRC is
>beloved by a small group of people and feared by others!
>
>Zulip was floated during the meeting as an open-source Slack alternative. I
>have no experience with it personally, but reading the website there would
>be a cost of either the $7/mo for hosting with indefinite retention, or the
>sanity and time cost of WG members managing a self-hosted server.
>
>Matrix is an interesting option for something vaguely Slack-and-IRC-like.
>It's never stuck for me but maybe it could work. I don't know what the
>retention story is there.
>
>I would obviously love to use ActivityPub technology to solve this problem
>but my current understanding of forum/group style communication via
>ActivityPub (informally called the "Threadiverse") is that the closed or
>semi-closed group/channel user story is not addressed at this time. I'm
>100% open to being proved wrong here though.
>
>Honestly I might have talked myself back into just using the mailing list
>and Github issues/PRs as the primary place for discussion. The mailing list
>in particular has the advantage of being world-readable but
>group-member-writeable.
>
>Interested in everyone else's feedback here!
>
>Darius Kazemi Chair, W3C Social Web WG