Re: Where to coordinate WG work?

I'd also suggest that Slack be used for chat and discussion. Maybe not having a durable archive is fine.  Conversations that should be archived should go out to the mailing list or GitHub. 

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