Announcing: The great bridge
Original post: http://bearlamp.com.au/announcing-the-great-bridge-between-communities/
In the deep dark lurks of the internet, several proactive lesswrong and diaspora leaders have been meeting each day. If we could have cloaks and silly hats; we would.
We have been discussing the great diversification, and noticed some major hubs starting to pop up. The ones that have been working together include:
Lesswrong slack
SlateStarCodex Discord
Reddit/Rational Discord
Lesswrong Discord
Exegesis (unofficial rationalist tumblr)
The ones that we hope to bring together in the future include (on the willingness of those servers):
Lesswrong IRC (led by Gwern)
Slate Star Codex IRC
AGI slack
Transhumanism Discord
Artificial Intelligence Discord
How will this work?
About a year ago, the lesswrong slack tried to bridge across to the lesswrong IRC. That was bad. From that experience we learnt a lot that can go wrong, and have worked out how to avoid those mistakes. So here is the general setup.
Each server currently has it’s own set of channels, each with their own style of talking and addressing problems, and sharing details and engaging with each other. We definitely don’t want to do anything that will harm those existing cultures. In light of this, taking the main channel from one server and mashing it into the main channel of another server is going to reincarnate into HELL ON EARTH. and generally leave both sides with the sentiment that “<the other side> is wrecking up <our> beautiful paradise”. Some servers may have a low volume buzz at all times, other servers may become active for bursts, it’s not good to try to marry those things.
Logistics:
Room: Lesswrong-Slack-Open
Bridged to:
exegesis#lwslack_bridge
Discord-Lesswrong#lw_slack_main
R/rational#lw_slack_open
SSC#bridge_slack
I am in <exegesis, D/LW, R/R, SSC> what does this mean?
If you want to peek into the lesswrong slack and see what happens in their #open channel. You can join or unmute your respective channel and listen in, or contribute (two way relay) to their chat. Obviously if everyone does this at once we end up spamming the other chat and probably after a week we cut the bridge off because it didn’t work. So while it’s favourable to increase the community; be mindful of what goes on across the divide and try not to anger our friends.
I am in Lesswrong-Slack, what does this mean?
We have new friends! Posts in #open will be relayed to all 4 children rooms where others can contribute if they choose. Mostly they have their own servers to chat on, and if they are not on an info-diet already, then maybe they should be. We don’t anticipate invasion or noise.
Why do they get to see our server and we don’t get to see them?
So glad you asked—we do. There is an identical set up for their server into our bridge channels. in fact the whole diagram looks something like this:
| Server | Main channel | Slack-Lesswrong | Discord-Exegesis | Discord-Lesswrong | Discord-r/rational | Discord-SSC |
| Slack-Lesswrong | Open | lwslack_bridge | lw_slack_main | lw_slack_open | bridge_slack | |
| Discord-Exegesis | Main | #bridge_rat_tumblr | exegesis_main | exegesis_rattumb_main | bridge_exegesis | |
| Discord-Lesswrong | Main | #Bridge_discord_lw | lwdiscord_bridge | lw_discord_main | bridge_lw_disc | |
| Discord-r/rational | General | #bridge_r-rational_dis | rrdiscord_bridge | reddirati_main | bridge_r_rational | |
| Discord-SSC | General | #bridge_ssc_discord | sscdiscord_bridge | ssc_main | ssc_discord_gen |
Pretty right? No it’s not. But that’s in the backend.
For extra clarification, the rows are the channels that are linked. Which is to say that Discord-SSC, is linked to a child channel in each of the other servers. The last thing we want to do is impact this existing channels in a negative way.
But what if we don’t want to share our open and we just want to see the other side’s open? (/our talk is private, what about confidential and security?)
Oh you mean like the prisoners dilemma? Where you can defect (not share) and still be rewarded (get to see other servers). Yea it’s a problem. Tends to be when one group defects, that others also defect. There is a chance that the bridge doesn’t work. That this all slides, and we do spam each other, and we end up giving up on the whole project. If it weren’t worth taking the risk we wouldn’t have tried.
We have not rushed into this bridge thing, we have been talking about it calmly and slowly and patiently for what seems like forever. We are all excited to be taking a leap, and keen to see it take off.
Yes, security is a valid concern, walled gardens being bridged into is a valid concern, we are trying our best. We are just as hesitant as you, and being very careful about the process. We want to get it right.
So if I am in <server1> and I want to talk to <server3> I can just post in the <bridge-to-server2> room and have the message relayed around to server 3 right?
Whilst that is correct, please don’t do that. You wouldn’t like people relaying through your main to talk to other people. Also it’s pretty silly, you can just post in your <servers1> main and let other people see it if they want to.
This seems complicated, why not just have one room where everyone can go and hang out?
How do you think we ended up with so many separate rooms
Why don’t we all just leave <your-favourite server> and go to <that other server>? It’s not going to happen
Why don’t all you kids get off my lawn and stay in your own damn servers?
Thank’s grandpa. No one is coming to invade, we all have our own servers and stuff to do, we don’t NEED to be on your lawn, but sometimes it’s nice to know we have friends.
<server2> shitposted our server, what do we do now?
This is why we have mods, why we have mute and why we have ban. It might happen but here’s a deal; don’t shit on other people and they won’t shit on you. Also if asked nicely to leave people alone, please leave people alone. Remember anyone can tap out of any discussion at any time.
I need a picture to understand all this.
Great! Friends on exegesis made one for us.
Who are our new friends:
Lesswrong slack has been active since 2015, and has a core community. The slack has 50 channels for various conversations on specific topics, the #open channel is for general topics and has all kinds of interesting discoveries shared here.
Discord-Exegesis (private, entry via tumblr)
Exegesis is a discord set up by a tumblr rationalist for all his friends (not just rats). It took off so well and became such a hive in such a short time that it’s now a regular hub.
Following Exegesis’s growth, a discord was set up for lesswrong, it’s not as active yet, but has the advantage of a low barrier to entry and it’s filled with lesswrongers.
Scott posted a link on an open thread to the SSC discord and now it holds activity from users that hail from the SSC comment section. it probably has more conversation about politics than other servers but also has every topic relevant to his subscribers.
reddit rational discord grew from the rationality and rational fiction subreddit, it’s quite busy and covers all topics.
As at the publishing of this post; the bridge is not live, but will go live when we flip the switch.
Meta: this took 1 hour to write (actualy time writing) and half way through I had to stop and have a voice conference about it to the channels we were bridging.
Cross posted to lesswrong: http://lesswrong.com/lw/oqz
How does this work exactly ? I mean technologically. As far as I know Slack and Discord don’t support bridges to each other.
was going to be a matterbridge bot, but that had bugs that would not go away. Now it’s going to be a custom xmpp protocol.
Won’t that be a lot of work ? As far as I know discord doesnt bridge to xmpp so that means you ll have to write a bot or use one already written. Same goes for other closed protocols. That s a lot of work. I don t want to dissapoint you but in the end what makes you think people will hang out in public channels ? ( I apologise if I missed something )
protocol is now going to be based on matrix.