During the past few months, I ran an undergraduate computer science research program at my university, and I chose to use Zulip to organize our communication (between 25 people). I wanted to use Zulip because it was open-source and, like you, I was a fan of the threads model. Unfortunately, the participants reported that the notifications were unreliable, the mobile app was janky, and the threads were confusing.
Keep in mind that these weren’t average software users but rather CS majors filtered through an application process – even for them, threads took a while to get used to. I concluded that Zulip would work well if every team member was on board with (and understood) the threads model, but a team that doesn’t care would prefer Discord or Slack.
That’s a shame. Unreliable notifications is a very strong poison. Undeniability of reciept/solving the byzantine generals problem is like, fundamental to all coordination problems.
Interesting and good to hear, as I was thinking of using it for a class too (also surprised; I don’t remember the slightest hint of counter-intuitiveness when I personally used Zulip with its threads).
During the past few months, I ran an undergraduate computer science research program at my university, and I chose to use Zulip to organize our communication (between 25 people). I wanted to use Zulip because it was open-source and, like you, I was a fan of the threads model. Unfortunately, the participants reported that the notifications were unreliable, the mobile app was janky, and the threads were confusing.
Keep in mind that these weren’t average software users but rather CS majors filtered through an application process – even for them, threads took a while to get used to. I concluded that Zulip would work well if every team member was on board with (and understood) the threads model, but a team that doesn’t care would prefer Discord or Slack.
That’s a shame. Unreliable notifications is a very strong poison. Undeniability of reciept/solving the byzantine generals problem is like, fundamental to all coordination problems.
Interesting and good to hear, as I was thinking of using it for a class too (also surprised; I don’t remember the slightest hint of counter-intuitiveness when I personally used Zulip with its threads).