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I'm a 2nd year masters student studying theoretical CS (algorithms to be precise). I would like to know if there are any public synchronous discussion groups (slack, discord, etc.) for TCS. CSTheory StackExchange works well when someone has a specific question/query, but I felt it would be awesome to have an online forum for people interested in TCS to discuss about various developments of the field and also talk about interesting papers and concepts.

If enough people are interested we could create one in discord.

EDIT 1

As we have gained enough traction, I would like to know your opinions on how to proceed further. Some questions on top of my mind -

  1. How should it be structured and what is the scope of the discussion
  2. As I'm still an amateur, I would need some guidance from mods on how to go about this in general. And preferably some more volunteers.
  3. Also I would like to know what platforms do the people up-voted prefer.

EDIT 2

Interested people, please fill this poll

EDIT 3

I have created a group in Zulip

Bhishmaraj
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    +1 - great idea! I've recently seen a Discord for algebraic geometry. The disadvantage of Discord (compared to, say, Slack) is that it doesn't allow threaded conversations, so it's hard to keep several conversations going at once and seems to get very disorganized. The advantage, of course, is if people are participating live they can do so with voice etc. Disadvantage of Slack: the free version only stores 10K messages. I wonder if ACM, IEEE, or the CCC steering committee (or whatever) could chip in the small amount of money to make a slack w/ unlimited history... – Joshua Grochow May 06 '20 at 15:37
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    @JoshuaGrochow you can check out Zulip it tries to find a good balance by making threads mandatory for every channel. Zulip vs Slack . Plus it's also open source. – Bhishmaraj May 06 '20 at 15:45
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    The AG Discord has a number of channels that I like, but we could let things occur organically. For example: They have a "math-chat" for more extended technical chats. A "today-im-learning" for 1-liners about what people are learning/working on today (sort of emulating the "quick catch-up at the water fountain"). A LBGTQ+ and LBGTQ+allies channel. A "town-hall" for the meta-discussion of the structure of the forum itself. "career-advice" etc. But some of these depend on the demographics of who joins. "announcements" channel. I'd suggest making a quick poll (not here) re: potential platforms. – Joshua Grochow May 08 '20 at 19:12
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    I think I'd be in favor of zulip for general usage, and discord for live "meet ups". I'm really disliking the deluge of unthreaded messages on the AG discord. – Joshua Grochow May 09 '20 at 20:20
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    Some of the cstheory folks at the IQC have started using Zulip and it seems pretty good so far. After looking at a lot of alternatives, we picked Zulip because of its superior LaTeX support. +1 for threads. –  May 10 '20 at 15:58
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    The free Slack version stores all messages and you can export all messages in JSON format for free, so old discussions aren't lost, they just aren't directly shown in the user interface. – Jukka Suomela May 10 '20 at 22:05
  • I recently contacted Zulip and they were willing to provide the Zulip Cloud Standard plan for free! – Bhishmaraj May 11 '20 at 06:29
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    If you are looking for volunteers to help, I am willing – Joe Bebel May 11 '20 at 16:09
  • @JoeBebel I have sent you a mail (bebel at usc dot edu) – Bhishmaraj May 12 '20 at 06:28
  • @Bhishmaraj: Awesome! I would add the Zulip link as an answer! Also, I think the zulip should just be cstheory.zulip - I thought you had in mind something much more general than StackExchange? (Otherwise SE itself would've fit the bill.) – Joshua Grochow May 12 '20 at 17:44
  • @JoshuaGrochow cstheory.zulip that was already taken.

    I thought you had in mind something much more general than StackExchange?

    Yeah we can discuss other things too. It's not restricted only to SE. I just took a spontaneous decision to name it that way.

     – Bhishmaraj May 12 '20 at 17:45
  • @Bhishmaraj: Okay. You might at least change the logo. If I were SE, I wouldn't be too happy with someone creating a third party discussion forum with the cstheory.SE logo on it...it just makes it seem too much like it is "officially" associated with cstheory.SE. – Joshua Grochow May 12 '20 at 18:06
  • @Bhishmaraj: Also, any idea who owns cstheory.zulip and tcs.zulip? – Joshua Grochow May 12 '20 at 18:07
  • @JoshuaGrochow yeah, maybe it was a bit too much.I have removed all the associations with SE now. I don't have any idea about who owns those 2 domains. I tried joining cstheory.zulip , but it's invite only. – Bhishmaraj May 12 '20 at 18:11
  • Another nice platform is Flarum, as it supports math typesetting, is open source and highly customisable, and it looks gorgeous ;) Free instances can be created at Free Flarum. – Henning Basold May 13 '20 at 04:44
  • @Bhishmaraj: You should add the Zulip as an answer and collect the bounty :). – Joshua Grochow May 15 '20 at 15:11
  • @JoshuaGrochow "Answers that other users post to this question are eligible for a +50 reputation bounty.". Looks like the author can't claim the bounty. – Bhishmaraj May 15 '20 at 16:34
  • That's alright. I upvoted your answer, so you should still get some points :). Probably others will too. – Joshua Grochow May 15 '20 at 16:54

1 Answers1

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CSTheory is now live at Zulip.

Thanks to everyone who participated in the above discussion and for sharing your opinion.

Bhishmaraj
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