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blog post about Discord for Scala chat (#1314)
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‎blog/_posts/2021-12-21-discord.md

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---
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layout: blog-detail
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post-type: blog
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by: Seth Tisue
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title: "Scala Chat: Hello Discord (So Long, Gitter)"
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---
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On behalf of the Scala organization, I am pleased to announce that we
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have adopted **Discord** as our official chat platform.
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## Join us!
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**Please join us** for live text-based chat on the Scala Discord
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server, via this link:
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* https://discord.com/invite/scala
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The server has existed for several years now and is already
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busy and well-established. It is actively moderated under the
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[Scala Code of Conduct](https://www.scala-lang.org/conduct/).
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Popular channels on the server include \#scala-users,
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\#scala-contributors, \#announcements, \#jobs, \#tooling, \#scala-js,
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\#scala-native, and others. New channels can be proposed on \#admin.
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## What about Gitter?
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Adopting Discord means we have moved away from Gitter. Most of our
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old Gitter rooms are now closed. The main room remains open, but
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mainly so we can help people find us on Discord.
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Gitter served the Scala community extremely well for more than six
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years. We applaud the Gitter team for their pioneering efforts, which
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revolutionized public online chat for programmers. We also thank
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Gitter for providing us with free, high-quality service for so long.
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## How is Discord different?
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A Discord "server" may contain many "channels", also called rooms.
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When you join a Discord server, all of the public channels on that
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server are immediately visible to you. Unlike Gitter, you don't have
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to join each channel individually. (But you can individually mute
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channels that don't interest you.)
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There is a desktop client and a mobile client (for iOS and Android).
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Both are high quality.
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Former Gitter users will notice a number of quality-of-life
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and user-interface improvements such as reactions and replies.
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## What other chat servers exist?
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Scala enthusiasts might also be interested in joining the following
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Discord servers:
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* **[Scalameta](https://discord.gg/RFpSVth)**: Scalameta-based tooling: Metals, Scalameta, Scalafix, Scalafmt, and Mdoc
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* **[Typelevel](https://discord.gg/XF3CXcMzqD)**: the Typelevel ecosystem for pure-functional programming in Scala
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* **[ZIO](https://discord.gg/2ccFBr4)**: Type-safe, composable asynchronous and concurrent programming for Scala
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* **[Functional Programming](https://discord.gg/K6XHBSh)**: not Scala-specific, but includes a Scala channel
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And although we have closed down all but one of the official Scala
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Gitter rooms, as of December 2021 there are still some active Gitter
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rooms out there devoted to particular libraries or topics, for example
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[playframework/playframework](https://gitter.im/playframework/playframework).
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## What about non-English languages?
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Our website's [community
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page](https://www.scala-lang.org/community/#chat-rooms) lists chat
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rooms and servers for many other languages besides English. Discord,
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Gitter, and Telegram are all represented.
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As of December 2021, the list is probably not very up-to-date. We
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invite the community to submit pull requests that will make it more
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current, one language at a time. The file to edit on GitHub is
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[community/index.md](https://github.com/scala/scala-lang/blob/main/community/index.md).
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## Are other clients supported?
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Yes, via [Matrix](https://matrix.org). You can connect to
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`#scala-lang:matrix.org` over the bridge, using your Matrix client of
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choice (perhaps [Element](https://element.io)). Not all Discord features
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are supported.
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## How did we decide to switch to Discord?
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The community discussion of record on this began in October 2019
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on the following Discourse thread:
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* https://users.scala-lang.org/t/can-we-have-an-official-scala-discord-server/5157
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Among the objections raised were:
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* Discord is a proprietary, closed-source platform.
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* The contents of Discord rooms are not indexed on the public web.
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But in the end, Discord's feature set and its sheer popularity decided
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the matter. By the time we officially switched over in December 2021,
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most of the community had already voted with their feet and our
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Discord server had become much more active than our Gitter rooms.
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Slack was considered as an option, but we decided it is best suited
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for private companies and groups, but not so well suited for
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open-ended public communities like ours.
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## Tell us more history.
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Okay, let's take a trip down memory lane.
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During Scala's earliest days (at least since 2007, perhaps earlier),
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the main chat platform for Scala was IRC. In those early years, when
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the community was still small and there weren't that many Scala
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conferences and meetups yet, the IRC channel (along with the Google
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Groups mailing lists) was an important place where community members
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got to know each other and, one might even say, became a community.
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Later, the IRC channel declined in popularity. In my personal view,
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this was due to a lack of moderation and lack of any code of conduct.
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It became essential to have these once the Scala community had become
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larger.
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The IRC channel still exists to this day, now on
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[Libera](https://libera.chat) instead of Freenode, but traffic there
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has slowed to a trickle in recent years.
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Gitter launched in 2014 and was widely adopted by the Scala community
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in 2015. The major advantages of Gitter over IRC include:
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* Scrollback: you can log out, log back on, and still see what
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people were saying while you were away. (On IRC, this was only
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possible if you used special software.)
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* Markdown support, including syntax-highlighting of Scala code.
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* Messages can be edited (within a limited time frame) and
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deleted.
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* More features supporting effective content moderation.
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Discord shares these advantages as well.
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Some advantages of Gitter that Discord _doesn't_ share:
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* GitHub integration, including GitHub-based login. (No need to
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make a separate account.)
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* Easy, decentralized, room creation, with room names based on GitHub
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repo names, making it a no-brainer for an open source maintainer to
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create a room specifically for their library.
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However, in recent years, the Gitter platform largely stopped
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advancing and eventually came to feel stale. After Gitter was
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acquired by GitLab in 2017, some features were added such as
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threading, but the implementation of threading was unpopular with
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users. The quality and feature set of the mobile client fell behind
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those of the desktop client. New Vector Limited acquired Gitter in
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2020 and added Matrix support, but otherwise has not advanced the
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platform.
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Meanwhile, Discord was becoming extremely popular in the video gaming
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community, then crossed over into programming communities.
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## Are the old Gitter rooms archived?
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The main Gitter room for Scala,
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[scala/scala](https://gitter.im/scala/scala) remains online and
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searchable. We'll probably leave it online indefinitely.
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The other Gitter rooms under the scala/* organization have been
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deleted and their contents archived; the Scala Center retains the
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archives.
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## Credits
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[Salar Rahmanian](https://twitter.com/salarrahmanian) created the
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Scala Discord server initially and administered it until recently.
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We are grateful to him for leading the way. Thank you, Salar!
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Personally, I would also like to applaud and thank everyone who's ever
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been helpful and kind to a Scala newcomer arriving in one of our chat
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rooms for the first time. You keep my faith in humanity alive. ❤️

‎community/index.md

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The server is covered by the [Scala Code of Conduct](../conduct.html).
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Alternate clients such as [Element](https://element.io) are supported
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via a [Matrix](https://matrix.org) bridge. Connect to
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`#scala-lang:matrix.org`.
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Scala-oriented Discord servers operated by the community include:
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* **[Scalameta](https://discord.gg/RFpSVth)**: Scalameta-based tooling: Metals, Scalameta, Scalafix, Scalafmt, and Mdoc

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