JMS: what is in jupyterlabworkspace.slack.com and is it maintained?

[krassowski]

The jupyter socials list appears to be actively maintained by JMS as Twitter was recently removed. It lists a slack workspace:

I would be curious to learn more about it! Is it private? Is it public? If so how can I sign up? I tried but failed:

I am also curious in the context of some companies previously suggesting using slack for communication on projects (like jupyter-ai); if this has to happen, maybe using that workspace could at least allow maintainers to have some visibility into it? I don't know. But I guess JMS must have discussed the use of slack before since it is on that list.

[ivanov]

cc @jupyter/media-strategy-working-group

[SylvainCorlay]

jupyterlabworkspace.slack.com

I am not aware of a Jupyter Slack workspace. I just looked it up, and there are no credentials to access it in the JMS vault of the password manager. Someone else may have more context.

I am also curious in the context of some companies previously suggesting using slack for communication on projects (like jupyter-ai); if this has to happen, maybe using that workspace could at least allow maintainers to have some visibility into it?

That's interesting. Slack does not seem like a good fit for public communication on an open-source project, because of its model requiring users to have an account on some organization's workspace, which are typically paid accounts. If for some reason, a project decided to use Slack, using such a workspace could be a way to enable interested folks who want to engage but don't have access to a paid Slack workspace.

[SylvainCorlay]

We should probably remove Slack from the list.

[choldgraf]

I basically agree w/ @SylvainCorlay's take - feels safe to remove to me. And thanks @krassowski for opening this up

In general I feel like a good strategy for communications platforms / services is something like:

• Jupyter should make it easy / cheaper / etc to use a subset of platforms that it thinks are best for the project (e.g., trivially adding a #sub-project channel to the Jupyter Zulip.
• But should still empower projects to choose a different platform if they wish, as long as it still abides by the principles of open membership etc.

[rpwagner]

• But should still empower projects to choose a different platform if they wish, as long as it still abides by the principles of open membership etc.

I mostly agree with this, although I'd rather not encourage different platforms to promote connections between subprojects by having fewer communication channels.

[fperez]

I suspect that was some kind of old slack that may have been fleetingly used by a few people a long time ago. I think there was once an IPython slack that also went nowhere (and that I have no credentials for).

We've clearly moved to consolidating in a few clear, open spaces (discourse/zulip + github) and none of these slacks, if they exist, should be considered valid.

I suggest adding somewhere an explicit note that as a project, Jupyter does NOT manage/endorse any Slack workspace as an official channel. There may be "Jupyter at organization X/community Y" slacks out there, and that's fine as a group of Jupyter users in some random place that we don't control, but we should make it clear that's not a Jupyter-endorsed official space.