mirror of https://github.com/zulip/zulip.git
49 lines
2.5 KiB
Markdown
49 lines
2.5 KiB
Markdown
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Part-time organizations like learning communities, standards bodies,
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advocacy groups, hobby groups, and alumni organizations often need different
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things out of chat than companies do. While there may be some core members
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spending many hours per week on the organization, much of the value of the
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community may come from a large number of members or potential members who
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have an unrelated job and thus may have less than an hour a week to spend on
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the organization. In such an organization, making it easy for someone to
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participate when they don't have time to read everything can be the
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difference between a robust, growing community and one that stagnates.
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Some of Zulip's earliest users were part-time organizatons, so we have given
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a lot of thought to the problems such groups face. Zulip's topic-based
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threading
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* Makes the catching-up experience fast and fun, even if a user has been
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away for a while. On Slack or email, wading through hundreds or thousands
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of unread messages is taxing at best.
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* Makes it easy to respond to conversations that started hours or days ago,
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so that users that drop by occasionally can contribute rather than just
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lurk.
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Zulip's topic-based threading also allows for more thoughtful discussion,
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since more people are able to chime in on any given conversation. It also
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makes it easy to start new threads, so digressions don't take over a
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conversation.
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If you haven't read [why Zulip](/why-zulip), read that first. If your
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organization is a technical group that will be sharing code, you may want to
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read [Zulip for open source](/for/open-source) as well. Finally, one of our
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earliest communities, the Recurse Center, wrote an
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[extended blog post](https://www.recurse.com/blog/112-how-rc-uses-zulip)
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about how they use Zulip, which has suggestions for conventions you might
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want to include as you build your community.
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Two additional points of note:
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* **Pay as you go**: We host many pro-social groups for free, and
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non-commercial entities at a greatly reduced price. Even if you don't fall
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into any such bucket, Zulip only charges for users that have been active
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in the last two weeks. So feel free to invite anyone you'd like, even if
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you're not sure if they'll end up sticking around!
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* **Smart digest emails (coming soon)**: Zulip's topic-based threading makes
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it easier for algorithms to guess which messages and conversations will be
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interesting to users that haven't checked in in a while. Occasional
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interesting digests sent to inactive users is a great way to bring users
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back into the group.
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