Hi Ben,

Communication is a topic that benefits from many different technologies and
approaches, and your project sounds like it might have a nice new angle to
add to this.

Welcome to the Guile community - I look forward to seeing your
contributions to this list and Guile as a whole :)

Best wishes,

Alex Sassmannshausen


On 7 Nov 2017 5:05 a.m., "Sutter, Benjamin" <
benjaminsutter@aurora-schools.org> wrote:

> Hello, Guilers. I'm a relatively new face for most likely all of you, if
> you've seen me at all (I'm bms_ on IRC, which is where I've been), but
> today I'd like to write the first of my papers on the extensible, federated
> instant messenger: Message (msg). I'll begin with a brief description of
> the program before I move into some theory on social systems.
>
> Message is an instant messenger written in Guile and designed with small,
> tight-knit communities in mind. Crafted to foster socialization naturally,
> instead of through intrusive alarms and alerts, Message (the command is
> msg) servers can be started with one command. In fact, it's the same
> command that starts the client. In theory, anyone who can run the client
> and can run a small server. Message configurations (think .guilerc or
> .emacs) are written in GNU Guile Scheme, the same language through which
> the program can be extended. There will never be a central server for
> Message, as the entire design focuses on small, friendly communities,
> rather than large, forbidding groups like you often find on IRC. Message is
> currently in very early development and I do not have an up-to-date Git
> repository or website to use as a central location for updates and news.
> However, I can often be contacted as bms_ on #guile, #guix, or #gnu at
> Freenode or at this e-mail. Now onto my theories on humans and why small
> groups are better than large.
>
> ###
>
> Oftentimes I've gone to join an IRC channel just to find that the current
> memberlist is huge and there's very rarely anyone there to say "hello" back
> to me. I attribute this to the prevalent -- and incorrect -- notion that
> social interactions don't matter when we're talking about code. For years,
> this lack of the exact social cues which I've so begrudgingly grown
> accustomed to in real life has frightened me away from even giving myself a
> real introduction. Now, I don't see how humans, as social creatures, could
> possibly see a good reason to not say "hello" in response to "hello", but
> online interactions tend to remove the stress that face-to-face
> interactions have on saying the right stuff. To an extent, this is helpful.
> You're given time to formulate ideas, but it seems awfully impolite and
> even asocial to ignore newcomers to your group.
>
> I'm not going to blame anybody because there's no one to blame. Instead, I
> have some ideas to fix the problem.
>
>
>    1. *Keep groups small and intimate: *No one likes joining a group to
>    find that it's memberlist is in the 1000's. Now, I realize that this isn't
>    optimal in all instances. Some groups are naturally large. I will never put
>    any fixed limit on server memberlist size in Message. I will only encourage
>    small groups.
>    2. *Don't allow multiple users with the same name in one server at the
>    same time:* Part of the importance of small groups is knowing who's
>    who. You can't do that with ten different incarnations of Kevin online.
>    3. *Good friends need privacy: *Therefore, every message should be
>    encrypted by default and without any extra work for the user.
>    4. *Don't discourage private messages or pings:* This isn't quite as
>    specific to any one implementation, but it always bothers me when
>    administrators in a group disallow average users from messaging or pinging
>    them without being requested to. It doesn't hurt anybody.
>    5. *On that note, groups should be democratic:* Choices that affect
>    the group (permanent banishment, name changes, new rules) should be voted
>    on by every active member of the group. Naturally, the server administrator
>    has the power to veto any decisions made by the masses, but even his
>    decisions should be liable to democratic law.
>    6. *Be nice:* As with the PM/ping rule, I can't do anything in Message
>    to help this, but in general, please be good to everyone else. It makes the
>    groups happier as a whole.
>
> I hope that this paper was informative, inspiring, and also a good
> announcement for the Message project. I'd ask for development help, as I'm
> the only one, but currently I don't have easy means to collaborate (Git, my
> own mailing lists, etc.). Eventually, I'll submit to the GNU Project and
> then maybe I'll be better off in that regard. Anyway, if you've made it
> this far, thanks for reading and please do try to continue to follow the
> project. I'll keep you updated.
>
> Sincerely,
> Ben Sutter,
> bms_
>