[HN Gopher] P2 powers internal collaboration at WordPress.com, a...
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P2 powers internal collaboration at WordPress.com, and is now free
Author : sochanger
Score : 87 points
Date : 2020-08-07 19:07 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (wordpress.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (wordpress.com)
| armandososa wrote:
| I used P2 back in ~2012 when Onswipe and Automattic were working
| together on a joint plugin for WordPress.com. It was a long time
| ago, but I remember it being... weird? Maybe it was the culture
| clash, but at the time it felt disorienting.
| noahtallen wrote:
| I work at Automattic, and p2 is (in my mind) _the_ thing that
| makes our remote-only culture work. We don't really use email
| that much or other forms of async chat. When synchronous chat
| (like Slack) gets to be too in-depth, our motto is "p2 or it
| didn't happen." p2 has the widest visibility in the company --
| anyone can search for a p2 post, or cross-post to other teams and
| divisions. Since many teams are spread across the globe, async
| conversations are crucial to staying aligned. That's why any kind
| of in-depth conversation, technical analysis, or decision making
| happens on p2.
|
| Company culture is also important to making it work, in my mind.
| p2 is viewed as the source of truth for many conversations
| (including meeting notes and summaries of slack conversations),
| which is part of how it works. Additionally, anyone across the
| company is empowered to post on any p2 to start conversations,
| ask questions, or kickstart lengthy, technical discussions.
|
| In response to another commenter, Automattic has been using p2 as
| its main form of async internal communication for years before it
| even hit 1k employees, so it's not the kind of thing which
| requires a ton of people to work. Once a few hundred people using
| it as the main form of async conversation, there is certainly
| more content than any one person can consume. :)
| user5994461 wrote:
| There is a live demo here https://p2customers.p2.blog/
|
| I don't get it. Looks like a regular news wall with endless
| scrolling and comments expanded.
|
| Except anybody can post an announcement on top? and the previous
| ones disappear under the constant flow?
| tootie wrote:
| The idea here (I think) is that this is meant for use within an
| enterprise. Like a corporate wiki, but organized more like an
| aggregator site. I've seen a few similar products that were
| like enterprise facebook or enterprise twitter. They are sorta
| useful, but it's hard to get enough engagement to be
| worthwhile. Your company needs at least a few thousand people
| in order for them to generate enough content to keep people
| interested.
| georgestephanis wrote:
| For context, a8c started using a prior version of p2 like
| eleven or twelve years ago, when we were positively dozens of
| people. We have smaller p2s for teams of three to four
| people.
|
| tl;dr: nah, doesn't need thousands of people to be useful.
| vosper wrote:
| "a8c" is Automattic (makers of Wordpress) for anyone who
| was confused.
|
| Obligatory "Mean Girls" ;)
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pubd-spHN-0
| haolez wrote:
| I'd like to use some alternative to Teams, but the Office 365 and
| videochat integration is so convenient that my not-tech-savy
| staff would have a lot of trouble working with anything else.
| Microsoft has done a great job on vendor lock-in with Teams.
| cloudmike wrote:
| I used to work at WordPress.com (Automattic) after they acquired
| our startup Simplenote. P2 was great.
|
| Now I'm at one of the big tech companies that is suddenly all-
| remote. I miss P2. It gives you a place where ideas can "stick"
| much better than with async chat, email, or wikis. At the top-
| level (per-team or per-project) P2s feel like much more than just
| another wiki aggregation page. You actually want to visit them to
| catch up on the latest.
|
| The per-post threaded conversations promote more thoughtful,
| ongoing discussion. These naturally fade over time as new posts
| are made, a bit like HN or reddit. Generally this is a useful,
| organic default, and complements (rather than replaces) async
| chat.
|
| It can be overwhelming once you're interested in tracking many
| P2s. But you can address this with discipline, culture, and more
| tools.
| [deleted]
| easton wrote:
| This looks really neat! Can anyone shine a light on what makes
| this different/better than Basecamp (other than being custom
| built for the way Automattic works, which is obviously a selling
| point for them). My understanding is that Basecamp does a lot of
| these things, although it's not self-hosted.
| kennydude wrote:
| I'm sure this used to be a theme for WordPress at one point?
| Either way, it's really unusual how Automattic haven't released
| it to the public
| folkhack wrote:
| > Can I self-host my P2? Not at the moment, but we plan to
| offer this option in the future.
|
| Yea - I see it as weird too. The _only_ reason I 'm still an
| advocate for WordPress are the self-host-ability/full
| customization aspects. Otherwise, you're just another Medium
| that's going to take my data and use it against me.
|
| Honestly, I wouldn't touch this until Automattic publishes the
| code. To a old-timer who's been leveraging WP for well over a
| decade: ew.
| georgestephanis wrote:
| Further context from a friend:
| https://wptavern.com/automattic-relaunches-p2-self-hosted-
| ve...
| westi wrote:
| The previous version was a theme and is still available -
| https://wordpress.org/themes/p2/
|
| This version is also a theme and will be released for self
| hosting in future too.
| renewiltord wrote:
| No pricing information if I want to use P2 for my company
| internally? Even as a SaaS?
| sandGorgon wrote:
| It looks very similar to Zulip.
|
| Can anybody contrast both ? Zulip would bring the best of slack
| and p2 right?
| sneak wrote:
| SaaS advertising for a closed source/proprietary, hosted, PHP
| app. No mention of end to end crypto, so third party doctrine
| applies to all your communications, including DMs. Your chatops
| are only as secure as their hosted auth system, which you can't
| review or audit.
|
| I don't think the world needs more things like this.
|
| Give me something open source that I can hack on, or run on my
| own machine, ideally in a modern language.
|
| This feels like too little, too late, in a world already
| cluttered by shiny, hosted tools that offer you zero privacy from
| the hosting provider (which you can't change).
|
| A company that does things like this can't really be said to have
| a commitment to free software. Free software is like veganism or
| respect for the rule of law in society: it's not something you do
| sometimes, when you feel like it. Either you believe in software
| freedom, or you do not.
|
| You should not be writing source code that you expect your
| customers to use but not be able to read and modify.
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