Hi, On 8/22/23 12:45, Niccolò Ve wrote:
Some of the communication could have been a bit better, but this was at least publicly known from a previous mailing list thread a few months ago. There was also a BoF at akademy about Matrix/IRC/Telegram and how we should proceed there. Noone showed up to argue in favor of Telegram.This is a terribly careless decision, for multiple reasons.Firstly, this is something that has a strong impact on the entire community and, because of that, it should've been discussed publicly before agreeing on this. I had been told this was going to happen, but only through private messages and without really any chance to argue against this. No chance has been given to discuss the consequences of this action, nor to discuss how to best address the technical issues related to the bridge maintenance.
This is not the impression i get when looking at the numbers. Plasma and KDE-Development aren't on Telegram at all. We have a "New Contributors" Channel that's not on Telegram at all. None of the rooms for the new goals are on Telegram, neither the rooms for most new apps we've started developing in the last years. Somehow we've just managed to handle akademy with a room that's not bridged to telegram.Secondly, the transition timeframe is way too small. There are a very big number of Telegram channels, and some even lack a Matrix counterpart. Telegram links used in multiple KDE wiki pages, and it will take time to shift all the chats over to Matrix. Taking Promo as an example, who knew this was happening some weeks ago: some chat have been successfully ported to Matrix, but it will take much more time to shift them all; this means that, after the 20th of Sept., Promo coordinators like Paul will have to handle both the Telegram and Matrix that's separately; or, we close down the Telegram channels before the transition is completed, which is even worse.Thirdly, this will make KDE lose contributors. The majority of developers I've worked with throughout my KDE experience has used Telegram as their main channel, and only a few switched over to Matrix when asked to.
For many, this worked mean installing one extra application(with terrible UX) just to be able to contribute to KDE; it wouldn't be an issue if they were employees, but we're all volunteers here and most likely those people will either not switch at all or slowly open that application less and less.Does it? We have a "New Contributors" channel that's usually quite active and isn't bridged to Telegram. We expect people to create an identity account, a bugzilla account, but having to create a Matrix or IRC account is "so much harder"?This includes me; I have very little interest in forcing myself to use e.g. buggy phone applications exclusively to contribute as a volunteer and in my free time.Fourth, this will make onboarding so much harder. All developers I've seen and helped onboard KDE have joined through Telegram, because that's what they had and it was easy for them. Again, same applies to me: I never would've joined KDE if it wasn't for the Telegram channels.
As mentioned before, this was known and discussed previously, in mailing lists and at Akademy. If you're just here to have an attitude, please leave that at the door.Fifth, the technological reasons given for this choice are lacking. It assumes that we use UserBots instead of normal bots (the limit of 1 message every 3 seconds is too restrictive?); it talks about issues with admin privileges of the bridge, without explaining why they would be necessary. It complains about spam over the telegram side: some channels introduced a captcha when users joined and that worked really well, why can't we use that for all channels? And so on: there are tons of questions and different approach that are lacking in the exploitation, which is particularly bad considering just how damaging the decision is to KDE,Of course, please don't bother replying to this paragraph with answers to my questions: this should've happened in the discussion phase of the choice, which you entirely ignored. I had expressed interest in helping out figuring out a solution to the bridging issue, but of course - since I had only been told about this privately - I had done that privately. I could've done that publicly if you had warned about what was going to happen.
If I go to https://community.kde.org/Telegram and have a look at the rooms, a bunch of the links are broken and some rooms are inactive. Some of the rooms are on Telegram only, meaning that at least as far as bridging is concerned, there's no problem there either. The distro channels (at least those that are not Neon) are outside of our control. This leaves a relatively small number of rooms where removing the bridge is even somewhat problematic IMO: VDG, some of the app rooms, and some local communities. Like Joseph said, there can be exceptions, for rooms where this is really needed.I will be happy to do everything I'll be asked to as part of my work; but as far as free time goes, this choice makes it harder for me to contribute to KDE and - as a result - I'll most likely fade out my free-time contributions over time.~Nicco
Cheers, Tobias
On Tue, Aug 22, 2023, 9:02 AM Joseph P. De Veaugh-Geiss <[email protected]> wrote:Hello KDE community, apologies for cross-posting! The time has finally come: both Telegram <-> Matrix bridges will be shut down in 4 weeks on *Wednesday 20 September*. Let's start the co-ordination process now so everything goes as smoothly as possible. For all KDE contributors: please read at least the "Five To-Dos" below to be informed about what will happen and what needs to be done. Below that there is some additional information about the bridging situation at KDE. Consult these notes if you want more background information about why the Telegram bridge is being retired. Cheers, Joseph _Five To-Dos_ 1. *General*: On Wednesday 20 September the Telegram bridging to KDE Matrix rooms will be shut down. To make the transition go smoothly, teams should start co-ordinating for the shutdown now. The Matrix room for co-ordination is "Telegram shutdown co-ordination" at https://go.kde.org/matrix/#/#telegram-shutdown:kde.org <https://go.kde.org/matrix/#/%23telegram-shutdown:kde.org>. 2. *Co-ordination*: This includes: (i) migrating all contributors to Matrix, and (ii) deleting the Telegram rooms before the bridge is shutdown or -- at most -- one day after the shutdown. Keeping Telegram rooms open when they are no longer being used will cause unnecessary confusion. Importantly, do not later add a non-KDE Telegram bridge to KDE's Matrix rooms as that will not solve the problems from doubled user accounts and lack of control over Telegram; see below for operational issues with Telegram bridging. 3. *Action needed by Telegram room admins*: Due to the unexpected shutdown of the public Libera.Chat bridge, we will have to move rooms over to the matterbridge (ircsomebot) bridge as we work through moving channels over to our own Libera.Chat IRC bridge. This will require someone with admin in the Telegram room to ensure @ircsomebot is in the Telegram room with admin. This needs to be done after we unbridge the Matrix bridge from the Matrix side, so the room can continue to be bridged until the Telegram shutdown on 20 September. 4. *Are there exceptions?": There /may/ be some rooms that focus on interacting with people external to the KDE Community who would benefit by having a Telegram bridge. We are thinking teams like those involved in the KDE Network program: https://community.kde.org/The_KDE_Network. Not all will need an exception, and it may turn out most don't. We would like to start putting together a list of these rooms so we can review for potential exceptions and estimate the scale of how much support is needed. However, this should be kept to a minimum; see below for operational issues with Telegram bridging. We understand that there are large internal KDE communities which rely heavily on Telegram, and we understand that shutting down the Telegram bridge is less than ideal for these rooms, but the issues we have with the Telegram bridge mean we need to keep exceptions to a minimum and only for those teeams whose work has a primarily external focus. 5. *Getting a Matrix account*: We can offer KDE Contributors (usually those in the developers group, but will consider other requests) a Matrix account on our KDE Matrix Homeserver. To request an account please file a sysadmin ticket https://go.kde.org/systickets. However, as Matrix is federated you do not need to have an account on our homeserver to access KDE's Matrix rooms -- you can use any homeserver! A list of some alternative Matrix servers is available on https://joinmatrix.org/servers/. To co-ordinate with other teams to make this transition go as smoothly as possible, please reach out to the "Telegram shutdown co-ordination" Matrix room: https://go.kde.org/matrix/#/#telegram-shutdown:kde.org <https://go.kde.org/matrix/#/%23telegram-shutdown:kde.org>. _Additional Information Re Bridges_ * Four years ago it was decided to add Matrix to IRC as KDE's official IM platforms (bridged together). IRC is not planned to be shut down. * Telegram is not Free Software and has never been an official platform for KDE communications. However, it has been used unofficially in a number of areas. * EMS hosts KDE's Matrix instance and the current Telegram bridge, and the majority of issues our community have with Matrix are related to bridges. Due to the huge extra load and poor performance Telegram bridging has in the Matrix rooms, it was agreed with EMS that the bridge would be only run for about a year until people had time to migrate to Matrix. * However, instead of people migrating away from Telegram, we have seen an increase in contributors using /both/ Matrix and Telegram, which has doubled the number of users we have to cope with. Having twice as many users as needed in the room slows everything down: longer joins, more state events for each user, higher chances of room state developing problems. * The public Libera.Chat bridge was unexpectedly shutdown, and we have to move rooms over to the matterbridge (ircsomebot) bridge as we work through moving channels over to our own Libera.Chat IRC bridge. This is not as originally planned, which was to migrate to that IRC bridge after the Telegram shutdown. * The vast majority of spam is from Telegram. Due to the Telegram bridge account being reported for spam, the account has lost the ability to do admin tasks in many rooms. At its worst the account was blocked from logging in for weeks, making the bridge non-functional. Since then, rooms often can't be bridged without deleting the Telegram room and starting fresh, but this only has about a 30% success of working long-term. We did not get anywhere attempting to get Telegram to help. * The current Telegram bridge doesn't work properly so it makes sense to shut it down rather than trying to just change account phone numbers (which would require removing the bridge from all channels then re-adding to a new bridge, with high chance we end up in the same situation in the future).-- Joseph P. De Veaugh-GeissKDE Internal Communications & KDE Eco Community Manager OpenPGP: 8FC5 4178 DC44 AD55 08E7 DF57 453E 5746 59A6 C06F Matrix: @joseph:kde.org <http://kde.org> Generally available Monday-Thursday from 10-16h CET/CEST. Outside of these times it may take a little longer for me to respond. KDE Eco: Building Energy-Efficient Free Software! Website: https://eco.kde.org Mastodon: @[email protected]
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