Re: [QGIS-Developer] Revolt Chat Community Server
Greetings Johannes and previous posters to this thread. I think the discussion needs to be split in three parts: 1) The official discussion area for project discussions and decisions. In my opinion, for better or worse, this is still the mailing lists until something better has replaced them. For me I am happy to use discourse or any other platform that is agreed by the PSC by direct decision or by putting it to community vote. 2) Which chat / other platforms we allow. In my opinion we should be really open and allow communities to gather on whichever platforms they want to, be it FB, Telegram, Gitter, Revolt, Stack Exchange etc. We basically have no control over this anyway and being open means also tolerating the fact that people assemble and form subcommunities on platforms that we don't necessarily prefer. 3) The status of 'official' chat platforms and their discoverability. For these, we should grant 'official / endorsed' status, have them listed on our web site, they should have clear contact points for moderators, be allowed to use the world 'Official' in their name, be generally limited to one per platform (e.g. the Official Facebook QGIS Group) and enforce things like our code of conduct and diversity rules. I think trying to police or control things beyond this is largely pointless as we cannot as a project dictate how and where people choose to collaborate. Regards Tim On Sat, Nov 5, 2022 at 3:18 PM Johannes Kröger (WhereGroup) via QGIS-Developer wrote: > Sorry if this was covered before, I googled "qgis revolt gitter" and got > no hits so maybe it was not: > > Apart from IRC and Matrix there is also Gitter, with four rooms > currently at https://gitter.im/qgis/home > > Anita said a while ago that those are actually indexed on Google. > > It seems to have a similar "richness" in terms of embedded images, slick > browser interface etc compared to Revolt. > > Does Revolt bring significant benefits compared to Gitter? Probably more > control about rooms and such? Maybe also the means of logging in are bad > at Gitter, I see Github, Gitlab, Twitter and Matrix, so all fairly > involved, nerdy choices. > > Cheers, Hannes > > ___ > QGIS-Developer mailing list > QGIS-Developer@lists.osgeo.org > List info: https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/qgis-developer > Unsubscribe: https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/qgis-developer > -- -- Tim Sutton Visit http://kartoza.com to find out about open source: * Desktop GIS programming services * Geospatial web development * GIS Training * Consulting Services Tim is a member of the QGIS Project Steering Committee --- ___ QGIS-Developer mailing list QGIS-Developer@lists.osgeo.org List info: https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/qgis-developer Unsubscribe: https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/qgis-developer
Re: [QGIS-Developer] Revolt Chat Community Server
Sorry if this was covered before, I googled "qgis revolt gitter" and got no hits so maybe it was not: Apart from IRC and Matrix there is also Gitter, with four rooms currently at https://gitter.im/qgis/home Anita said a while ago that those are actually indexed on Google. It seems to have a similar "richness" in terms of embedded images, slick browser interface etc compared to Revolt. Does Revolt bring significant benefits compared to Gitter? Probably more control about rooms and such? Maybe also the means of logging in are bad at Gitter, I see Github, Gitlab, Twitter and Matrix, so all fairly involved, nerdy choices. Cheers, Hannes ___ QGIS-Developer mailing list QGIS-Developer@lists.osgeo.org List info: https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/qgis-developer Unsubscribe: https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/qgis-developer
Re: [QGIS-Developer] Revolt Chat Community Server
+1000 for a QGIS* Discourse! Discourse is fun to use and to administer. Easy to automate with scripts and bots. Login is possible with openid and all that modern bling. As others said, it has a mailing list mode that should cater well to those who prefer that method. Etc etc. I meant to set up a proof of concept during FOSS4G but ended up discarding that for personal reasons. Actually I had meant to make a PoC three years ago already https://trac.osgeo.org/osgeo/ticket/2306 but back then I was demotivated by too much (understandable and reasonable) effort required around with SAC, another mailing list etc. I would be up for *joining* a maintenance and moderation team any time, as long as responsibilities are well spread and shared. :) Also I'd probably be able to help on the initial setup and importing of mailing lists I guess. It would be fantastic to have a friendly, open and modern, persistant, search-index, intuitive communication platform next to the emphemeral chat, focused Q (StackExchange) and developer exchanges on GitHub. Imagine people being able to e. g. showcase their work-in-progress GIS/mapping projects or discuss ideas and concepts in-depth, with illustrations and graphics. I agree about Régis' points about chats being kind of subdividing to communities, requiring lots of attention and being kind of silos of information (no one will "discover" information that was shared in a chat later, it is just for the moment and thus often a waste). On the other hand, people clearly want and use such modern chat systems so if there was a unified one, potentially for all OSGeo projects, it would be a good thing. While I am a fan of Matrix on principle, the bridges are always broken and its UX, at least with Element and any other client I have used so far, is really *really* awful. I am not a fan of Revolt, if only for their "please don't self-host" approach which is anti-FOSS to me, but it was way nicer to use when I tried it in Firenze. Too many options make everything worse. I'd probably scream and kick, but if IRC was killed of, it would probably effect 5-10 people, for Matrix maybe a couple more. If it would mean that 50 others might join in on a better platform, then it would be worth it. tone> By relying on mailing lists we ignore the vast majority of users out there, who would never touch a system that looks like https://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/qgis-user/2022-November/thread.html , where every message is on a separate page, text lines are as long as the browser window is wide, monospace font rendering makes everything look nerdy and >50% of the page is the previous message above or below or in between the actual content of the post. It could just as well be hosted on gopher:// To me mailing lists are utterly outdated, user-unfriendly, confusing and a pain to use. You cannot edit your messages if you made tiny mistakes. Message threads are unwieldly messes of different quoting styles and signatures. There are no highlighting or formatting features. There is no inlining of images and people often have their attachments dropped. Search options are nothing compared to well search-engine-indexed webpages. Discoverability is zero. Following messages means having to submit your mail address instead of just being able to subscribe to a RSS/Atom feed. Using mailing lists in your mail account pollutes a tool for communication with an information store with (usually) pretty bad indexing and search capabilities. Separating actual mails from mailing list messages would require extra effort on the user in setup of their mail client, if it would even be possible. Access to older messages requires manual imports. Participating in mailing lists exposes your mail address to everyone and their spam bot neighbor. People sometimes reply privately by accident. People sometimes cannot easily configure their mail program to not send HTML mails when they are using them by default and with great success and happiness for the rest of their daily mailings. And that's just the incoherent stream of thoughts from the top of my head right now... Hannes PS: *or even better: OSGeo! Just imagine if there was a central, common place for people to talk about proj, gmt or geoserver easily and with a modern interface. PPS: I do use Arch btw! Archlinux users against mailing lists unite! https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/qgis-developer Unsubscribe: https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/qgis-developer
Re: [QGIS-Developer] Revolt Chat Community Server
Thank you all for your feedback and responses. I will try to get to them all, but may be through several emails (due to time and length). Regis: Thank you for your thorough reply. I do greatly appreciate the effort you put in to your response. For sake of clarity, I will quote just the beginning portion of large sections, but my response will be for the entire section. 1. First, before jumping to a tool, I would like that we discuss globally the communication challenges that all those new tools bring for all online communities - QGIS included. Yes, I agree. I had a QGIS Open Day announcement and discussion that happened a couple of months ago (you can watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrvTnkGNzSw). I wanted to not only "complain" about the existing platforms, but also provide a solution. I had worked with Tim Sutton on this Revolt server, and after it's "launch" at the QOD session, I had some feedback from Amy and Alexandre. --- 2a. Mailing lists are dying... Yes. It was actually shortly after the email I originally sent out, that GNOME was dropping it's own mailing lists (GNU Mailman 2) and porting them over to Discourse (as you mention later). Discourse is a forum solution (not a chat solution) that many other organizations and project use. GNOME isn't replacing everything with this one solution. They have 3 different platforms in place for 3 distinct roles/purposes. 1. Discourse to replace Mailing Lists as the threaded discussion platform 2. Matrix to replace IRC (which the Matrix room(s) are bridged to IRC) for use as a chat platform 3. GitLab for all development, patches, feature requests, etc... We could also aim for this kind of platform. It maybe worth while discussing with OSGeo whether they want to migrate all the mailing lists to Discourse instead (as Nabble is no more). (Discourse also has an email-able interface to still have that "mailing list" experience for those who need it (i.e. screen readers) or insist on it). Another "issue" with the mailing lists are that we (as in QGIS) do not manage it. The mailing lists are handled by OSGeo, so if we need anything related to mailing list administration, we have to go through OSGeo for that. (For instance, I had to go through OSGeo to even get me added to the mailing list in the first place as the sign-up didn't work; and even now, I'm still not fully getting the proper emails I should for this mailing list). Just a minor inconvenience with mailing lists, is the archive does a hard break between months. This thread, for instance, spans two months, October and November. One can't navigate to the October message from within a November one with the previous message by thread link. --- 2b. And let's not forget that some people just don't want to use apps, and would like to stick to mail forever. Yeah, there will always be those people (see xkcd 1782). We are in a technology field that is moving forward (thankfully we aren't all still using GRASS CLI right?) We can't appease everyone. Usually in doing so, we end up offending everyone. I would think that the people who insist on still using mailing lists (and IRC) are in a vast minority. Our focus should be on the community as a whole who would rather have a more user-friendly way of interacting with this great community, than a few people who use Arch BTW, emacs or vim, and live solely in the command line (this is a bit sarcastic and humorous, and not degrading or insulting. I myself use vim (neovim) for programming and do like the command line for certain things.) As mentioned earlier, Discourse does offer an email solution for interacting with it for those people. Also, bridges to exist to bridge platforms over to others (mainly developed for those who do prefer to live in IRC). What I'm trying to say here is that we have to way the pros and cons, and who our "target audience" is for a community site. --- 3. Chats are fun, but messy, and they break our community in sub parts. Yes. Chats are fun. It's great to be able to say hi to fellow QGIS members, ask for help, show off really cool maps (i.e. we're in the 30-Day Map Challenge right now). And yes, they can be messy, but organization is key. One of the purposes for choosing a platform like Revolt (and this does also include Discord) is the ability for multiple rooms for various topics to keep the chatting more organized and less messy. This is meant to unify the various groups under one umbrella (i.e. the various QGIS mailing lists are disjointed), but yet have their own space (either by a single room to themselves, or a group of rooms depending on the needs). In Revolt, all rooms are visible (unless you specify otherwise for
Re: [QGIS-Developer] Revolt Chat Community Server
Hi Greg, On 03/11/2022 01:20, Greg Troxel via QGIS-Developer wrote: Régis Haubourg via QGIS-Developer writes: I think it's really unfortunate that people object to using email, for reasons that to me border on fashion. Besides archives, mailinglists have another important point, which is that the set of subscribers to a list are a community, a group that makes some effort to belong, and people tend to remain. I don't see this with other mechanisms. Agreed. I think - hoping I am not rewriting history - that Discourse was created to address these issues, with keeping the advantages of the mailing lists. I agree about too much traffic. Between it being easy to type, vs an expectation of thoughtfulness in email, and people popping into chats, expecting help, and then leaving, I find it too much and only follow a few. Same here. - we also have issues, Pull requests and potential GitHub discussions to not forget here :) We do, but that's proprietary software and relying on it more raises the cost of leaving. Clearly, but if we had gitea or a self hosted gitlab, the problem of having a good part of the discussions there would be the same, even with FOSS versions. - adding a new communication channel without stating officially which is the main channel just breaks the single source of truth principle we had with mailing lists. I have seen recently two feedback from community users thinking that there was no debate on major topics, just because the discussion on the mailing list topics stalled. But those discussions in fact did occur, but spread across those new channels, and we didn't have enough bandwidth to summarize the decision on the mailing list (and we also forgot). This is the most annoying issue. I think this should be fixed by declaring the mailinglist to be the communication method of record. Discourse is a modern forum, that can act as a chat if you are inline, or a mailing list, and let users tune their notifications levels pretty nicely. Just have a look to the main page, stating the principles of this tool [0] This is interesting and I don't have experience with it. I suspect that means the kinds of projects I tend to participate in are either mailinglist culture projects or github only. - Discourse as one organized and persistent place, including the osgeo history discussions. This would be the main communication channel. I will contact OSGEO to see if the system administration committee want to go this way for all the osgeo mailing lists. I am open to considering this if it functions as a non-broken mailinglist. That's a tall order, with From: fields correct without messing up DKIM/DMARC, but maybe there is good enough. - We choose on main chat tool for instant messaging. Discord or Revolt could be the choice. I would vote for open source first. So this would be Element-Matrix or Revolt. Revolt is a bit too much overlapping Discourse feature to me. Element Matrix is already bridged to IRC and exists. I would say that open source, clients and server should be an absolute requirement, and there should be a very strong bias to federated and already in use. And, I'd include "people who avoid Google push services do not have a second-class experience". I agree, as long as it doesn't divert too much our workforce from focusing on QGIS and that we don't fall into vendor locking traps. But I know we have a diversity of opinions in the project. You say Element Matrix, but I think it's really "Matrix" and people can use whatever clients they want (and I get it that most use Element). Yep, sorry for this shortcut. I link both because many non tech don't even know about Matrix protocol. Also, revolt's terms contain: You are responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of your account and password, including but not limited to the restriction of access to your computer and/or account. You agree to accept responsibility for any and all activities or actions that occur under your account and/or password, whether your password is with our Service or a third-party service. which seems like it is trying to be an indemnification, and it is clearly unreasonable. I don't think it's ok for osgeo projects to ask people to sign contracta with third parties as part of participating. But, I realize I am likely viewed as an extremist. That said, revolt's terms (for their site) are less troublesome than many other centralized services. Interesting. I had a look at the project info. The idea is really to offer a FOSS Discord alternative but the number of contributors is not that high (8). and the rationale behind this project is really to fill this FOSS alternative gap. When Discourse offers something radically different. All the best and thanks a lot for those constructive thoughts. I'll raise this discussion to the next PSC. // ___ QGIS-Developer mailing list
Re: [QGIS-Developer] Revolt Chat Community Server
Hi Regis, Thanks for your well though email. Despite local/platform specific communities can arise without any notice, I agree that the QGIS project should choose one official mean of communication. It used to be these mailing lists, but lately it's very quite, which suggests that discussions and decisions are probably being taken somewhere else. So I do believe the project could/should discuss this situation. Something that could still leverage email and that allows archiving and browsing of old messages would be great. Best Regards, Alex Neto A quarta, 2/11/2022, 20:37, Régis Haubourg via QGIS-Developer < qgis-developer@lists.osgeo.org> escreveu: > Hi Ethan, > > thanks for the work with Revolt. I tried it during the developer meeting > in Firenze, but I did not persist in using it. Let me explain why and > please excuse me in advance, this is a pretty long mail! > > First, before jumping to a tool, I would like that we discuss globally the > communication challenges that all those new tools bring for all online > communities - QGIS included. > > I experienced the very same situation with mailing list and a spontaneus > Discord server ( at my paragliding club) and I learned a few things, both > positive and negative. > > # Where are we now ? > > - mailing lists are dying. Younger won't jump in. Being at ease suppose a > good email client and filter rules. And this is a pain. What is really > unique is that they are indexed by search engine and accessible via public > archives. We built a knowledge base each time we post a mail. Osgeo also > offers a central hub where one can't explore existing mailing lists, and > this was a really nice to me. Now that Nabble is dead, there is no more > forum-like web access. And let's not forget that some people just don't > want to use apps, and would like to stick to mail forever. So we can't > stay without decision here. > > - Chats are fun, but messy, and they break our community in sub parts. > Telegram / IRC / Element -Matrix / Gitter / Signal / WhatsApp etc... > Furthermore, there are multiple channels that you can't be aware if you're > not invited into. This is a serious regression, because transparency and > public discussion is a key principle of Free software. > > - Chats aren't efficient and generate too much traffic. I personnaly just > don't have enough bandwidth to follow 10% of the channels I should follow. > And I am pretty involved. Furthermore, each country seems to have its > preferences on which too to use. I ended up in having 6 apps on my phone > only for those channels. This is far from ideal. Let's not forget that some > people will never leave IRC too :) (and some have older phones not > supporting so many apps). > > - Discord / Revolt are organized chats, with topics. They have nice apps. > They are still it is some kind of private place if this can't be found via > a search engine. Maybe Revolt can be indexed? At one point, I think they > also start to be messy and require so clear rules for category / topics > management, and archiving discussions. The Revolt instance has too much > categories IMO. > > - we also have issues, Pull requests and potential GitHub discussions to > not forget here :) > > - adding a new communication channel without stating officially which is > the main channel just breaks the single source of truth principle we had > with mailing lists. I have seen recently two feedback from community users > thinking that there was no debate on major topics, just because the > discussion on the mailing list topics stalled. But those discussions in > fact did occur, but spread across those new channels, and we didn't have > enough bandwidth to summarize the decision on the mailing list (and we also > forgot). This is the most annoying issue. > > - Side note, I didn't have a good user experience with Revolt, the app > seems still a bit young. But I am pretty sure it will get more mature. > > - Last but not least, after discussing this issue in the French OSGeo > local chapter and with open data groups, I discovered (yet) another option, > which is Discourse. > > Discourse is a modern forum, that can act as a chat if you are inline, or > a mailing list, and let users tune their notifications levels pretty > nicely. Just have a look to the main page, stating the principles of this > tool [0] > > There are tools to migrate mailman history archives to Discourse. Gnome > project just chose this path recently. [1] (thanks Marco for your pointers > here) > > S, we are all now facing the "too much choice" situation and user's > confusion. > > # How to adress this situation ? > > So I would like to propose the following approach, which is basically the > Gnome's project strategy. > > - Discourse as one organized and persistent place, including the osgeo > history discussions. This would be the main communication channel. I will > contact OSGEO to see if the system administration committee want to go this > way for all the
Re: [QGIS-Developer] Revolt Chat Community Server
Also, revolt's terms contain: You are responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of your account and password, including but not limited to the restriction of access to your computer and/or account. You agree to accept responsibility for any and all activities or actions that occur under your account and/or password, whether your password is with our Service or a third-party service. which seems like it is trying to be an indemnification, and it is clearly unreasonable. I don't think it's ok for osgeo projects to ask people to sign contracta with third parties as part of participating. But, I realize I am likely viewed as an extremist. That said, revolt's terms (for their site) are less troublesome than many other centralized services. signature.asc Description: PGP signature ___ QGIS-Developer mailing list QGIS-Developer@lists.osgeo.org List info: https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/qgis-developer Unsubscribe: https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/qgis-developer
Re: [QGIS-Developer] Revolt Chat Community Server
Régis Haubourg via QGIS-Developer writes: > thanks for the work with Revolt. I tried it during the developer > meeting in Firenze, but I did not persist in using it. Let me explain > why and please excuse me in advance, this is a pretty long mail! I found your message to be very thoughtful and helpful. For background, my involvement in qgis development is so far maintaining the pkgsrc entry (also gdal, postgis, proj), portability testing on those projects, and ranting about WGS84 ensembles. > - mailing lists are dying. Younger won't jump in. Being at ease > suppose a good email client and filter rules. And this is a pain. What > is really unique is that they are indexed by search engine and > accessible via public archives. We built a knowledge base each time we > post a mail. Osgeo also offers a central hub where one can't explore > existing mailing lists, and this was a really nice to me. Now that > Nabble is dead, there is no more forum-like web access. And let's not > forget that some people just don't want to use apps, and would like to > stick to mail forever. So we can't stay without decision here. I think it's really unfortunate that people object to using email, for reasons that to me border on fashion. Besides archives, mailinglists have another important point, which is that the set of subscribers to a list are a community, a group that makes some effort to belong, and people tend to remain. I don't see this with other mechanisms. In particular, community doesn't happen with github; only the very few dedicated contributors subscribe all, and, at least in smaller projects, a handful of people deal with and respond to issues that mostly should not be in issues. I suspect this is partially github's fault for pushing all interaction to their systems while not offering mailinglists, and partly that people expect personalized support from others rather than joining and being mutual. Another point I think is very important is that email allows meaningful participation by people who are only able to pay attention once a day or even less. Anything chat-like (which includes many forums in my experience) generates a culture of instant discussion and moving on. The things that matter actually happen on slower time scales, and using fast-only mechanisms effectively excludes slower time scale people. This is a tools issue, but I find that with email, the conversations arrive (and in my case are sorted into per-project folders), and I become aware of them. I do not have to go to N different websites to keep up with various projects. > - Chats aren't efficient and generate too much traffic. I personnaly > just don't have enough bandwidth to follow 10% of the channels I > should follow. And I am pretty involved. Furthermore, each country > seems to have its preferences on which too to use. I ended up in > having 6 apps on my phone only for those channels. This is far from > ideal. Let's not forget that some people will never leave IRC too :) > (and some have older phones not supporting so many apps). I agree about too much traffic. Between it being easy to type, vs an expectation of thoughtfulness in email, and people popping into chats, expecting help, and then leaving, I find it too much and only follow a few. > - we also have issues, Pull requests and potential GitHub discussions > to not forget here :) We do, but that's proprietary software and relying on it more raises the cost of leaving. > - adding a new communication channel without stating officially which > is the main channel just breaks the single source of truth principle > we had with mailing lists. I have seen recently two feedback from > community users thinking that there was no debate on major topics, > just because the discussion on the mailing list topics stalled. But > those discussions in fact did occur, but spread across those new > channels, and we didn't have enough bandwidth to summarize the > decision on the mailing list (and we also forgot). This is the most > annoying issue. I think this should be fixed by declaring the mailinglist to be the communication method of record. > Discourse is a modern forum, that can act as a chat if you are inline, > or a mailing list, and let users tune their notifications levels > pretty nicely. Just have a look to the main page, stating the > principles of this tool [0] This is interesting and I don't have experience with it. I suspect that means the kinds of projects I tend to participate in are either mailinglist culture projects or github only. > - Discourse as one organized and persistent place, including the > osgeo history discussions. This would be the main communication > channel. I will contact OSGEO to see if the system administration > committee want to go this way for all the osgeo mailing lists. I am open to considering this if it functions as a non-broken mailinglist. That's a tall order, with From: fields correct without messing up DKIM/DMARC, but
Re: [QGIS-Developer] Revolt Chat Community Server
Hi Ethan, thanks for the work with Revolt. I tried it during the developer meeting in Firenze, but I did not persist in using it. Let me explain why and please excuse me in advance, this is a pretty long mail! First, before jumping to a tool, I would like that we discuss globally the communication challenges that all those new tools bring for all online communities - QGIS included. I experienced the very same situation with mailing list and a spontaneus Discord server ( at my paragliding club) and I learned a few things, both positive and negative. # Where are we now ? - mailing lists are dying. Younger won't jump in. Being at ease suppose a good email client and filter rules. And this is a pain. What is really unique is that they are indexed by search engine and accessible via public archives. We built a knowledge base each time we post a mail. Osgeo also offers a central hub where one can't explore existing mailing lists, and this was a really nice to me. Now that Nabble is dead, there is no more forum-like web access. And let's not forget that some people just don't want to use apps, and would like to stick to mail forever. So we can't stay without decision here. - Chats are fun, but messy, and they break our community in sub parts. Telegram / IRC / Element -Matrix / Gitter / Signal / WhatsApp etc... Furthermore, there are multiple channels that you can't be aware if you're not invited into. This is a serious regression, because transparency and public discussion is a key principle of Free software. - Chats aren't efficient and generate too much traffic. I personnaly just don't have enough bandwidth to follow 10% of the channels I should follow. And I am pretty involved. Furthermore, each country seems to have its preferences on which too to use. I ended up in having 6 apps on my phone only for those channels. This is far from ideal. Let's not forget that some people will never leave IRC too :) (and some have older phones not supporting so many apps). - Discord / Revolt are organized chats, with topics. They have nice apps. They are still it is some kind of private place if this can't be found via a search engine. Maybe Revolt can be indexed? At one point, I think they also start to be messy and require so clear rules for category / topics management, and archiving discussions. The Revolt instance has too much categories IMO. - we also have issues, Pull requests and potential GitHub discussions to not forget here :) - adding a new communication channel without stating officially which is the main channel just breaks the single source of truth principle we had with mailing lists. I have seen recently two feedback from community users thinking that there was no debate on major topics, just because the discussion on the mailing list topics stalled. But those discussions in fact did occur, but spread across those new channels, and we didn't have enough bandwidth to summarize the decision on the mailing list (and we also forgot). This is the most annoying issue. - Side note, I didn't have a good user experience with Revolt, the app seems still a bit young. But I am pretty sure it will get more mature. - Last but not least, after discussing this issue in the French OSGeo local chapter and with open data groups, I discovered (yet) another option, which is Discourse. Discourse is a modern forum, that can act as a chat if you are inline, or a mailing list, and let users tune their notifications levels pretty nicely. Just have a look to the main page, stating the principles of this tool [0] There are tools to migrate mailman history archives to Discourse. Gnome project just chose this path recently. [1] (thanks Marco for your pointers here) S, we are all now facing the "too much choice" situation and user's confusion. # How to adress this situation ? So I would like to propose the following approach, which is basically the Gnome's project strategy. - Discourse as one organized and persistent place, including the osgeo history discussions. This would be the main communication channel. I will contact OSGEO to see if the system administration committee want to go this way for all the osgeo mailing lists. - We choose on main chat tool for instant messaging. Discord or Revolt could be the choice. I would vote for open source first. So this would be Element-Matrix or Revolt. Revolt is a bit too much overlapping Discourse feature to me. Element Matrix is already bridged to IRC and exists. - We let community driven channels be impulsed by groups (user groups, thematic groups), but let's be clear that it tends to break the community and should not be advertised as the official channels I am sorry if this not goes the way you want, and we are here to debate and find a consensus. Adding more channels without removing others is confusing for all of us. All the best Régis [0] https://www.discourse.org/ [1]
[QGIS-Developer] Revolt Chat Community Server
Greetings Devs! For those who aren't aware, Tim Sutton and I created a new community site with Revolt. Revolt is a FOSS alternative to Discord that has many of the features of Discord (for those who know about Discord), but without the not-so-friendly TOS. Some features are missing, but are planned as Revolt is in very active development (such as the overhauled . I gave a presentation on a QGIS Open Day session regarding the new community site (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrvTnkGNzSw) A big reason for creating this, was to help centralize and organize the community. A key feature is being able to have multiple rooms (channels) for various topics all under one single roof. Need a new room for some major thing without clogging up the main dev channel (such as Qt 6 work)? Need a room for discussing the new QGIS website aside from comments on Figma (already suggested to Anita)? Creating separate rooms for these discussions is very easy (takes a few seconds), and helps organize things, and increases community involvement and feedback. I have setup already, a couple of development rooms: core development, plugin development, translations, documentation, and a general chat for hackfests (Carlos, Amy, Raymond, and Tim already posted tons of photos from the hackfest in Firenze). Right now, the server isn't very active. But, I believe that with enough key/core members using it, it will gain traction as we use it. There are already numerous people signed up for this server. I recommend checking it out, there are desktop apps, mobile apps, and a Web App available (plus with being FOSS, custom apps are completely allowed, unlike Discord). Please feel free to provide feedback. A couple of people have already made suggestions; and things have been rearranged, and changed since it's initial setup and launch, so nothing is set in stone. To create an account: https://.revolt.chat To join the QGIS server: https://rvlt.gg/eRTmS1ZV Let me know if you have any questions. We made this for the QGIS community, as we believe this is a great platform for such a large and active community and would like to see it used. Thanks, Ethan Snyder DISCLAIMER: This message and any documents attached may contain confidential information and are intended only for the individual(s) named. If you are not the intended recipient, or the employee or agent authorized to received for the intended recipient, you should not disseminate, distribute or copy this e-mail and any attached documents. If you have received this e-mail in error, please immediately notify the sender at Remington & Vernick Engineers by replying to this e-mail and delete the original e-mail and any reply e-mail messages from your system. E-mail transmission cannot be guaranteed to be secure or error-free as information could be intercepted, corrupted, lost, destroyed, arrive late or incomplete, or contain viruses. The sender therefore does not accept liability for any errors or omissions in the contents of this message, which arise as a result of e-mail transmission. If verification is required please request a hard-copy version. Thank you. ___ QGIS-Developer mailing list QGIS-Developer@lists.osgeo.org List info: https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/qgis-developer Unsubscribe: https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/qgis-developer
