Re: [SMW-devel] Modern chat solution as alternative to IRC?

[Stephan Gambke via Semediawiki-devel]

> The SMW IRC chat seems pretty dead these days (albeit not completely).
> I tend to pretty often have quick questions I that would be very
> suitable for a chat (need a quick answer, or throwing some questions
> back and forth, making the mailing list too slow), and find that the IRC
> chat is too silent to be of much use (I got some good answers sometimes,
> but it is not "reliable").
> A lot of projects seem to get very good use of some of the more modern
> chat solutions like slack, or gitter (We actually even put up a gitter
> chat for SMW at https://gitter.im/SemanticMediaWiki ... ).
> What are people"s opinions ... would it be reasonable to push for using
> some such solution more (e.g. the gitter chat)?

I don't understand how changing the chat system would create more traffic.
What you are proposing appears to me to be an attempt of a technical solution 
for a social problem. IRC my not be the most modern system, but there are web 
frontends available and I don't think that more people would come to chat about 
SMW if only the interface was more shiny. And multiplying the communication 
channels might even be counterproductive as it spreads the people available for 
conversation over even more places. As you noted, there already is (or was?) an 
SMW chat on Gitter that apparently did not get traction.

Finally, if you don't ask questions because the channel seems so quiet (and 
other people do the same) then it is probably not a surprise if the channel 
stays quiet. Or, in other words, start using the existing channel and maybe 
stay around a while to answer other people's questions, and we might see some 
more traffic.
Just my 2 cents.
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Re: [SMW-devel] Modern chat solution as alternative to IRC?

[Samuel Lampa]

On 2017-07-27 13:32, Stephan Gambke wrote:
What you are proposing appears to me to be an attempt of a technical 
solution for a social problem. IRC my not be the most modern system, 
but there are web frontends available and I don't think that more 
people would come to chat about SMW if only the interface was more 
shiny. And multiplying the communication channels might even be 
counterproductive as it spreads the people available for conversation 
over even more places.


Multiplying channels is problematic, and is why I'm raising the topic, 
so that we can have consensus on where to go, if anywhere.


There are a number of factors apart from just "web access" that I 
believe make the newer breed of solutions more used:


1) They make history available at all times, even though you weren't 
logged in all the time. This helps users be able to jump in on a 
question asked a few hours ago, while you might have been offline (for 
time zone reasons or whatnot).


2) Mobile clients. Slack, Gitter, RocketChat and some others have very 
easy to use mobile clients, which allow you to be reachable (upon 
mention) even when on the move. Of course, you have to set the 
notification settings to your preferred level of availability, but it 
can help a lot for people always on the move.


In our research group, we went from a widely used but constantly very 
low-traffic IRC chat, to a much more frequently used Slack chat, very 
much because of the above reasons, AFAIS.


As you noted, there already is (or was?) an SMW chat on Gitter that 
apparently did not get traction.


This room was set up as a test. We didn't inform about it, and it is 
(currently) not open to anybody outside the SMW github org to join.


Finally, if you don't ask questions because the channel seems so quiet 
(and other people do the same) then it is probably not a surprise if 
the channel stays quiet. Or, in other words, start using the existing 
channel and maybe stay around a while to answer other people's 
questions, and we might see some more traffic.


I have have asked questions numerous times that never got answers.

I'd be happy to support new users with whatever answers I can provide, 
but since I don't see questions not asked when I was not online (see 
points above), that basically never happens.


Best
// Samuel

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Re: [SMW-devel] Modern chat solution as alternative to IRC?

[Jeroen De Dauw]

Hey,

Thanks for raising the topic Samuel.

I can be lazy and not outline my view on this matter as it is identical to
what Stephan already wrote.

Cheers

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Re: [SMW-devel] Modern chat solution as alternative to IRC?

[Samuel Lampa]

On 2017-07-27 14:24, Samuel Lampa wrote:
1) They make history available at all times, even though you weren't 
logged in all the time. This helps users be able to jump in on a 
question asked a few hours ago, while you might have been offline (for 
time zone reasons or whatnot). 


On a related note, the current IRC history log seems to be down:

http://ur1.ca/9gmt7 , which points to 
http://bots.wmflabs.org/~petrb/logs/%23semantic-mediawiki/ , returns a 
404 page.


Best
// Samuel



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Re: [SMW-devel] Modern chat solution as alternative to IRC?

[Samuel Lampa]

On 2017-07-27 13:01, Samuel Lampa wrote:
A lot of projects seem to get very good use of some of the more modern 
chat solutions like slack, or gitter


One example of a very active and thriving gitter chat is the one for the 
workflow tool Nextflow [1]: https://gitter.im/nextflow-io/nextflow


// SL

[1] http://nextflow.io

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Re: [SMW-devel] Modern chat solution as alternative to IRC?

[Martin Brunner]

Yury Katkov schrieb:
> I've no idea how to use IRC

In comparison e.g. to Slack it uses a free open protocol.

I think if you still will stay on IRC, Users could enhance it via Quassel (e.g.
http://quassel-irc.org ), which means that you have a Quassel-Server that is
always connected to IRC. And a client you could use from PC, Phone, etc. that
will connect and get you in the right channels including the chat history.
Maybe some wants to offer this server, I'm not sure if there are public ones.

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[SMW-devel] Modern chat solution as alternative to IRC?

[Samuel Lampa]

Hi SMW folks,

The SMW IRC chat seems pretty dead these days (albeit not completely).

I tend to pretty often have quick questions I that would be very 
suitable for a chat (need a quick answer, or throwing some questions 
back and forth, making the mailing list too slow), and find that the IRC 
chat is too silent to be of much use (I got some good answers sometimes, 
but it is not "reliable").


A lot of projects seem to get very good use of some of the more modern 
chat solutions like slack, or gitter (We actually even put up a gitter 
chat for SMW at https://gitter.im/SemanticMediaWiki ... ).


What are people's opinions ... would it be reasonable to push for using 
some such solution more (e.g. the gitter chat)?


At least I would find it helpful.

Best
// Samuel

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Re: [SMW-devel] Modern chat solution as alternative to IRC?

[Yury Katkov]

I've no idea how to use IRC, actually, for me it's something like BBS,
something from the history lesson. Gitter and Slack will at least provide a
slight possibility of somebody to appear.

-
Yury Katkov

On Thu, Jul 27, 2017 at 1:32 PM, Stephan Gambke via Semediawiki-devel <
semediawiki-devel@lists.sourceforge.net> wrote:

>
> The SMW IRC chat seems pretty dead these days (albeit not completely).
>
> I tend to pretty often have quick questions I that would be very
> suitable for a chat (need a quick answer, or throwing some questions
> back and forth, making the mailing list too slow), and find that the IRC
> chat is too silent to be of much use (I got some good answers sometimes,
> but it is not "reliable").
>
> A lot of projects seem to get very good use of some of the more modern
> chat solutions like slack, or gitter (We actually even put up a gitter
> chat for SMW at https://gitter.im/SemanticMediaWiki ... ).
>
> What are people"s opinions ... would it be reasonable to push for using
> some such solution more (e.g. the gitter chat)?
>
>
> I don't understand how changing the chat system would create more traffic.
> What you are proposing appears to me to be an attempt of a technical
> solution for a social problem. IRC my not be the most modern system, but
> there are web frontends available and I don't think that more people would
> come to chat about SMW if only the interface was more shiny. And
> multiplying the communication channels might even be counterproductive as
> it spreads the people available for conversation over even more places. As
> you noted, there already is (or was?) an SMW chat on Gitter that apparently
> did not get traction.
> Finally, if you don't ask questions because the channel seems so quiet
> (and other people do the same) then it is probably not a surprise if the
> channel stays quiet. Or, in other words, start using the existing channel
> and maybe stay around a while to answer other people's questions, and we
> might see some more traffic.
>
> Just my 2 cents.
>
> Stephan
>
> 
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Re: [SMW-devel] Modern chat solution as alternative to IRC?

[Stephan Gambke via Semediawiki-devel]

http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=semantic-mediawiki

>  Original Message 
> Subject: Re: [SMW-devel] Modern chat solution as alternative to IRC?
> Local Time: July 27, 2017 1:40 PM
> UTC Time: July 27, 2017 11:40 AM
> From: katkov.ju...@gmail.com
> To: Stephan Gambke 
> Samuel Lampa , Semantic MediaWiki - developers 
> 
>
> I've no idea how to use IRC, actually, for me it's something like BBS, 
> something from the history lesson. Gitter and Slack will at least provide a 
> slight possibility of somebody to appear.
>
> -
> Yury Katkov
>
> On Thu, Jul 27, 2017 at 1:32 PM, Stephan Gambke via Semediawiki-devel 
>  wrote:
>
>>> The SMW IRC chat seems pretty dead these days (albeit not completely).
>>> I tend to pretty often have quick questions I that would be very
>>> suitable for a chat (need a quick answer, or throwing some questions
>>> back and forth, making the mailing list too slow), and find that the IRC
>>> chat is too silent to be of much use (I got some good answers sometimes,
>>> but it is not "reliable").
>>> A lot of projects seem to get very good use of some of the more modern
>>> chat solutions like slack, or gitter (We actually even put up a gitter
>>> chat for SMW at https://gitter.im/SemanticMediaWiki ... ).
>>> What are people"s opinions ... would it be reasonable to push for using
>>> some such solution more (e.g. the gitter chat)?
>>
>> I don't understand how changing the chat system would create more traffic.
>> What you are proposing appears to me to be an attempt of a technical 
>> solution for a social problem. IRC my not be the most modern system, but 
>> there are web frontends available and I don't think that more people would 
>> come to chat about SMW if only the interface was more shiny. And multiplying 
>> the communication channels might even be counterproductive as it spreads the 
>> people available for conversation over even more places. As you noted, there 
>> already is (or was?) an SMW chat on Gitter that apparently did not get 
>> traction.
>>
>> Finally, if you don't ask questions because the channel seems so quiet (and 
>> other people do the same) then it is probably not a surprise if the channel 
>> stays quiet. Or, in other words, start using the existing channel and maybe 
>> stay around a while to answer other people's questions, and we might see 
>> some more traffic.
>> Just my 2 cents.
>> Stephan
>> --
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Re: [SMW-devel] Modern chat solution as alternative to IRC?

[Yaron Koren]

Hi,

The history log is not down, but it moved, to this URL:

http://bots.wmflabs.org/~wm-bot/logs/%23semantic-mediawiki/

Hopefully someone can change the URL in the message - it has been incorrect
for years now, which I'm sure has caused a lot of confusion.

I have no strong opinion on the IRC/Gitter/Slack/etc. question.

-Yaron

On Thu, Jul 27, 2017 at 9:30 AM, Samuel Lampa 
wrote:

> On 2017-07-27 14:24, Samuel Lampa wrote:
>
>> 1) They make history available at all times, even though you weren't
>> logged in all the time. This helps users be able to jump in on a question
>> asked a few hours ago, while you might have been offline (for time zone
>> reasons or whatnot).
>>
>
> On a related note, the current IRC history log seems to be down:
>
> http://ur1.ca/9gmt7 , which points to http://bots.wmflabs.org/~petrb
> /logs/%23semantic-mediawiki/ , returns a 404 page.
>
>
> Best
> // Samuel
>
>
>
> 
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Re: [SMW-devel] Modern chat solution as alternative to IRC?

[Samuel Lampa]

On 2017-07-27 14:24, Samuel Lampa wrote:
Multiplying channels is problematic, and is why I'm raising the topic, 
so that we can have consensus on where to go, if anywhere. 


Oops, reading this again I see it might come off as a little snarky, 
which was not my intention.


So what I mean is that I agree about the concern but think it won't be a 
big problem as long as there is some level of community consensus on 
what to use.


Best
// Samuel

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Re: [SMW-devel] Modern chat solution as alternative to IRC?

[Samuel Lampa]

On 2017-07-27 16:27, Yaron Koren wrote:

The history log is not down, but it moved, to this URL:

http://bots.wmflabs.org/~wm-bot/logs/%23semantic-mediawiki/ 



Hopefully someone can change the URL in the message


Great, yes, let's find who's to do it :)

// S

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Re: [SMW-devel] Modern chat solution as alternative to IRC?

[Mark A. Hershberger]

I'll pile on to what Stephan has said: Just use IRC.  If people aren't
there, get them to show up.

I use Slack (via its IRC interface, naturally) and it works, but even
using Slack's own client, I see no real advantage and I see several
disadvantages.

Cindy Cicalese[1] (who does things lik e Display Title née Semantic
Title), just started as the new product manager for the MediaWiki
Platform team at the WMF and, since it is WMF, started using IRC.

She is using IRCCloud[2] which provides

* Unlimited history access
* Free apps for iOS and Android
* 2 IRC connections
* 100MB drag and drop file sharing
* Full history export
* Fast, personal support

That seems pretty "modern", to me.

But what do I know?  I'm happy with using emacs's erc[3] and znc[4], so
I'm a veritable dinosaur.

Mark.

Footnotes: 
[1]  https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Cindy.cicalese

[2]  https://www.irccloud.com/pricing

[3]  https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/ERC

[4]  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZNC

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Re: [SMW-devel] Modern chat solution as alternative to IRC?

[Samuel Lampa]

Thanks Mark and others,

On 2017-07-27 20:36, Mark A. Hershberger wrote:

I'll pile on to what Stephan has said: Just use IRC.  If people aren't
there, get them to show up.


Well, I'm pretty much ready to give in to the peer pressure :D


Cindy Cicalese[1] (who does things lik e Display Title née Semantic
Title), just started as the new product manager for the MediaWiki
Platform team at the WMF and, since it is WMF, started using IRC.

She is using IRCCloud[2] which provides

* Unlimited history access
* Free apps for iOS and Android
* 2 IRC connections
* 100MB drag and drop file sharing
* Full history export
* Fast, personal support


Thanks for the tip! Looks pretty neat actually.

Best
// Samuel

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[SMW-devel] RDFIO 2.2.1 released

[Samuel Lampa]

We just released RDFIO 2.2.1 [1] which is a bug fix release.

Importantly, 2.2.1 adds support for non-English wikis, by using properly 
i18n'ed namespaces for property and category titles.


It also fixes a bad bug in the RDF Import form, that would disallow 
edits if a certain global variable was not set, without any error message.


Note: No SMW 2.5.X support yet (only 2.4) :/

Best
// Samuel

[1] https://github.com/rdfio/RDFIO/releases/tag/v2.2.1

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Re: [SMW-devel] Modern chat solution as alternative to IRC?

[Jeroen De Dauw]

Hey,

I suppose the IRC could be linked more prominently, and as "SMW chatroom"
rather than "IRC", so people that do not know IRC don't get scared from the
get-go. One place where it is currently missing is the homepage, in the
"User community" section next to Facebook, YouTube, etc. This could be
combined with some short documentation (maybe a video) showing how to get
the more modern experience via a service such as IRCCloud.

Hopefully someone can change the URL in the message
>>
>
> Great, yes, let's find who's to do it :)
>

https://www.semantic-mediawiki.org/wiki/semantic-mediawiki.org:Services_accounts

Cheers

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