<div dir="auto">Hi Regis,<div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">Thanks for your well though email.</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">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.</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">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.</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">Best Regards,</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">Alex Neto</div><div dir="auto"> </div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">A quarta, 2/11/2022, 20:37, Régis Haubourg via QGIS-Developer <<a href="mailto:qgis-developer@lists.osgeo.org">qgis-developer@lists.osgeo.org</a>> escreveu:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div>
<p>Hi Ethan, <br>
</p>
<p>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!</p>
<p>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. <br>
</p>
<p>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. <br>
</p>
<p># Where are we now ?<br>
</p>
<p>- 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. <br>
</p>
<p>- 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. <br>
</p>
<p>- 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).<br>
</p>
<p>- 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. <br>
</p>
<p>- we also have issues, Pull requests and potential GitHub
discussions to not forget here :) <br>
</p>
<p>- 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. <br>
</p>
<p>- 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. <br>
</p>
<p>- 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. <br>
</p>
<p>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]</p>
<p>There are tools to migrate mailman history archives to Discourse.
Gnome project just chose this path recently. [1] (thanks Marco for
your pointers here) <br>
</p>
<p>Soooo, we are all now facing the "too much choice" situation and
user's confusion. <br>
</p>
<p># How to adress this situation ?<br>
</p>
<p>So I would like to propose the following approach, which is
basically the Gnome's project strategy.<br>
</p>
<p> - 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. <br>
</p>
<p>- 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. <br>
</p>
<p>- 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<br>
</p>
<p>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. <br>
</p>
<p>All the best</p>
<p>Régis <br>
</p>
<p>[0] <a href="https://www.discourse.org/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer">https://www.discourse.org/</a><br>
</p>
<p>[1]
<a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/yer97p/from_the_register_the_gnome_project_is_closing/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer">https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/yer97p/from_the_register_the_gnome_project_is_closing/</a></p>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<p>On 28/10/2022 23:10, Ethan Snyder via QGIS-Developer wrote:<br>
</p>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre>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 (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrvTnkGNzSw" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrvTnkGNzSw</a>)
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: <a href="https://.revolt.chat" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer">https://.revolt.chat</a>
To join the QGIS server: <a href="https://rvlt.gg/eRTmS1ZV" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer">https://rvlt.gg/eRTmS1ZV</a>
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
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