[QGIS-Developer] Revolt Chat Community Server

Wed Nov 2 13:35:53 PDT 2022

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)

Soooo, 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] 
https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/yer97p/from_the_register_the_gnome_project_is_closing/

On 28/10/2022 23:10, Ethan Snyder via QGIS-Developer wrote:

> 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
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