Okay, what do we need before we do the Official Grand Opening?
Spaces feature needs to launch officially
There’s some GDPR handling text which was in Matrix’s generic code of conduct and is not in the Fedora one; #action @mattdm to check with Legal about this.
Documentation
How-tos for users (get started, get clients)
Some basic policy docs
At least pointers to this discussion category / SIG
Announcement email
Fedora Magazine post
Pin links to these in Announcements
Update key links and general documentation (like join sig stuff)
Design for chat.fedoraproject.org login page
Unique icons for at least the Spaces and Welcome rooms
remove (“tombstone”) the “Under Construction” room.
make sure the bot in #fedora won’t chide everyone on the bridge when it detects problems with one user
Post launch:
More docs
Update more links
Unique icons for more rooms
What am I missing? I’ll add in new items as you tell me them.
@mattdm: Thanks. Also, do you think the new Matrix announcement should replace the existing IRC announcement that is pinned? I’m not quite sure how to handle that IRC announcement since it is an ongoing issue. I didn’t write it or post it there, so I didn’t want to take it down. I’d like to keep the number of long-term pinned articles to a minimum. Maybe the Matrix article should include a short note at the end about Libra IRC so that it can serve to announce both systems? Pinning the Matrix article for a while sounds OK to me since we want to onboard folks.
As an idea you could then also publish and pin a summary article that gives context on the communication situation and infrastructure, links to both IRC and Matrix articles and gives a bit of info on maybe the history, the present state and the ideas / target where you are going?
@glb I was the one that originally pinned the IRC Announcement. I think it has been pinned long enough for most people to notice the IRC network change. I’ve removed the pin.
Also of note: I have a big internal non-Fedora meeting basically consuming my whole next week. So for everyone else excited to get this going, let’s figure out how to make it so I’m not the blocker. Lots of docs/writing to do, design tickets and work, etc., which could use YOUR help!
OK. Since you asked and since Fedora Magazine is currently in need of content for publication, I gave the Fedora Magazine announcement a try. You should be able to preview what I came up with here. As I did with the cover image, I’ll add a poll so people can give it a thumbs up or thumbs down. I know it isn’t great, but hey, you get what you pay for.
Yea
Nay
0voters
Of course, if you down-vote it, then you are automatically volunteering to write a better version.
OK. I’ve made an attempt at updating the image with one from the link you provided. (Hopefully I didn’t butcher it too bad trying to make it fit the article. @duffy ) I’m open to other suggestions for improvement. Or, if you want to run with it as-is, just let me know what day you would like it published.
I’m afraid I don’t like/agree with the async/sync paradiem here. I’ve heard it before, but it’s just not actually true. IRC/Matrix are not any more sync than email… someone could answer an email in 1min, and it could take you a week to get an answer in a IRC/Matrix channel. I think what people really mean here is feedback time or interactivity? With an email thread you could have a back and forth conversation, but it would likely be at least minutes between emails, where as on IRC/Matrix you could have a conversation thats only seconds between back and forth.
It’s due to that feedback/interactivity delay that causes blog posts / email / irc/matrix to allow for more time/thought into what people are saying. ie, irc/matrix with the lower feedback time is more ‘off the cuff’ where you take days to write up and check a blog post.
Perhaps you could reword based on min feedback time or interactivity? (if you agree with me
I’m open to rewording, but I don’t think I completely agree. Particularly, I think there’s a difference between private conversations and public ones — I think what you’re saying is more true for DMs or private messages and individual back-and-forth email, and less so for public chat rooms vs mailing lists and forum posts.
If someone sends me a DM, sure, I can respond later when I see it.[1] And, one can get into a quick back-and-forth by email.
But if I haven’t been in an IRC channel for a while, basically any conversation that isn’t on the screen now is lost to me. I mean, I can read the scrollback, but it’s probably not worth it, and I can’t really reasonably reply to something from much longer ago than last night. And if I want to talk to someone who was there before but is gone, I can ping them if they’re still afk in channel, but my expectations are low.
With Matrix, there’s the “reply” function, and persistent identity, but still — it’s mostly “you had to be there” medium.
With a list or discussion post, sure, if there’s hundreds of unreads I might ignore — or skim if it’s an important list to me. But it’s expected that people will come in sometime later, read and reply to some stuff, and then come back again, with not everyone being there at the same time to really participate.
If anyone has terms that fit both what I’m saying and what Kevin means, that’d be excellent.
But if we start having a real-time back and forth chat, it’s usually polite to say “gotta run to a thing, bye”, because the other person very reasonably might wait around expecting you to still be there — so, even in private messages, there’s a “sync” aspect. Never mind that friend we all have who gets offended if they see you’re online but don’t respond right away. ↩︎
I’m totally cool with rewording things. FWIW, I do kind of think that the word “synchronous” is a little bit too complex/technical and I would like to come up with something simpler.
I don’t disagree with what you are saying except that I think the article should be more about promoting how we want people to use the tools than how they could potentially be used. I mean, yeah, someone might be able to beat a nail into a board with a large wrench, but that isn’t the way it is supposed to be used.
So, do people think I should replace “asynchronous” with “expected response time”?
I.e.:
One way the various forms of communication can be subdivided is synchronous and asynchronous.
would become
One way the various forms of communication can be subdivided is by the expected response time.
Yea
Nay
0voters
That’s what I was getting at with the frequency/quality trade-off overview. Though perhaps I didn’t state it explicitly enough.
Edit: Go ahead and suggest how you think particular sentences might be reworded if you have other ideas. Or even suggest whole paragraphs if you like. We can even list you as a coauthor if you like.
I get your point, but I don’t think it matters. While you’re technically correct (the best kind of correct), those terms are widely used for this exact context. Think of them as terms of art more than strict descriptions.
I agree once you start interacting with someone they expect you to keep interacting (although there’s exceptions like: “Hey, I’m here, but also in a meeting, so I will be slow to reply”). Its the expectations before that that come from labeling something as ‘synchronous’.
ie, ‘Hey, matrix/irc are sync, great, I have a urgent problem. I’ll just join there’
‘Hey, I need help with XYZ. I need help right now, who can help me’
‘Fine! no one is here or cares!’
I agree with channels it’s less likely because the chance is higher someone will reply, but it’s not a sure thing.
Anyhow, I am still on vacation, and have to head out here… I can see about suggesting wording/etc sometime.
Ah, yeah, I get what you’re saying about not wanting to over-promise with “synchronous”. I didn’t see that implication before, but now that you mention it, I’m sure someone else will and then be upset about it.
I see. Yeah, I never meant to imply that there was a guarantee of anything. In fact, maybe I could just strategically place “(no guarantees)” in a few places?
Edit to add
I know that that sort of “the world revolves around me” mentality exists (and seemingly ever more so as time progresses). But I instinctively ignore it because I see it as that person’s problem that they need to overcome. I kind of think ignoring that sort of thing is the right way to deal with it. I would just caution trying to go down the “try to please everyone all of the time” path. Don’t make rules that someone must respond within X minutes or anything like that. Just my 2¢.
Seriously, I thought it did a good job of explaining the options. At least “I” learned some more.