The status of the Telegram groups within the project

Project Discussion
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1

Hello,

There doesn’t appear to be a full consensus between whether the groups on Telegram are considered official communication channels of the project:

  • The code of conduct and the description of @fedora (past the gateway) claim that these groups are official and endorsed by the project
  • A long-time administrator of the group claims that the group is “a community project” and that there is no official Fedora contact point in charge of the groups

The moderation of that group also appears to play down the Code of Conduct, making use of vulgarisms and approving calling certain people “fascists” and “nazis” by the members and other administrators whilst banning people who bring attention to this behavior being non-compliant (and morally questionable in itself).

Therefore my questions:

  • Are these communication channels official?
  • Are these values endorsed by the Fedora project?
1 Like
4

This is a very good question.
I assume you are referring to the ‘Fedora’ Telegram channel. I have noted in the past it is not very ‘on topic’ and left the channel.

Fedora does not support the negative values you are talking about.

Maybe you can make a code-of-conduct complaint at https://pagure.io/CoC/new_issue
or by email to codeofconduct@fedoraproject.org (found on https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/#_reporting_and_enforcement )

I don’t know who has admin to the channel you are talking about, but include all the admin names (you can find them in the list of users) in the complaint.

It could be the case that the channel has simply been forgotten about, and can be closed or the original owner can boot the current admins.

5

Did you see this?

I guess you are not talking abouth @fedoranews do you?

Telegram

6

I assume you are referring to the ‘Fedora’ Telegram channel. I have noted in the past it is not very ‘on topic’ and left the channel.

Yes, I’m referring to this group specifically.

I’ll try bringing this up with the CoC team, but the aforementioned admin has previously asserted that he is the owner of this group, so I’m not sure if there’s anything that can be accomplished this way.

20251108_151416_881bbe93d7f02a2b8784001561421972fbab290c
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7

No, the group is known plainly as @fedora. Technically, that handle leads to a “bot gateway” group, that then gets you accepted into the actual, private group once you sufficiently prove that you’re human.

The invite link to the actual group can also be found in the gateway group, which directly opens the group where this is happening if you already are a member.

1 Like
8

Hi, this is a complicated topic. Before we had Matrix, Telegram was a popular platform used by Fedora contributors and we frequently bridged Telegram groups to IRC channels so that we had a better option for participating in project discussions from mobile devices. However, in the years since we have adopted Fedora Chat/Matrix as our chat platform of choice, this is only official chat platform that Fedora supports.

There are chat channels on WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram, Discord, Reddit, and at least a few others. Unfortunately, we do not have the capacity to be engaged in all of these channels. Sometimes we have an active contributor who takes on a volunteer capacity as an admin or moderator for these channels, but it doesn’t change the fact that Fedora Chat/Matrix is the only official chat platform that we support.

In situations like these, we typically encourage people to work with chat moderators through the established channels. Sometimes there is an appeal process, and I always encourage our various chats and communities to consider adopting an appeals process for bans or punishment. However, this is not a firm rule, and again, we do not have the capacity to be present on every single chat platform and app where people start a Fedora group.

I couldn’t find the link to the Fedora Wiki page you mentioned, could you share the link?

From the Fedora Docs page about Secondary social media accounts, this is current definition we use:

“Secondary accounts are accounts created officially within the project, but they are not the primary method for distributing news or information. Often, these accounts post automatically or pull from other feeds to relay content.”

This feels really unclear to me though. Perhaps we can make this language more clear. The linked channel on the Fedora Docs page is @fedoranews, which is a news channel and not a discussion group.

1 Like
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The Wiki page does not make a claim about official status of groups. It seems to be a community-maintained collection of groups on Telegram where discussions about Fedora happen:

“Telegram is a popular multi-platform messaging tool used by some members of the Fedora community for sync chat and updates. This page aims to list all Fedora groups and channels, including country-specific localized ones.”

12

As a receiver of this attack, and part of the creators and previous admins of that group I can properly tell:

NO, @fedora is not an official communication channel.

This is the wiki page that talks about telegram, but as commented before, it doesn’t mention anything about being official or even endorsed by the project.

Preciously, when I was admin on that group, I tried to make it an official communication channel, finally the decision was that if it make sense for the project and i they can comply with CoC and trademark guidelines as per a document that is not linked in the issue.

I would recommend no to mention or lead people to that channel, specially since:

  1. It’s a private group
  2. It doesn’t endorse nor adhere to CoC
  3. It’s a hostile environment

Like it’s mentioned above, Matrix is the only official chat platform, just stick to it and if you need to recommend a chat channel, use this:

  1. Fedora on Matrix: General chat channel
1 Like
13

While there’s no explicit claim on the Wiki, the group itself does make such a statement (through the @fedorarule reference in its description; see the attached screenshot). One might be tempted to believe the information is true since the official Fedora Project Wiki links there.

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Screenshot_20251110-235147_Telegram_9fcd1ec9ff8320c28988c064919b4d233d60aa6b1080×4892 1.49 MB

The code of conduct also mentions participation in an “official Fedora communication channel, such as […] telegram”. Perhaps this could be clarified as @fedoranews, or removed altogether, as that is a read-only channel?

It’s worth noting that the admins that (in my case) participated in this also own the German language group (also listed on the Wiki) and the Polish language group (cross-linked through @fedorarule).

While I haven’t been a member of these, chances are they have similar moderation issues, as might the other groups mentioned on the Wiki that aren’t actively reviewed by Fedora.

14

Yes, they keep that message from the time I was part of the admin team. You can argue if it’s legal or not for them to call the channel official. Stick to the docs:

That page is updated when something change in official communication channels. If it’s not there, it’s not official.

15

The comment in the rules that it is officially endorsed by the Fedora Project seems like a legacy statement, left from the days when Fedora did semi-officially use Telegram as a communication channel. It is misleading, and ideally, should be updated to clarify that the group is not officially endorsed by the Fedora Project.

You are absolutely right that the Code of Conduct needed an update there. It also mentioned IRC, which is also not an official chat platform anymore. I made a Pull Request to make this clarification to the Fedora Code of Conduct:

3 Likes
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Can someone listed here, inform Telegram, that this information is totally outdated and that the group fedorarule should be removed?

This way they have to create their own group.

And if they start to post information from the official community we all can report them by telegram, mention they not clearly state, that this Chanels they link are unofficial.

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:sos_button: Need help? :raising_hands:

If you find that someone is spamming or is breaking the rules, you can mention all admins using the /report command.
Be warned that spamming this command might get you banned!

:open_hands:t2: Feel free to reach out to any of the admins if you have any concerns or private questions. The current administrators of the group are:

:folded_hands:t2: We would also like to thank @jwflory and @bexelbie for helping us moderate the group and wish them luck on their next endeavours!

1 Like