[OOTB-hive] Use of / switch to Discord server?

Michael Bui micb at redpill-linpro.com
Fri Sep 14 18:08:58 BST 2018 

>How will the community figure out how to find us? 
There's a link to an invite to the Alfresco Discord server in the title. 

> Is there a MacOS app for Discord 
There's Discord applications for browsers, windows, Linux, MacOS, Android and iOS. 

> It is frustrating to have to go create another account for another service that I will only use for Alfresco stuff. 
Discord doesn't require to have an account created, you can simply select a username and start chatting. Although having a user account does help for history, search and mentioning purposes. 

>Also, what's with the gamer iconography everywhere 
Discord was initially built as a replacement for the VoIP communication tools like Skype or TeamSpeak. However, over the years they have approved a lot on the app making it great for larger communities to collaborate and communicate. 

There were a few requirements when looking for an IRC replacement such as: 
* No costs (in licenses, hosting, etc) and available for free to users. 
* Integration with Slack, IRC e.t.c if required 
* Open Source 

Some of the suggested alternatives mentioned was Slack, Mattermost, Matrix and Discord. 
The biggest reason Discord was tested first and stuck with so far is because it was free to setup and everyone could start using it without creating user account. 

Most of these applications has a lot of neat functionality that IRC necessarily doesn't have or lack, such as: 
* Preview of images 
* Search of chat messages with advanced filtering (such as from:user, mentions:user, before:date, in:channel, has:file and much more) 
* Editing/Deletion of own messages. 
* Roles/Permissions 
* Emojis 
* Advanced moderation 
* Notifications, mentioning of specific users/groups. 
* Formatting of code blocks (try copy pasting a small piece of code into IRC ;)) 
* Modern look and feel 
* APIs to create custom bots 

Personally I think it's easier to use a "modern" chat client so everyone with low to no technical skill can easily join and communicate, such as new developers, customers, project managers etc. Then again, it doesn't necessarily have to become THE IRC replacement, just an alternative way of engaging with the community. If you think it's weird with bots talking to themselves you're always welcome to join the Discord server. 

/Michael 

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Today's Topics: 

1. Re: Use of / switch to Discord server? (Jeff Potts) 
2. Re: Use of / switch to Discord server? (Jim Tomonto) 


---------------------------------------------------------------------- 

Message: 1 
Date: Fri, 14 Sep 2018 11:20:00 -0500 
From: Jeff Potts <jeffpotts01 at gmail.com> 
To: Axel Faust <axel.faust.g at googlemail.com> 
Cc: ootb-hive <ootb-hive at xtreamlab.net> 
Subject: Re: [OOTB-hive] Use of / switch to Discord server? 
Message-ID: 
<CAA1rCi7VVsrPqQS59GFhbOZXJOb556T8i0XOFLmymMiFZiB_rA at mail.gmail.com> 
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" 

When I first heard that some folks were using Discord I tried to figure out 
how to access it and was totally flummoxed. I couldn't find an invite link 
and didn't want to bother anyone. I ended up giving up. If we were to 
switch entirely to Discord, would people still need to hunt down an invite 
link? How will the community figure out how to find us? 

Is there a MacOS app for Discord (didn't see one in the app store) or must 
I use yet another browser window to keep it open? (Slack has a nice desktop 
app, for example). 

It is frustrating to have to go create another account for another service 
that I will only use for Alfresco stuff. Also, what's with the gamer 
iconography everywhere? Strange! 

IRC is free and open, has a variety of apps for all platforms, and does its 
job sufficiently well. I didn't see any concerns about IRC that couldn't be 
addressed. But, if we can't stay on IRC, and if we're going to move to a 
non-open source product, why wouldn't we move to the one that everyone is 
probably already using anyway: Slack. 

Jeff 

On Fri, Sep 14, 2018 at 6:11 AM Axel Faust <axel.faust.g at googlemail.com> 
wrote: 

> A quick follow up: To show that the Discord server is still in evaluation 
> and even I have yet to learn more about it, I accidentally included the 
> wrong invite link in my last email. If you want to check out the Discord 
> server, please use https://discord.gg/wEvSqDG instead. 
> 
> On 14/09/2018 13:07, Axel Faust wrote: 
> 
> Hello everyone, 
> 
> in his last mail to this list, Younes has mentioned that we as the Board 
> have been looking into improvements of the internal communication. One 
> aspect of this is that we have setup a Discord "server" for the Order of 
> the Bee, created various rooms and played with / implemented some 
> integrations. All of this was done as an evaluation or at least an interim 
> solution (with regards to how the new Board communicates among its 
> members), but with this email I want to start the discussion about this 
> potentially becoming a permanent solution. 
> 
> Now, some of you may ask "Why Discord?" and "Don't we already have an IRC 
> channel?" / "What about our Mattermost (https://chat.orderofthebee.org) 
> server?". So let me give some arguments on why we have looked at Discord: 
> 
> - In IRC we currently have one public channel on freenode. Some of the 
> discussions (especially among the board members) may not fit in that 
> central, public space. Having the ability to host multiple channels was 
> also a reason behind the 2016/2017 trial of using Mattermost. This is also 
> true for Discord, though other than in Mattermost there is no additional / 
> superfluous concept of teams that separates the channels and you don't need 
> to explicitly add/join to channels, so accessibility-wise it feels to be 
> slightly better. 
> - Using Mattermost requires us to run and maintain our own service on 
> our infrastructure. Since we currently have infrastructure sponsored by 
> Magenta Apps, the cost is not the main concern here, but the available 
> resources in terms of people in charge of administration / maintenance. 
> This was initially covered by the INFRA committee composed of Marsbard, 
> Daren, Lanre, and Heiko. But as most of our committees, the level of 
> activity has approached near zero over time. As the board, we felt it would 
> be better to rely on a free, hosted solution to reduce our internal effort 
> / dependencies, and allow any renewed activities in the INFRA committee (or 
> any successor team / constellation) to be focused on more productive tasks. 
> - Our internal Mattermost server has seen no activity since the 
> 2016/2017 trials, and even then the interaction was extremely light. 
> - We recognize that Discord is not open source as opposed to 
> Mattermost. Still, it is a platform with a proven track record among open 
> source communities, has a - in my eyes so far - mostly fair and transparent 
> business practice, and - most essentially - provides unlimited chat history 
> in the free tier. 
> - A significant portion of the #alfresco IRC channel members have made 
> the switch to a Alfresco Discord "server" created by Bhagyas Silva, which 
> may at some time in the future be designated the official community channel 
> by Alfresco. By having our own Discord server, we make it easier for 
> members of #alfresco to engage in our organisation as well, without 
> requiring separate credentials on a disconnected system. 
> 
> Currently we have the following channels on Discord: 
> 
> - #general: the main channel, synchronized with IRC via a bot, so that 
> we can keep the IRC channel alive without cutting anyone off 
> - #github-updates: collecting notifications from GitHub about events 
> on any repository in the OrderOfTheBee GitHub organisation 
> - #board: a private channel for members of the board to discuss / 
> organise their activities 
> - #support-tools: a channel dedicated to the OOTBee support tools 
> addon, which may obsolete / succeed the previously separate Gitter channel 
> (a custom integration with GitHub events provides the same type of 
> notifications we had in Gitter) 
> - #alfresco-irc-bridge: a read-only channel dedicated to keeping a 
> complete history of #alfresco on IRC (chat.alfresco.com runs on a 
> private server of Richard Esplin and may stop to work at any time when 
> alfbot breaks or Alfresco demands the server be shut down / moved to a 
> different name) 
> 
> There are also a couple of channels for specific tests that may come and 
> go, i.e. a bridge to the Alfresco-internal Slack system to allow for 
> interaction with Alfresco staff. 
> 
> 
> TL;DR: We have set up a Discord server for evaluation ( 
> https://discord.gg/kbPSjum), I outlined the reasons why we chose it and 
> what channels we currently have, and we want to know your opinions on this 
> subject before we call for a vote on making it "official". 
> 
> 
> Regards and my apologies for not being able to write a shorter mail... 
> 
> Axel 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________ 
> OOTB-hive mailing list 
> OOTB-hive at lists.xtreamlab.net 
> https://lists.xtreamlab.net/mailman/listinfo/ootb-hive 
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------------------------------ 

Message: 2 
Date: Fri, 14 Sep 2018 10:29:47 -0600 
From: Jim Tomonto <jim at jt-solutions.com> 
To: Jeff Potts <jeffpotts01 at gmail.com> 
Cc: ootb-hive <ootb-hive at xtreamlab.net> 
Subject: Re: [OOTB-hive] Use of / switch to Discord server? 
Message-ID: <97341E8D-F2E6-4A22-AA31-C7AA6B6AE5A3 at jt-solutions.com> 
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" 

There is a Mac app for Discord (just not in the app store) https://discordapp.com/download <https://discordapp.com/download> 

On the Mac App you just select the channel -> right click -> Invite People and then you are off to the races. 

Discord did start with gamers but has gotten real traction in the Blockchain/Crypto space. 

The cool thing with Discord is that the free tier has unlimited storage for each user locally to see the history. Slack requires you to pay once you exceed the dreaded history limit (which happens pretty quickly on most channels). 

Jim 

Jim Tomonto 




> On Sep 14, 2018, at 10:20 AM, Jeff Potts <jeffpotts01 at gmail.com> wrote: 
> 
> When I first heard that some folks were using Discord I tried to figure out how to access it and was totally flummoxed. I couldn't find an invite link and didn't want to bother anyone. I ended up giving up. If we were to switch entirely to Discord, would people still need to hunt down an invite link? How will the community figure out how to find us? 
> 
> Is there a MacOS app for Discord (didn't see one in the app store) or must I use yet another browser window to keep it open? (Slack has a nice desktop app, for example). 
> 
> It is frustrating to have to go create another account for another service that I will only use for Alfresco stuff. Also, what's with the gamer iconography everywhere? Strange! 
> 
> IRC is free and open, has a variety of apps for all platforms, and does its job sufficiently well. I didn't see any concerns about IRC that couldn't be addressed. But, if we can't stay on IRC, and if we're going to move to a non-open source product, why wouldn't we move to the one that everyone is probably already using anyway: Slack. 
> 
> Jeff 
> 
> On Fri, Sep 14, 2018 at 6:11 AM Axel Faust <axel.faust.g at googlemail.com <mailto:axel.faust.g at googlemail.com>> wrote: 
> A quick follow up: To show that the Discord server is still in evaluation and even I have yet to learn more about it, I accidentally included the wrong invite link in my last email. If you want to check out the Discord server, please use https://discord.gg/wEvSqDG <https://discord.gg/wEvSqDG> instead. 
> 
> On 14/09/2018 13:07, Axel Faust wrote: 
>> Hello everyone, 
>> 
>> in his last mail to this list, Younes has mentioned that we as the Board have been looking into improvements of the internal communication. One aspect of this is that we have setup a Discord "server" for the Order of the Bee, created various rooms and played with / implemented some integrations. All of this was done as an evaluation or at least an interim solution (with regards to how the new Board communicates among its members), but with this email I want to start the discussion about this potentially becoming a permanent solution. 
>> 
>> Now, some of you may ask "Why Discord?" and "Don't we already have an IRC channel?" / "What about our Mattermost (https://chat.orderofthebee.org <https://chat.orderofthebee.org/>) server?". So let me give some arguments on why we have looked at Discord: 
>> 
>> In IRC we currently have one public channel on freenode. Some of the discussions (especially among the board members) may not fit in that central, public space. Having the ability to host multiple channels was also a reason behind the 2016/2017 trial of using Mattermost. This is also true for Discord, though other than in Mattermost there is no additional / superfluous concept of teams that separates the channels and you don't need to explicitly add/join to channels, so accessibility-wise it feels to be slightly better. 
>> Using Mattermost requires us to run and maintain our own service on our infrastructure. Since we currently have infrastructure sponsored by Magenta Apps, the cost is not the main concern here, but the available resources in terms of people in charge of administration / maintenance. This was initially covered by the INFRA committee composed of Marsbard, Daren, Lanre, and Heiko. But as most of our committees, the level of activity has approached near zero over time. As the board, we felt it would be better to rely on a free, hosted solution to reduce our internal effort / dependencies, and allow any renewed activities in the INFRA committee (or any successor team / constellation) to be focused on more productive tasks. 
>> Our internal Mattermost server has seen no activity since the 2016/2017 trials, and even then the interaction was extremely light. 
>> We recognize that Discord is not open source as opposed to Mattermost. Still, it is a platform with a proven track record among open source communities, has a - in my eyes so far - mostly fair and transparent business practice, and - most essentially - provides unlimited chat history in the free tier. 
>> A significant portion of the #alfresco IRC channel members have made the switch to a Alfresco Discord "server" created by Bhagyas Silva, which may at some time in the future be designated the official community channel by Alfresco. By having our own Discord server, we make it easier for members of #alfresco to engage in our organisation as well, without requiring separate credentials on a disconnected system. 
>> Currently we have the following channels on Discord: 
>> 
>> #general: the main channel, synchronized with IRC via a bot, so that we can keep the IRC channel alive without cutting anyone off 
>> #github-updates: collecting notifications from GitHub about events on any repository in the OrderOfTheBee GitHub organisation 
>> #board: a private channel for members of the board to discuss / organise their activities 
>> #support-tools: a channel dedicated to the OOTBee support tools addon, which may obsolete / succeed the previously separate Gitter channel (a custom integration with GitHub events provides the same type of notifications we had in Gitter) 
>> #alfresco-irc-bridge: a read-only channel dedicated to keeping a complete history of #alfresco on IRC (chat.alfresco.com <http://chat.alfresco.com/> runs on a private server of Richard Esplin and may stop to work at any time when alfbot breaks or Alfresco demands the server be shut down / moved to a different name) 
>> There are also a couple of channels for specific tests that may come and go, i.e. a bridge to the Alfresco-internal Slack system to allow for interaction with Alfresco staff. 
>> 
>> 
>> TL;DR: We have set up a Discord server for evaluation (https://discord.gg/kbPSjum <https://discord.gg/kbPSjum>), I outlined the reasons why we chose it and what channels we currently have, and we want to know your opinions on this subject before we call for a vote on making it "official". 
>> 
>> 
>> Regards and my apologies for not being able to write a shorter mail... 
>> Axel 
> 
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