Plots2: Need for more chatrooms?

[grvsachdeva]

Hi, as we were discussing in the Gitter channel about the need of more chatrooms for organising conversations better and at correct place, let's consider all the scenarios.

Convo from Gitter:

Do we have a seperate room for the Outreachy fellows? I was wondering that would make the process more convenient and efficient for the mentors and mentees. @jywarren @gauravano
Also, just to confirm, the opencall happens on recurring Tuesdays, right?

Gaurav Sachdeva @gauravano May 30 00:44
We don't have separate room till now, but we are ready to form one if there's requirement

Jeffrey Warren @jywarren May 30 00:44
I think maybe we need to get organized about Gitter rooms. Some people have made new ones, and I understand the need, but also don't want to get too fragmented -- especially since many SoC and Outreachy people would get a lot of help being able to rely on each other
maybe we need some kind of recommended thing like "try to always start conversations in the main room, and then move them to other rooms" as well as a listing of rooms?
it's easy to get siloed, but also easy to feel like we're flooding the main chat room!
both are legitimate things to watch for

Pranshu Srivastava @rexagod May 30 00:50
Indeed, we definitely need a plan to manage isolation and flooding.

Jeffrey Warren @jywarren May 30 00:52
@rexagod if you have some ideas for this (or anyone else) perhaps we could start an issue and give some proposal a try for a week or two, and see if we like it?

Pranshu Srivastava @rexagod May 30 00:52
I guess @CleverFool77 @ananyaarun can wiegh in on this, let us know if they require something of this sort?
Sure, @jywarren!
Also, regarding the publiclab/soc room, can we move the updates to some other place, maybe publiclab/updates, or something? That can help us deal with some of the flooding here.
The main room would still be used for general conversations.
I'll spin up an issue on this.

Gaurav Sachdeva @gauravano May 30 00:57
Great!

[grvsachdeva]

We can create more Gitter rooms. But. let's think for what cases we need more rooms--

1. Project-specific room -- I think, we don't need this type as it's good to have transparent and open discussions about the project. It will also help other contributors to be in-sync with the SoC projects.

2. Repo specific reviewers group -- We can think about this type. But, I think, the current reviewer's group is good and we can add reviewers of all repos there only

3. Repo specific discussion group -- Sometimes, discussion about a repo's issue keep on getting big. It's not bad, but maybe repo specific group will be good to collect those discussions? Maybe, let's keep plots2 as a major general group and we can create rooms for Mapknitter and Image Sequencer for start?

4. SoC mentor group - We can create them as some things need privacy and maybe mentors will share their thoughts and opinions openly in Gitter room?

Thoughts are welcome @rexagod @jywarren @publiclab/community-reps @publiclab/reviewers @publiclab/mentors

[starkblaze01]

I think Repo specific discussion group will be great, keeping all the discussions related to Repo at one place will be also easy for others to the gist of what's going on related to that repo if they are left behind and easy to find which is usually hard because of conversation flooding in a single group. We can discuss the general ideas in plots2 itself and Repo specific discussions could be done in the respective channel.

[jywarren]

And copying in thoughts from @rexagod here:

However, agreeing to @jywarren's statement above, I believe that this can actually be a part of a bigger issue we are currently facing in out gitter chatspace, namely, isolation and flooding (eg., occasionally a newer member can't get much engagement in the lobby due to messages of different categories being posted in the same room, difficulty finding a particular message, many discussions on different topics simultaneously, etc.).

Okay so I'll start. Some changes I'd recommend are:

• Move updates from 'soc' to 'updates' room. That way the SoC room could be utilized for SoC-specific discussions, while the lobby could be used for sharing all sorts of general ideas.
• As above, a separate room for all Outreachy discussions.

Maybe we could formulate a composed plan out of all the ideas that get posted here and try it out for a week or two, like @jywarren recommended?

[CleverFool77]

Hi @gauravano Can we have a poll maybe between various way. So everyone can choose maybe ?
Though According to me the repo specific group looks like a great idea.
By this, we can continue on the conversation in chatroom in future too. Thus if a new contributor came across any problem. It would be preferred write their issues in chatroom of that specific group where we have only those people who are working and interested in that repo instead of one main chatroom where we have all members of community.

[jywarren]

Sure a poll sounds nice. Gaurav remember how the poll with responses
worked? :-)

On Tue, Jun 4, 2019, 1:57 PM Lekhika Dugtal [e-mail]
wrote:

Hi @gauravano https://github.com/gauravano Can we poll maybe between
various way. So everyone can choose maybe ?
Though According to me the project specific group looks like a great idea.
By this, we can continue on the conversation in chatroom in future too.
Thus if a new contributor came across any problem. It would be preferred
write their issues in chatroom of that specific group where we have only
those people who are working and interested in that project instead of one
main chatroom where we have all members of community.

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[grvsachdeva]

Yeah, we can open a poll for sure. But, I want to mention that if any @publiclab/soc is facing communication issues or they think that having a separate project-specific room or repo-specific room will fasten and would be convenient for them and the work, then we just need to poll between repo-specific & project-specific room or even no poll at all as your convenience is a priority for us. What do you think @jywarren?

About @rexagod 's suggestion -

Move updates from 'soc' to 'updates' room. That way the SoC room could be utilized for SoC-specific discussions, while the lobby could be used for sharing all sorts of general ideas.

Do we really need those updates about the various activities @jywarren? I think we can remove them.

As above, a separate room for all Outreachy discussions.

I think as we are considering dedicating a room for SoC, we can use that room only for Outreachy as both programs share the same aim of OSS uplifting and introduction with little bit different processes?

[jywarren]

Yes I guess just repo vs project. I think we should not split outreachy
from gsoc, as there are many benefits to being well connected.

For updates we can suggest it's a best practice but not require it?

On Wed, Jun 5, 2019, 7:49 PM Gaurav Sachdeva [e-mail]
wrote:

Yeah, we can open a poll for sure. But, I want to mention that if any
@publiclab/soc https://github.com/orgs/publiclab/teams/soc is facing
communication issues or they think that having a separate project-specific
room or repo-specific room will fasten and would be convenient for them and
the work, then we just need to poll between repo-specific &
project-specific room as your convenience is a priority for us. What do
you think @jywarren https://github.com/jywarren?

About @rexagod https://github.com/rexagod 's suggestion -

Move updates from 'soc' to 'updates' room. That way the SoC room could be
utilized for SoC-specific discussions, while the lobby could be used for
sharing all sorts of general ideas.

Do we really need those updates about the various activities @jywarren
https://github.com/jywarren? I think we can remove them.

As above, a separate room for all Outreachy discussions.

I think as we are considering dedicating a room for SoC, we can use that
room only for Outreachy as both programs share the same aim of OSS
uplifting and introduction with little bit different processes?

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[IshaGupta18]

I think project specific chatrooms will be a great idea!

On Thu, Jun 6, 2019, 8:10 PM Jeffrey Warren [e-mail]
wrote:

Yes I guess just repo vs project. I think we should not split outreachy
from gsoc, as there are many benefits to being well connected.

For updates we can suggest it's a best practice but not require it?

On Wed, Jun 5, 2019, 7:49 PM Gaurav Sachdeva [e-mail]
wrote:

Yeah, we can open a poll for sure. But, I want to mention that if any
@publiclab/soc https://github.com/orgs/publiclab/teams/soc is facing
communication issues or they think that having a separate
project-specific
room or repo-specific room will fasten and would be convenient for them
and
the work, then we just need to poll between repo-specific &
project-specific room as your convenience is a priority for us. What do
you think @jywarren https://github.com/jywarren?

About @rexagod https://github.com/rexagod 's suggestion -

Move updates from 'soc' to 'updates' room. That way the SoC room could be
utilized for SoC-specific discussions, while the lobby could be used for
sharing all sorts of general ideas.

Do we really need those updates about the various activities @jywarren
https://github.com/jywarren? I think we can remove them.

As above, a separate room for all Outreachy discussions.

I think as we are considering dedicating a room for SoC, we can use that
room only for Outreachy as both programs share the same aim of OSS
uplifting and introduction with little bit different processes?

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[grvsachdeva]

React with the corresponding emojis to give your opinion:

1. Repo-specific room (Separate groups for each of the repo, starting from Mapknitter, Image-Sequencer, LDI, LEL -- Long term/permanent groups) :heart:
2. Project-specific room (Separate groups for each of the Summer of code project -- temporary/archived after the end of SoC) :+1:
3. SoC group (Group which will consist of all mentors and SoC interns) :rocket:

Only one of the option from 1 and 2 will be implemented. For 3, we will consider it depending on # of votes.

Thanks!!

[cryptoclidus]

Another option could be a two chat split: general / projects, but I'm voting for an existing option!

[skilfullycurled]

Am I correct in thinking that a gitter room is not the same as a slack channel? If not, does Riot have an equivalent? I have some thoughts on this but they might not be relevant given the structure of what is being discussed.

[rexagod]

@skilfullycurled I'd rather not recommend Riot anyway, but yes, it does have that functionality (wrt. gitter rooms).

[skilfullycurled]

@rexagod, thanks for responding to my question. My question was poorly worded and not very specific. I confused Gitter as being synonymous with Riot since that was what I was using (thanks for the tip by the way!).

More directly, I'm wondering what we mean by "chatrooms" in this conversation. Do chatrooms refer to a specific feature in Gitter which is different than what one thinks of when they use a "channel" in Slack?

[rexagod]

No problem, @skilfullycurled. And no, not a gitter-specific feature, but vaguely similar to channels. I take it that you've used the publiclab lobby in the past, right? That's a "chatroom", and that is (chatrooms, in general, not the lobby) what's being referred to here.

[skilfullycurled]

I think I see now. Did a bit more digging and it sounds like although a room can be a channel, in general, Channels in Gitter are subsets of rooms. Thanks, that really helped me to understand what was guiding the choices in the poll.

[grvsachdeva]

Hi everyone, we have 3 new chatrooms -

https://gitter.im/publiclab/image-sequencer
https://gitter.im/publiclab/leaflet - For all leaflet based projects
https://gitter.im/publiclab/mapknitter

You are welcome to join these rooms and hold discussions regarding your project there. Thanks!

[IshaGupta18]

Could you please open one up for simple-data-grapher?

On Wed, Jun 26, 2019, 12:29 AM Gaurav Sachdeva [e-mail]
wrote:

Hi everyone, we have 3 new chatrooms -

https://gitter.im/publiclab/image-sequencer
https://gitter.im/publiclab/leaflet - For all leaflet based projects
https://gitter.im/publiclab/mapknitter

You are welcome to join these rooms and hold discussions regarding your
project there. Thanks!

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[grvsachdeva]

cc @jywarren

[grvsachdeva]

Thank you @jywarren!

Here's one for simple-data-grapher: https://gitter.im/publiclab/simple-data-grapher

[grvsachdeva]

Hi, closing this now but feel free to re-open if the discussion around any new Gitter room required. Thanks everyone!