Create new discussion hub for real-time ddev-specific communication (replace CMS-specific slacks)

[andy-blum]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

Spinoff discussion from #2057

@rfay

It would be great to have a unified place for communication and support for DDEV. Perhaps try to get people to move to a new DDEV slack org. That way the various CMS communities, especially TYPO3 and Drupal, could share their expertise and experience.

@Lefaux

I would advise against using Slack for a new community hub. Slack is a temporary solution because once the community becomes too big, Slack will ask you to move off their platform eventually.

We're currently in planning phase to get 8k people off Slack and I have to say... it's not pretty :)

@ekl1773

I'm biased, but you could use Mattermost. Happy to help make that happen if it would be the right fit :)

https://docs.mattermost.com/about/subscription.html#do-you-have-a-program-for-official-non-profits-open-source-projects-and-charities

@andy-blum

I'd be extremely hesitant to move away from slack. It's the de facto hub for distributed async discussion and I know that I wouldn't likely keep a new chat application open when my agency chat, client chat, and open source communities chat are all already on slack.

[rfay]

Thanks!

• Slack might work for us for the time being (a new DDEV slack), but I sure do have enough slacks already. Lando seems to have done fine with starting their own slack. (A DDEV slack already exists, but I'm the only one in it.)
• Discord: Lots of open-source projects like discord. I haven't come to terms with it yet.
• Gitter: We've had a space on gitter.im for ages, but it hasn't gotten any traction. Easy to use. Poor threading, etc.

We need to think about what our actual priorities are. Some I can think of:

• Needs to be inexpensive or free, the project doesn't need new expenses.
• Preferably familiar to people, so they'll use it.
• We'd like to consolidate all users into one platform, instead of having so many
• Integration with github is a plus (show issues, PRs, etc.)

[andy-blum]

It might be good to get a few acceptable solutions together here and then put out feelers in the CMS-specific communities?

[deviantintegral]

Discord: Lots of open-source projects like discord.

The nice thing about Discord is it's a single account, whereas with Slack each instance is a separate set of credentials. Their business model also may be a better fit, in that instead of a central org handling billing, individual users can pay for additional features. It's been reasonable enough for me as a user in the Home Assistant instance.

I noticed that discussions are available but relatively quiet. While I still think there's a need for real-time chat, perhaps the problem space becomes simpler if we encourage the community to use Discussions first.

[BrianGilbert]

Discord also has what I consider the best voice, video, and screen sharing capabilities

I use to manage the various systems in a single interface https://getferdi.com/

[rfay]

@deviantintegral I agree that Github Discussions has promise, but I haven't much liked it so far. I'd actually be fine with putting everything in github issues. The problem is... not everybody follows or participates in those, so it's good for me to give support, but a platform like slack or discord is much more likely to get a community involved. I know that in another world where everybody subscribed to all github discussions we'd do fine with it, but it doesn't seem to work right now. I was thinking about turning it off.

[rfay]

So @BrianGilbert ferdi will combine slack and discord and all?

[BrianGilbert]

So @BrianGilbert ferdi will combine slack and discord and all?

@rfay Yes... Slack, Discord, and a plethora of other services in a single app.

226 of them in all, plus you can create custom ones for any app you need that has a URL!

[rfay]

IMO we should start moving to discord, without cutting anything off at this time.

I welcome everybody to https://discord.gg/kDvSFBSZfs

I also created a #ddev-typo3, #ddev-drupal, #ddev-laravel, #ddev-magento and #ddev-shopware channels there, hope to teach people to use those for CMS-specific things.

[andy-blum]

@rfay that link isn't directing me to the ddev discord server.

[rfay]

How about this? https://discord.gg/kDvSFBSZfs

[Lefaux]

want me to ask our partnermanager to get the server „official“ via fast track or do you want to get there organically?

[rfay]

Not sure we have to move fast on it. Let's see if we can do it organically at first. A few things to get used to at this point.

[rpkoller]

great idea. and one suggestion it might perhaps ben idea to provide OS specific text channels like ddev-linux, ddev-macos and ddev-windows for os specific support requests and discussions as well?

[andy-blum]

Mentioned this Randy yesterday. His response:

My preference is to not have OS-specific channels. In general, DDEV works the same everywhere. As for CMS-specific channels, I put a note on them suggesting that they mostly get used only when something is really specific to that CMS, which it usually isn't.

[rpkoller]

ah that makes sense, thanks for the heads-up @andy-blum

[mkalkbrenner]

I don't like Slack. But I don't like Discord, too. In general it is a pain to have multiple chat solutions running in parallel.

[rfay]

Pain we all have, agreed @mkalkbrenner - the issue here is not having a fragmented community, which is our current situation.

[WarpedOne]

Discord is planning on removing public access to their message API, only allowing it for top verified bots. https://support-dev.discord.com/hc/en-us/articles/4404772028055-Message-Content-Privileged-Intent-for-Verified-Bots

[andy-blum]

@WarpedOne I don't think that's an issue.

This change applies only to verified bots and apps, which means those that are in 75 or more servers.

[WarpedOne]

Read the "WHAT WILL AN UNAPPROVED BOT LOSE ACCESS TO?" section.

[rfay]

Calling this done. We still have to encourage people to move over from the other places.

Discord is at https://discord.gg/kDvSFBSZfs