Re: [Tools-implementation] Draft 2 (was Rough draft of message to the community re Zulip and Matrix)

[Robert Sparks <[e-mail]>]

One edit to correct a mangle already:

On 9/25/20 1:18 PM, Robert Sparks wrote:
> I think this reflects the comments so far, with the exception of not 
> talking about the potential delay for the zulip email message. Lets 
> wait for Glen to have an opportunity to look/tweak before we talk 
> about that.
>
> -----
>
> We are deploying trials of the matrix and zulip chat services to gain
> operational experience and get community feedback about how well these 
> services
> meet the need for IETF related chat.
>
> We have clear evidence from the IETF 107 post-meeting survey
> (https://www.ietf.org/media/documents/ietf-107-survey-results.pdf) 
> that many
> IETF participants find jabber a significant problem.  This is partly 
> due to
> difficulties in finding a free jabber service and partly due to client
> issues.  There are two paths to try to resolve these problems, one is to
> improve the IETF jabber service and the other is to switch to an 
> alternative
> groupchat solution.  The community has already taken a step on the latter
> path with the introduction of an IETF Slack space, and we want to 
> ensure that
> this path is properly explored by widening the range of options to well
> established free/open source tools.
>
> The installs currently have almost no local configuration or 
> customization.
> Over the next few weeks, we will be exploring reconfiguring them to use
> datatracker credentials for sign-in, and explore bridging between these
> systems, Slack, and Jabber. One consequence of these explorations is that
> there will  likely be times, outside of meetings, when accounts will be
> disrupted or even removed and will have to be recreated. Initially, we
> suggest you use an email address for the username on each service.
>
> The secretariat is operating each instance. We've chosen this path for 
> these
> trials over third party hosting to learn what would be needed if the 
> community
> felt self-hosting was important in the longer term.
>
> The services can be found at matrix-trial1.ietf.org and 
> zulip-trial1.ietf.org.
>
> Any matrix client can be used with the trial matrix server. There is 
> also a
> web client available at at matrix-trial1.ietf.org.
>
> Similarly any zulip client can be used with the trial zulip server, 
> which has a
> built in web interface.
>
> We would like feedback on how well each client meets chat needs during
> meetings, both the full online IETF 109 meeting, 

> virtuals,
was meant to be "interims".
> adhocs, and
> hallway conversations.
>
> Around December, we will assess our experiences and the feedback 
> received to
> inform what chat services we provide in the future and how we will 
> operate
> them. In January, these trial instances will be taken down. We do not 
> intend to
> preserve or migrate any account configuration or chat history from the 
> trial
> instances as we move forward.
>
> This does add to the potentially confusing large number of places 
> conversation
> might take place. We hope to address that with some level of bridging, 
> at least
> with Jabber, but have been cautioned by the respective development 
> communities
> that bridging between Zulip and Matrix is unsatisfying since the 
> conversation
> models in the two applications are so different.
>
> The chat services are intended to be explorational and informal. However,
> please treat them as contexts where contribution rules apply (See
> https://www.ietf.org/about/note-well/).
>
> We are not, at this time, planning to host jabber accounts. We may 
> revisit that
> as an option as we continue to gather more feedback.
>
> Please send feedback on the services to [e-mail]
>
>