I would like to suggest a change. I think Signal groupe is great, user-friendly for most people but it lacks the ability to manage multi-group.
We could have one chat dedicated to annoucement, budget, volunter, meeting, picture, accessibility…and regroup them into one room : Offdem. The goal is to provide a much more clearer organisation similar to this forum.
We have 3 softwares :
Matrix
Zulip
Mattermost
Which one do you prefer ? As for me, they are all good. We can selfhost them.
Matrix may be somewhat complicated for newcomer due to its encryption. If they don’t cross-verify their device they wont be able to see our message.
Zulip is clean and tidy. With its hashtag its kinda a chat-forum. I used it once and it was good.
Mattermost, offer pretty cool option as mention everybody or a team along an integrated kanboard if i recall correctly.
For budget i would say matrix with encryption turned off. Userfriendly Mattermost.
Well, I forgot about another option, which is to use the Discourse chat plugin. It’s actually already enabled up there. There can be a room for each category as you’re mentioning.
What about xmpp?
It is the prefered communication method of disroot, FSF and Tails. Users are free to create an account in any server they choose and it has very limited resources need for self-hosting.
Why not ! Can we have several room (Budget, meeting date, volunteer, accessibility, purposal, offtopic…) regrouped into one space (Offdem) ? That’s the only one requirement i have for the chat beside its free software.
The idea is to avoid messier communication and help users to find the revalent information. On signal, i can’t find the pad anymore, nor the meeting date, you have to browse over thousand messages and do a quick search wich is very inefficient.
My idea, as matrix space : we join only one room and access to all related group that are focusing on one topic. It would avoid talking about deafhood, organisation, budget on the same room which is the current state of signal group.
Is signal free software?
I haven’t used it personally, but it seems that you need to provide mobile phone number in order to register to signal service.
As for matrix, there are the concerns in the disroot link I have posted above. Some people may also find their affiliations disturbing.
It is but their central server is still needed to get in touch with the usual users. That’s one of the reasons why we didn’t use Signal in the first place, as is this mobile phone number issue that you’re mentioning.
We agree with your remarks in general. But everyone has their own view on the different options… The most important is still to keep using the forum for most discussions so we can better organise and archive them in the long term.
For example the Tor project was created by the US navy to protect american intelligence communication. We use it, they use it for the exact same reasom as us. They also want to add hidden backdoor.
Let’s go back to the topic. Any software are good as long we can have several group in one space.
Because it will allow us to create as many group chat we want on any topic and you will thank me later when it will become bigger. If xmpp can do that, then it’s perfect
Clean. Tidy. Efficient. They have a space for player interaction with dev team (feedback, bug…) The dev have several closed room for their work and sharing about it directly. That’s the most important point of my post : collaboration and organisation.
We could achieve the same thing :
upcoming meeting date (and no other post zill be allowed) announcement only.
a group that send us the latest pad report of the meeting. Only pad.
a group chat for volunteer organisation : bringing blankets, buying drinks, reaching organiser team
a group for well-being team and seeking help
a group for communication, sharing picture
a group sharing picture
a group on accessibility
a group on budget
a groupe for finding event new location
Signal is messy, i can’t find the information i need. What if the group become bigger ? 100 people ? We should act while we are still 20 peoples (easier migration) and use a better working place.
On signal, everything is mixed so i’m losing my time and have to browse lot messages. I need to stay up to date and read them all otherwhise it will be burried.
With my above suggestion, we won’t lost important messages because they have a locked and dedicated chat room. I don’t care about the software we will chose as long we have this. Which will serve to keep in touch.
Btw, There is a integrated chat in Discourse, i will try to bridge it with mattermost. Mind there is no long message retention for discourse chat.
This forum is the one place for discussion. This is where we organize and keep memory. If you need to chat, you should use the Delta.chat group. If you start organizing outside of this forum it creates a problem for the community because this is where we organize.
Unencrypted chat to discuss anything is not an option.
We decided on Delta.chat for chat, this is what we use.
Indeed Discourse has a chat feature, but again, chat is not for organizing.
Does it allows multiple chat group ? I’m not interested in having one group to discuss on everything. It’s inefficient and messy.
Example :
I want to open a new meeting for the next offdem organization. I wrote on the forum, website and send the meeting date to the chat.
Then someone send his vacation pic on the chat, another one found an interesting book on activism, some people comment how great it is…and the meeting date is lost, buried.
Let’s imagine 3 chats groups :
Announcement (only @teams can post there)
off-topic (i can break, share some pic and we are creating a bond and chi-chat)
ressource (we share book, movie, talk about it)
There is the forum where we can follow a topic, discourse is perfect. However chat fit another need for direct interraction that the forum can’t do. You can’t remplace the direct interaction that chat provide with a forum. And the chat can’t remplace a forum where we keep a trace on our interaction.
Depends on the resource: probably somewhere in Care. If it’s off-topic, better the chat.
That’s why we have delta.chat. Anyway there’s a chat activated here on Discourse and nobody has been using it. Its retention delay is 28 days. What else do you need?
No, it’s not, because you posted it on the forum, didn’t you?
I just tried quiet but it doesn’t fit the deaf community’s needs. Deaf people use sign langage to communicate with each other, they mainly communicate in video.
Futhermore, very few deaf people have a good understanding of english writing. Altough i prefer text over video communication…there is a a difficult balance to find between simplicity and privacy…
If you need video, then you may try Galene. We at petites singularités are running our own instance at https://galene.z7l.eu/. Would you like a specific group setup for you?
Let’s stop there, i already tried delta.chat. it doesn’t answer the issues pointed above.
We won’t understand each other : for me, the forum isn’t enough. I don’t fell understood, i just wanted several group chat that are divided by topics and reunited under one address : offdem. As a forum but it’s not a forum.
There is telegram, matrix, slack, mattermost, zulip, discord, xmpp…those can regroup several topic under one group with various rules based on your role (admin, team, supporter…). Veloren matrix group was a very good example.
W̴̰̫̾o̴̅͜t̵̜͇͠s̶̱͓͝͝ù̵̮̻p̵͈̬̓̉?̷̜́, briar, signal, jamy…doesn’t suit for an organization. There are very limited.
Il y a un malentendu pour le coup car Galène n’est pas delta.chat. Je te rejoins en partie concernant la pertinence des chats pour les messages rapides qui pourraient flooder le forum. Est-ce qu’il y a un soucis avec le plugin chat de Discourse ? Tu aimerais pouvoir t’y connecter via un client lourd sur tes appareils, c’est ça ? Si oui, je comprends le besoin, même si je trouve personnellement que le client web marche assez bien sur mobile et desktop pour ne pas en ressentir le besoin.
Oui, le plugin chat de discourse est parfait, j’essaye de le connecter à un client mais j’ai du mal à en trouver. Parait qu’on peut le connecter à mattermost.