[pytest-dev] [RFC] experimenting with using matrix as chat/community platform for potentially superseding irc

[Floris Bruynooghe]

Hi Ronny,

It seems reactions here are have not been overly positive so far.  I
strongly suspect this is selection bias though, you're asking the people
who are currently on mailing lists and IRC.  E.g. if it was up to me
pytest would never have bothered moving from hg to git, yet that move
was immensely beneficial overall for attracting many more contributors.

So I think you should create a matrix community and see how it goes.
Even link to it from the contact page from the docs and anywhere else
IRC is mentioned.  If it doesn't work out we can remove it again, but
it's impossible to say if we don't try.  And for those on IRC there's no
threat of the IRC channel going away, I imagine many of us who do use it
will remain using it for other reasons anyway and thus remain logged in.

My only suggestion would be to limit the number of channels initially,
to avoid fragmenting a potentially already small userbase.  You can
always split up if it becomes too noisy, but for IRC there only ever was
one channel too and seemed to work.  But then again, I'm not familiar
with how matrix communities work so feel free to ignore my opinion here.

Cheers,
Floris


On Sat 08 Feb 2020 at 14:39 +0100, Ronny Pfannschmidt wrote:

> Hi Everyone,
>
> since a while now i have stopped using irc directly/controlled and
> instead switched to a setup using matrix that i like much better.
>
> Matrix enables a few features that i really like, for example
>
> * multiple synced clients (on my computers and my mobile)
> * server side persistent history (where i don't have to manage/juggle logs)
>
> In addition my personal perception of the communication structure on 
> matrix is close to irc in a sense.
> (this is a emotional perception hard to put into word, but i like that 
> matrix is IRC-like with nice features while being not like slack&co at all).
>
> In order to see how acceptance works out for that,
> i'd like to set up a community with  a small number of channels for dev 
> talk, support, general chatter.
>
> However before starting, i would like to get feedback from the community 
> on the ML.
>
>
> -- Ron
>
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