Propose new functionalities for Decidim software
#DecidimRoadmap Designing Decidim together
Latest update: we're test-driving Matrix using Element.io. There's a community with two rooms setup here: https://matrix.to/#/+decidim:matrix.org.
Waiting on response from the association committee to move forward with more rooms and migrate in practice.
I've updated the title of the proposal to reflect where it's currently at.
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(This not a feature proposal - posting it here as it seems to be the best option at this point. It's definitely meta, at least)
So, I propose migrating community communications now done on Telegram and Gitter over to a new Decidim Slack.
I believe this would greatly improve support to users and developers, better enable water cooler conversations and brainstorming, where a lot of good ideas come from, and increase overall governance transparency. It'd strengthen community integration.
Though I like the intention of Gitter and the fact it's now on Matrix, it's still very clunky and it'lll be a long while until it's on par with Slack. The Telegram groups are hard to find (a lot of people posting on Gitter, Meta and Github don't know they exist) and don't allow for separating topics into channels that can be easily browsed.
With Slack we can have channels like 'new-to-decidim' or 'getting-started', 'core', 'deployment', as well as 'product' and 'general' (for announcements, participatory ecosystem news, etc). Also, specific topics like 'e-voting' or 'participatory-budgeting', and even locale or region-specific channels.
We can have automated notification channels tracking Github activity (commits, issues, PRs, etc), and even Metadecidim proposals. Integration for the latter would need to be developed, but it could come handy to Decidim instance communities as well.
It wouldn't need to be persistent (the conversations are meant to be ephemeral and can be thrown away), so it doesn't need to be paid.
For some context, this idea is something I discussed privately with @andres a couple of months ago, and briefly mentioned to @carol as well. We agreed it was better to wait a little bit before starting this discussion until after the holidays, with the association in place and with the election for the coordination committee over.
@carol also said there might be alternative proposals floating around - so perhaps this can start a conversation on the different options and relative benefits.
Rocket.Chat might be one, or even Matrix itself. I've never used them myself and so can't really vouch for them. I know OSP uses Rocket on their daily work, perhaps they might chime in with their experience with it here. I suspect Matrix is hard to use, but I could be wrong. Another option is Discourse, but then we wouldn't have the quick, real-time chatter that Slack offers.
The development of this proposal has finished
Has been reviewed by Decidim Product and complies with the Social Contract
It is funded by the Decidim Association
Developed by the Decidim Association
Available in GitHub via #8466
The Decidim Matrix Space is available at https://matrix.to/#/#decidim:matrix.org
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37 comments
Conversation with Andrés
I agree that we need something better than what we have at the moment, although I'm not personally a Slack fan.
I don't like Telegram as you need to have a phone number to create an user account and depending on where you live you may not have it installed, and it'd be difficult to expect that people install it to only use it for Decidim. About the discoverability, the thing is that we're not publishing them also (like mention it in the README, in docs, in Meta, etc).
There are two features that I like about Gitter:
1) Log in with GitHub account
2) Its conversations are discoverable by search engines (like Google or DDG)
But I agree that feature-wise seems like Gitter is not on par with other chat platforms.
Whichever decision we make I'd want to close Telegram and Gitter in the migration process, as I don't want to have more apps/websites.
Mattermost was also mentioned.
In the past @verarojman also proposed using Discord for the voice capabilities.
This is a very interesting discussion. For the Amsterdam program "cities for change" we're working on a Decidim implementation and complementing with Chat is very desirable. I would argue for Matrix, as it is the only decentralised chat server that works. One can be on many matrix.org compatible servers and in your Element.io or whatever server of your choice you can have a combined view of the various chat channels and personal messages you are engaged with. In the past it may have been hard for average users, but today it's pretty acceptable for families, teachers, civil servants and other non-techies.
my 2 cents (and would love to test any work that can be done to integrate this)
I'd love to be able to use Matrix. Have you used it on a daily basis?
Hi Oliver! Since last year we're using it in a few collectives, at meet.coop, in the association of families from my kids' school and with a team in the municipality of Amsterdam. Of course not everybody is keen in changing habits, some are still on Telegram, Signal or even Whatsapp.
The comparison with slack, mattermost and rocket.chat is also interesting, as in Matrix servers you can create your "community" and group the channels that belong to that community. With meet.coop we use a public matrix channel plus a private channel for each of the circles of work (our intention is to work following sociocracy, but in our intent we are all learning and hope to get there one day ;-))
When I click the meet.coop community in my Element.io webclient, desktop client or mobile client, I get these various channels and the others are hidden. Another click and I get all the others back in view again. I hope you find it worth trying out!
I've been playing with Element for a while and I think that's the best-suited solution for our use case:
PROs:
You can set roles per room
Since it's multi-room, we can have dev- and support-related channels, even different support channels in different languages (thinking about non-dev users here)
You can set the UI in your own language (Catalan included)
It allows individual chats
Has web, desktop and mobile clients
Offers integrations with Jitsi and GitHub (although I don't know if that's useful)
CONs I could find:
Again, that's just my opinion :)
@mrcasals: couldn't agree less ;-)
One observation though: the last aspect you mention about rooms: when rooms are public you can search for them, so they're discoverable. And here comes the beauty of the decentralised architecture: you can have a room with multiple "addresses", for example our general meet.coop room is at
#meetcoop:matrix.org
but was first created as an IRC room, with this address:
#freenode_#meetcoop:matrix.org
And if I am not mistaken, you could set up your own server and point a local address of that server to this room. So the rooms "live" between all servers in a way.
Ah, cool, I didn't know they were that discoverable! I saw they were shareable with some specific addres, but I didn't try to discover new rooms, thanks!
I wonder if they're still trackable by search engines, though...
When searching for a room, you can opt to search all public rooms, on all matrix servers.
As room admin you'll need to have this option activated so that the room is indeed discoverable: "Publish this room to the public in matrix.org's room directory?" Try it out for yourself.
I'm not sure about the search engines, we should investigate that part ;-) Feel free to open a room and invite me so we can play and research together: https://matrix.to/#/@wtebbens:matrix.org
Conversation with Armand
What about a RocketChat or a Mattermost? Discord could be great too, but I don't think we need vocal capabilities
+1 to explore Mattermost
+1
IMHO following the main principles of Decidim, we should find an opensource solution, and Mattermost is probably the best one.
My concerns on Mattermost is that it's only free for small teams (10 or less) or if you host it yourself. hosting implies some expenses (even if small). Who should host it? What happens if whoever hosts it wants to stop hosting it?
Open to exploring both. Agree in principle about open source, though I worry about tools that are open but clunky - clunkiness is exclusionary, in the end.
Conversation with Pau Parals
I think this is not the space to decide how the community should communicate.
I think it should be Decidim associates who should decide which channels they use.
Otherwise, I have the feeling that it is the "companies" or people "with an economic interest" who are worrying about the governance of Decidim (I am not saying that this is the case).
Again, I am seeing "community" collide with "governance". We have an association, a regulation, a new committee ... shall we start?
This is an important conversation to be had. What do you (and @carol, @arnau, @andres and the rest of the committee) expect the role of the community to be regarding governance, and if the community is to participate in it at all, where would the appropriate place be?
My understanding of the governance structure being put in place is fuzzy at best. So far I'm assuming we can debate as a community, make proposals etc, and the elected committee has the last word.
When I suggest a public chat tool could improve transparency of governance, I don't mean final decisions and votes done there. Just open and informal conversation and debate, including the ones being had between committee members. Avoiding closed door, top-down decisions etc. Same for the Product team
I understand what Pau is questioning is who and where should take the decision of what tool to use, apart from the use of the tool itself. It's probably OK to move this conversation to another place, but I guess the voices of the "users" (developers materializing Decidim's code, regardless of the funds origins) should definetely be heard as making their work more productive, accesible and transparent is something that Decidim should pursue no matter what.
I fully agree with what has been said :). My concern isn't that the community cannot participate, but that the flow of action passes more through relationships between devs than the actual community that exists behind the Decidim' "installations" (organizations, municipalities, cooperatives).
It's hard for me to admit that we're really asking the "community" if they want these channels. That is why I believe that the association (where everyone is invited to participate: = D!) has to open those spaces and try to engage all the ecosystem. so then, anyone can add their proposal :)
But I don't think this is the process or the open "chat" we need to raise these questions. This does not mean that I love your proposal and that I am in favor of it :) And yes, maybe this is more of a political position rather something technical about your proposal. But as you say, sometimes it is difficult to know how to deal with these issues. A big hug to all and thanks for the answers :)
I have understood it that way too @oliverbarnes , in the same way that we have started other discussions. I think it's good to have these kinds of conversations with the wider community, and not just with members.
As you also said @paarals @furilo , perhaps it's better to open a separate space for this kind of debates.
Speaking to @paarals in private, I better understand his concern about end users (participants in Decidim instances) having a say in the communication channels they'd like to use. I follow this wholeheartedly, but I also think it's a chicken-egg situation. We don't have the channel to ask this yet :)
I believe a public, multi-channel chat will be more inclusive of end-users too, and this space should be visibly linked to in Decidim instances. That could go hand in hand with a more structured governance space, a MetaDecidim dedicated for that purpose, or simply a process in the existing MetaDecidim instance. Once more end-users are involved in the conversation, and if there's clear demand for a different channel of comms, we can migrate again.
And thanks @furilo :) Personally I'd add that on top of being more productive and having my work more accessible and transparent, I want to have closer interaction with end users (both instance managers and participants), get better insight into and participate in the overall vision and future of Decidim. I don't just "materialize code" based on somebody else's vision ;)
I do get the tension between economic interests and the long-term, macro vision the association is going to govern. It's a classic open source issue. I think the answer to that is more inclusive channels of open dialog and debate.
Thank you very much @oliverbarnes! I think you have perfectly explained our conversation :) It's great to have people like you who care that these channels could running someday and I couldn't agree more with the proposal! big thanks!
<3<3<3
I would suggest using Slack, as most of the Decidim developers have already Slack instance already running, and that may translate also in one less application to manage on local development.
Even though i am trying to be active, i cannot be present on Gitter as fast i am on Slack / Telegram.
Conversation with Virgile Deville
Looping back what was said on Telegram.
2 criterias seemed to emerge :
- @mrcasals was advocating for "free for ever" solution until the association has the ressource to host an maintain its own install.
- we need a tool that can support multi-channel
Gitter being already in place, easy to login with Oauth and linkable with the repo + recently supports rooms (multi-channels) it sounds that we ought to at least test the "Room" see if it fits our needs before migrating to another solution.
Happy to serve as guinea pig to test the Room feature on Gitter.
I'd add a third: that it needs to be polished both on desktop and mobile, and, specially, easily usable by non-techies
I agree with Oliver here, the system needs to be usable for non-tech users. It's been ages since I last checked Gitter, I'm not sure how usable it is right now!
Conversation with Oliver Azevedo Barnes
Based on @wtebbens' and @mrcasals' input, I'm getting real curious about Matrix on Element.io.
How about a test-drive with dev and product channels initially, replacing current Telegram channels? Once we're satisfied it's user-friendly enough, we could begin broadcasting it to the broader public, replacing Gitter, and creating the other topic channels discussed here.
I can update the proposal here accordingly, so people can formally endorse it
Here is a test of a Matrix/Element.io room ... https://matrix.to/#/!vVcsnwMNPHhwWsmXST:matrix.org?via=matrix.org
(I just arrived into another room the other day, and ended up creating this test, sorry if it's not appropiate! But with this invite several people can test it and say how user-friendly the process is...)
@wtebbens check this one!
Created a Decidim Community on Matrix, added the Decidim Devs room @furilo had created, and added a newly created Decidim Docker room as well: https://matrix.to/#/+decidim:matrix.org.
I've invited the current people testing Matrix/Element to it, and it's open for anyone to join. But I couldn't find a way to convert other users into administrators, though
Conversation with Oliver Azevedo Barnes
Latest update:
Waiting on response from the association committee to move forward with more rooms and start migrating in practice.
I've replaced "Slack" with "Matrix/Elelment.io" in the title of the proposal, to reflect the recent developments.
*Element.io :)
Conversation with Núria Alonso
From Canòdrom - Ateneu d'innovació digital i democràtica, residence space and research on democratic technologies and digital culture un Barcelona, and precisely where the Decidim association is housed, we are offering a shared mattermost instance for all resident projects.
This means that Decidim can use a team within this matermost, creating as many public and private channels as we want, and inviting all users as deemed necessary.
Ups, one last thing...
canòdrom shares the same values of Decidim in relation to user privacy, and free software promotion. Therefore the instance is mounted on a server with the ethical and technological criteria of data encryption, environmental sustainability and promotion of technological autonomy.
Thanks so much for the offer Núria! I'd say that the decision in terms of platform is really between Mattermost and Element. It seems that any of them would allow the participation of the whole community (not just the devs). For reference here is a comparison of functionalities to evaluate: https://sourceforge.net/software/compare/Element-Messenger-vs-Mattermost/
I personally lean more towards a solution that allows Decidim and its community to have full autonomy (we don't know what will happen in the future with the Canòdrom and I worry that we would then have to migrate to an own server of the Association).
I thought the offer was pretty cool too :) Canòdrom itself sounds great, can't wait to go visit soon. But I understand what you're saying, @carol.
Is that the overall committee's position, then? Can we start creating more rooms on Element/Matrix? There were a few suggested on the Decidim Devs Test room there, not sure if you saw
We look forward to your visit!
Oh no, I was just giving my personal view ☺️
I think it's worth exploring the pros & cons of both options for a few more days (not weeks) before making the final decision :)
+1000 regarding having more autonomy on the hosting of mattermost.
For instance regarding the Canodrom offer:
1) What would the subdomain be? For me it should be chat.decidim.org or something like that in the decidim.org domain. People in Japan will not know what's the Canodrom.
2) Who will have the LOPD/GDPR data controller?
I'm asking these questions because I have doubts on what will happen mid-term (in 2025) regarding this installation and we'd need to have an exit plan: if it's contained in its own subdomain and the Association is the data controller then it can be migrated in this moment.
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