Public Metamaps Chat Room(s)
Robert Best
Public
Seen by 106
This discussion will hopefully resolve the question of whether we should have a Public Metamaps Chat Room(s), and then if necessary, how to implement this idea.
Marija Coneva Sun 8 Feb 2015 7:58PM
I like the idea of an open and inviting space where conversation can happen...and then again isn't that supposed to be metamaps.cc itself? The comment that Devin made at the very beginning of this discussion sounds closest to my idea of a public chat room - as long as it is on the site itself and not a place that takes you away from the mapping experience, then it makes sense to me :)
Marija Coneva Sun 8 Feb 2015 8:20PM
just a note - I voted Yes and maybe for a sec too late, which is why my position does not appear in the summary!
Ishan Shapiro Mon 9 Feb 2015 8:21AM
I missed voting here but I agree as well, a 'lobby' of a sort for Metamaps users would be very useful, even more so if these are also within maps..
I'm also with Marija and Devin that I don't know if it should necessarily be in another place than Metamaps.cc.
Poll Created Mon 9 Feb 2015 8:43PM
I propose that we use Gitter for our public MM chat room, and position it as our new community hub. In addition, I propose that we create and distribute an invitation to this new community hub immediately (As soon as reasonably possible). Closed Wed 11 Feb 2015 7:06PM
We seem to be in agreement that Gitter is sufficient to enable us to test/prototype offering a public chatroom as a real-time community hub for Metamaps . (Only 3 votes were cast, but feel free to continue to add comments regardless of the current proposal stage)
Ok, I have thought about this quite a bit. I won't be able to share all of this thinking here in this proposal though, so I have dumped some of my thoughts out here https://metamaps.hackpad.com/Public-MM-Chatroom-A-new-community-hub-ubIhYwD4Gtw
I would ask that you quickly skim through that, sorry its kinda messy, before posting a reply here. I will try and summarize some key points FOR my proposal, but I won't be able to detail everything.
The closing time for this specific proposal is set for fairly soon. I am hoping I can get the same sort of active interaction on this as I have over the last few days. I am not really available from Feb. 12th-24th (Vacation), and so I hope to set this in motion fairly quickly if possible. (Or at least get it to the point of not needing me to push it for it to continue to progress)
If you haven't used gitter yet, you can easily give it a try! There is already a direct link to our current Gitter chat room right in the Metamaps repo readme:
https://github.com/metamaps/metamaps_gen002
I expect everyone to have their personal disagreements and concerns regarding this proposal. Please voice all of them! We will try and discuss each concern to the point of being "resolved". This proposal will iterate until we reach some sort of optimized state. (Keep in mind though, there may be no perfect proposal that everyone can totally agree with, and this should not keep us from implementing the best proposal that we arrive at)
Here is me trying to think from the perspective of others:
Q: Who can join this space/chatroom?
A: Anyone that knows of the chatroom's existence, has a desire to join, and is willing to set up a github account in order to do so (Or they already have one which is fairly likely)
Q: How do we let people know about it?
A: This feels in a way like the next step for after this proposal... But the answer is also a little obvious. "Hey guys, come join our new community hub" ---> blog, twitter, G+, maybe email list, put link in the G+ community, add a link on our homepage and somewhere prominent for logged in users (Until we have the MM chat feature implemented with its own UI element)
Q: Speaking of the MM chat feature! Why don't we just incorporate this idea into that?
A: That would be ideal! Actually, I think of this proposal as the initial phase and testing ground that will inform the design of our eventual chat feature... However, having a MM community space for humans to interact with other humans (vs. documents) in real-time seems to be of great value NOW! I see this as a low risk, high reward thing to push out and have immediately.
Q: Ok, so if we do this... Send out an invite, how do we contextualize it?
A: Well, firstly... even though we may think of it as a temporary space, I don't think we contextualize it that way. I think we refer to it as a new community hub for MM. A place to meet the others, have conversation, see and be seen in real-time, request collaboration, provide help/support, learn from each other, all of this good stuff. We can migrate onto MM for chat later, when that is ready.
Q: Sounds good, but why Gitter?
A: HipChat, Slack, Gitter, Hall, etc.... They are actually all very very similar, so really there is no clear obvious choice... But here are some UNIQUE things about Gitter that set it apart for me:
-You don't need to send out invites to people, like on slack or Hipchat, for them to join... anyone can set up a github account, and just click the link and join on their own. This is exactly the type of openness I am looking for. (I know Ishan wants us to use slack, and I am totally ok with that. I think this open community space can be its own space, and if we want to switch to slack as a team, then that can still happen too)
-Gitter allows people to connect by IRC too if they so wish.
-We have an intention to make github more integrated into our team workflow... i.e. to move away from asana a bit... Gitter is the most integrated into github and therefore should serve us well.
-Gitter offers unlimited message history for public rooms (e.g. Our hipchat has a 10,000 message limit)
Q:How are we going to make this proposal happen so fast?
A: Actually, the chat space already exists... People are already joining it... We just need to create a more deliberate invitation. The only thing that I would say is a little strange is the current name of the room..."Metamaps_gen002", this doesn't feel like the "Name" of our community hub... so we can also think about creating a dedicated gitter channel with a better name. (I know for sure that this can be done, but we need to determine if this is actually our best choice)
Q: Why force people to make a github account? Why not have them set up a MM account?
A: In my eyes, asking someone to set up a slack/HipChat account is actually a bigger request than with Gitter since more of our community will likely already have a github account vs slack/hipchat accounts (Also, MM uses github!... so finding our community on github, and getting more people onto our github repo means we are directly growing our Dev community in subtle and not so subtle ways)... To the MM question, I am all for this! Except chat on MM isn't possible yet. But once it is, then of course this would be the better way to invite others.
Results
| Results | Option | % of points | Voters | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
|
Agree | 100.0% | 3 |
|
| Abstain | 0.0% | 0 | ||
| Disagree | 0.0% | 0 | ||
| Block | 0.0% | 0 | ||
| Undecided | 0% | 7 |
|
3 of 10 people have participated (30%)
Devin H
Tue 10 Feb 2015 3:31AM
I'd prefer streamlining our spaces, especially for the public. I don't think Gitter has a value add over a simpler chat solution - either a) IRC or b) embedded in Metamaps. A github account is an unnecessary barrier if you don't already have one.
Robert Best
Tue 10 Feb 2015 10:00PM
I have outlined my support for this proposal in the discussion and in the proposal itself.
Devin H
Tue 10 Feb 2015 10:08PM
I want to see more research.
I put disagree instead of block because I would go along with this.
Devin H
Wed 11 Feb 2015 6:58PM
Based on Rob's excellent research this seems like our best option.
Connor Turland
Wed 11 Feb 2015 6:58PM
I think gitter (minus the fact that you can only sign-in with github and not other auths) satisfies what excites me about a public chat room for metamaps, as an interim solution
Robert Best · Thu 5 Feb 2015 12:16PM
I am only asking/proposing a) at this time Ben... and I have been doing b) already, but am not really seeking any sort of assistance yet. Was waiting to see the result of this proposal.
==============
What follows are some thoughts on next steps, towards implementation... Maybe this saves you some time if you don't feel the need to keep reading now.
I am currently leaning towards using Gitter for our Public chat room. It will require people that want to chat to set up a Github account, if they don't have one already... But this act alone moves someone one step closer to being a full-blown MM collaborator (if they are a coder I guess), it may also have them check out our codebase, or even just see our github, when they might not have otherwise.... Plus, choosing slack or Hipchat would require someone to create a new account on a new platform too... just without the added benefits just described above.
There is the option of IRC too of course, and it seems we already have this set up... and IRC is really great because it affords anonymity and is a really easy way to allow anyone to come chat without them having to set up any sort of account.... Thats the argument for IRC... However, IRC is really lacking in most other facets. There isn't a chat history, and therefore is also lacking in search capability... so someone just dropping in would have no context at all without asking for it... Another drawback is that we can't paste in nice snippets of code or screenshots, which is a really neat feature... Also, if someone really wants to be anonymous, they can always just create a bogus Github account, to come chat as CraZyCaTlAdy246 (Not that anonymity is really what we are going for anyways, since this is a community building venture).... Also, getting to know our community through Github, seems superior to slack or Hipchat too, because Github already has a rich social network and enables us to get a social graph data of our current and future connections... I am currently just writing ideas just as they come to me.... Hopefully the warning I gave above means nobody is frustrated by my poor English right now :P
Another PRO for Gitter, is that it is a very natural way for our community to come and hang... It doesn't even feel like we are adding yet another platform into our repertoire.... Gitter just feels like an extension of Github, which is a deep deep element of our Community Stack, that likely isn't going anywhere soon.... The natural integration of Gitter is also probably why we already have 13 members in the base room without even making a big public invite (i realize some of these are due to our hack day, but not all of them)
To Ishan's other concern about switching between project spaces... this wont necessarily help him with having everything all in slack... But Gitter is great for switching between chat on different Github Repos...
Finally, Gitter offers 1 free private chat within a github 'organization', which we now have. So we could utilize this too, if desired. They also allow unlimited public channels, if we want to totally shift all our rooms over from Hipchat.... (More discussion about "Open source communication with Gitter" is given here on their blog: http://blog.gitter.im/open-source-communication-with-gitter/ )
Anyways, I'm sure there is lots to scrutinize about what I just said... But Hey! We have lots of quality and free chat options! Which is great.