Loomio
Wed 10 Jun 2020 3:36AM

A Matrix chat room for the OAE.group?

DS Danyl Strype Public Seen by 82

I recently asked about the possibility of using software developed by the Ontario Coalition of Rape Crisis Centres to embed a Matrix chat box in each Loomio group.

Rob replied:

we support embedding an iframe anywhere you can put rich text, so it's likely you can just embed this within your group description without us doing anything.

I am happy to set up a Matrix chat room for OAE, based on the homeserver run by Feneas (Federated Networks Association). Would anyone else use it? If so, would it be best to create a public one, or one that is invite-only (and E2EE), open only to OAE members? If we go ahead with it, would anyone be willing to follow up on Rob's suggestion to embed it in our group description (and maybe document the process and any gotchas on the original thread)?

M

martin ➬ Wed 10 Jun 2020 3:49AM

I'm in favour, though I do have my own homeserver. However, it'd be good to have more homeservers, instead of everyone just defaulting to matrix.org.

DS

Danyl Strype Wed 10 Jun 2020 9:28AM

Just for clarity, Matrix is federated, so people would be able to join the room regardless of what homeserver they have their own account on. Room are federated too ... sort of. Here's how it works as I understand it.

Let's say I start a room called #oae:chat.feneas.org . When a user on matrix.org joins, the room history is stored on matrix.org too, from then on (plus any history they scroll up to look through, as it's fetched from chat.feneas.org). You can even give the room an alias like #oae:matrix.org that can be used to join the room, and access the history matrix.org has stored, even if chat.feneas.org goes down permanently. The more homeservers have members in a room, the more redundancy you have.

But if you start a room on matrix.org and the first group of users have accounts there too, matrix.org has the only copy of the room history, up to the point where a user from another homeserver joins, and so on. This has happened a lot. So I'm keen to start new rooms on other homeservers, to reduce the overall dependence of the network on matrix.org . Not attached to which one though, it's not mission critical because of the decentalized architecture I've described.

JR

Jon Richter Wed 10 Jun 2020 6:32PM

I had once created

- #open-app-ecosystem:matrix.allmende.io
- #oae:matrix.allmende.io
- #openappecosystem:matrix.allmende.io

end of July 2017, which you are invited to reuse and assign aliases from different home servers.

I'll put admin to the names present and active in there that I know from here.

DS

Danyl Strype Wed 10 Jun 2020 11:19PM

FYI I just joined using #open-app-ecosystem:matrix.allmende.io , the other two aliases didn't seem to work.

DS

Danyl Strype Tue 26 Sep 2023 1:29AM

Sadly Feneas shut down a year or so back, but I now have an account on a local matrix server at chat.iridescent.nz. I just tried to join the room using all 3 aliases, but no joy. Is anyone still an admin or mod in the room, and able to add a new local address and publish it, so we can continue the existing room?

If not, I guess we could set up a new one if folks think there's value in that?

DS

Danyl Strype Wed 10 Jun 2020 10:51PM

OK, so we have a Matrix room already, awesome! Is anyone willing to follow up on Rob's suggestion and see if a chat box for it can be embedded in our group description?

JF

Josh Fairhead Thu 11 Jun 2020 11:47AM

I'd be really interested to see an embedded matrix room on Loomio. Cant say I'll be the most active but would be very curios to see an integrated solution of synchronous/asynchronous discussion