Thank you all for sharing your stories of success and pointing out some of the problems with Matrix! I really appreciate the engagement.
There are many helpful comments and interesting ideas here. I will discuss some of them in this thread. If we notice that there are multiple discussions going on at once, we can break up the thread as needed.
I’m excited to see that @nbuechner is working with other admins to manage the Ubuntu space. I joined the space, and I am relieved to see that moderation is working well, even though federation is on. I am willing to help the community grow by supporting the existing Ubuntu Space. It would be great to have governance to look after the Matrix space and rooms. If this is interesting to your @nbuechner , I can work with you and other administrators of the Matrix space to make sure that we provide a safe environment for our community. This includes clear rules and a CoC that matches what we have on other platforms, so we will need to contact the Ubuntu IRC Council and the Ubuntu Community Council for guidance. I understand that the lack of bridging with IRC is limiting the growth of our Ubuntu Space on Matrix, and this brings me to the next point.
I completely agree with @teward regarding bridging. Regardless of the chat software being used at a certain point, being able to bridge with other popular platforms promotes inclusivity. Thank you, @teward , for sharing valuable information and for offering to help. I am going to reach out to you soon.
To move things forward on the bridging situation, I spoke with EMS a few times about this issue. After a few chats, it is my understanding that stable, long-lasting portalled bridges between Matrix and Libera.Chat are a bit of a question mark. I believe the best course of action for our community is to rely on our own bridging solution. EMS confirmed that they can, if we want, archive the portalled rooms, set a tombstone and a redirect to our own bridged rooms. This will avoid confusion every time portalling is enabled and then possibly disabled again.
I understand that bridging with Matrix has caused some issues in the past, and a slow and careful approach might be needed. Ultimately, the decision is up to the IRC council, so I reached out and I hope we can hear their thoughts on this very soon.
Regarding issues mentioned by others in this thread, it appears that @kernellinux and @nbuechner are having good success with their setups. I do not want to dismiss any of the concerns expressed by @popey , @sukso96100 and @mikee3005 , though. I think it would be healthy to have specific discussions about those, here in the open. Furthermore, I am going to ask @nbuechner and @kernellinux for guidance and with their help and expertise, we can see where Matrix is nowadays in terms of stability, security, and features. I am happy to start another thread, and why not, dedicated channels on the Ubuntu Space on Matrix for real-time communication.
No matter where various discussions are held, I am going to post regular updates here on Discourse. This will ensure full transparency and demonstrate my commitment to assisting the Ubuntu community in any way I can.
There are quite a few platforms you mentioned, which are all valuable in their own way. You are right that these provide much opportunity for Canonical to interact with the community, and I do believe we have quite a few people discussing on those platforms. However, if we go for an individual solution per team then we’re fragmenting where teams can be interacted with. It means some people might miss out on important conversations simply because they weren’t aware of the platform being used. The most common denominator right now for synchronous communication is IRC. There is a barrier of entry for IRC that I’d like to reduce, and IRCv3 simply isn’t there yet. (nickserv? SASL? how do I get scrollback? Oh a bouncer, how do I enable that? How do I do a group DM? …)
