DeckPackerWe should rethink how the communitcation channels for piefed devs work
wjs018A development focused community isn’t a bad idea, really. rimu has mentioned in the past that we need to dogfood our own platform more. We have some specific ones already:
- for css customization - [email protected]
- for api questions/updates - [email protected]
- for plugins - [email protected]
But, having a catch-all everything else might be useful. The closest thing we have to this currently is the codeberg repo. There is lots of info to be found in codeberg issues and PR’s and I find myself linking those quite often in matrix discussions. However, it isn’t something that casual users usually know how to navigate or search.
The different chat platform options are there mainly to help meet people where they are. Lots of the fediverse uses matrix, so many people only really reach out to us on there. We made a zulip instance to help address some of the shortcomings of the matrix chatroom since Zulip allows for topic-based organization in a kind of hybrid between a chatroom and a forum. However, the number of people using zulip is far smaller than matrix.
I think, that the vast majority of pieced developers is actively using piefed (or some piefed-compatible software) though, because otherwise, how would you even think of contributing to a project like that?
Is not breaking some peoples habits really worth all the negative aspects of realtime chat platforms like Zulip or Matrix?
I think there would be some huge upsides, if we explicitly told people on the codeberg page to post their questions to our forum instead of asking it on matrix/zulip.
Like skavau mentioned elsewhere, the realtime chatrooms do serve a useful purpose. It is more freeflowing and responsive. So, it’s nice to do things like realtime debugging or issue resolution (a lot of other piefed admins are there to provide expertise). Also, we have gone there in the past to brainstorm different feature ideas or ways to solve an issue, just to kind of get a temperature check from some power users there.