Retirement of notes.kde.org

[Simon Redman]

On September 15, 2019 11:03:31 PM PDT, Ben Cooksley <bcooksley at kde.org> wrote:
>On Mon, Sep 16, 2019 at 5:14 AM Valorie Zimmerman
><valorie.zimmerman at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Hey Ben,
>
>Hi Valorie,
>
>>
>> On Sun, Sep 15, 2019 at 11:58 AM Ben Cooksley <bcooksley at kde.org>
>wrote:
>>>
>>> Good evening all,
>>>
>>> Currently we're in the situation where the software we use to run
>>> notes.kde.org is both difficult to maintain, as well as support (for
>>> things like document confidentiality for various groups within KDE).
>>>
>>> We'd therefore like to retire the service, replacing it with the
>>> Realtime Text Editor within Nextcloud (share.kde.org). Internally
>this
>>> editor uses Markdown.
>>>
>>> You can find a demo of this at
>https://share.kde.org/s/gtFcRmwetRKqTZJ
>>> (no login required)
>>>
>>> It would be appreciated if everyone could please test the realtime
>>> text editor and let us know if they encounter any issues.
>>>
>>> In terms of feature differences, we are aware that
>>> highlighting/authorship information won't be retained by the new
>>> editor, and there can occasionally be problems when editing the same
>>> line with someone else simultaneously.
>>>
>>> If everyone is okay with this we'd like to go ahead with shutting
>down
>>> notes.kde.org as soon as possible.
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>> Ben Cooksley
>>> KDE Sysadmin
>>
>>
>> I noticed that most every BoF at Akademy this year used notes to link
>the BoF notes. Will all these notes be just disappeared? If so, that is
>really unfortunate. There is a reason many of us continue to use notes.
>One can see who typed what, one can see the history of the doc - and
>other points mentioned on https://share.kde.org/s/gtFcRmwetRKqTZJ.
>>
>> ::sigh::
>
>The content of notes.kde.org will be exported - likely in ODT format -
>prior to us shutting it down.
>The resulting files will be made available on share.kde.org.
>
>If there are things which need to be resolved prior to the shutdown of
>notes.kde.org we can look into those.
>
>While it is unfortunate that the links will be broken, we should be
>able to make them relatively close (ie. send the user to a public view
>of the folder on share.kde.org which contains all of the content
>exported from notes.kde.org) so the user isn't too far from the
>original link.
>
>In terms of feature regressions i'm tracking, I see the following:
>- Lack of editor highlighting
>- No stored history aside from Nextcloud versioning
>- Slightly harder to create new documents
>
>Any other comments on this which I missed from the document?
>
>Cheers,
>Ben
>
>>
>> Valorie
>> --
>> http://about.me/valoriez - pronouns: she/her
>>
>>

I personally don't find the author highlighting very necessary. For one thing, the information of who actually wrote a color often seems to go missing from notes.kde.org anyway. Granted, I have not been around here very long, so maybe I just haven't seen a killer use for it. Does anyone have one come to mind?

Again from the point of view of someone who hasn't been around for very long, I made a face when I saw the notes.kde.org landing screen and interface. It gave me the impression that KDE infrastructure was stuck in the past. One big advantage IMO is that the new tool feels much more modern and inviting, which might help retain new contributors. It may sound petty, but I imagine there are some people who would see that and run away.
(This is not to knock notes.kde.org. Once I started using it I thought it was nice and useful, but crossing that initial barrier is important)

Thanks,
Simon