[announcement] Telegram bridging to be retired Wed. 20 Sept. | 5 to-dos

Tue Aug 22 11:45:57 BST 2023

This is a terribly careless decision, for multiple reasons.

Firstly, this is something that has a strong impact on the entire community
and, because of that, it should've been discussed publicly before agreeing
on this. I had been told this was going to happen, but only through private
messages and without really any chance to argue against this. No chance has
been given to discuss the consequences of this action, nor to discuss how
to best address the technical issues related to the bridge maintenance.

Secondly, the transition timeframe is way too small. There are a very big
number of Telegram channels, and some even lack a Matrix counterpart.
Telegram links used in multiple KDE wiki pages, and it will take time to
shift all the chats over to Matrix. Taking Promo as an example, who knew
this was happening some weeks ago: some chat have been successfully ported
to Matrix, but it will take much more time to shift them all; this means
that, after the 20th of Sept., Promo coordinators like Paul will have to
handle both the Telegram and Matrix that's separately; or, we close down
the Telegram channels before the transition is completed, which is even
worse.

Thirdly, this will make KDE lose contributors. The majority of developers
I've worked with throughout my KDE experience has used Telegram as their
main channel, and only a few switched over to Matrix when asked to. For
many, this worked mean installing one extra application(with terrible UX)
just to be able to contribute to KDE; it wouldn't be an issue if they were
employees, but we're all volunteers here and most likely those people will
either not switch at all or slowly open that application less and less.

This includes me; I have very little interest in forcing myself to use e.g.
buggy phone applications exclusively to contribute as a volunteer and in my
free time.

Fourth, this will make onboarding so much harder. All developers I've seen
and helped onboard KDE have joined through Telegram, because that's what
they had and it was easy for them. Again, same applies to me: I never
would've joined KDE if it wasn't for the Telegram channels.

Fifth, the technological reasons given for this choice are lacking. It
assumes that we use UserBots instead of normal bots (the limit of 1 message
every 3 seconds is too restrictive?); it talks about issues with admin
privileges of the bridge, without explaining why they would be necessary.
It complains about spam over the telegram side: some channels introduced a
captcha when users joined and that worked really well, why can't we use
that for all channels? And so on: there are tons of questions and different
approach that are lacking in the exploitation, which is particularly bad
considering just how damaging the decision is to KDE,

Of course, please don't bother replying to this paragraph with answers to
my questions: this should've happened in the discussion phase of the
choice, which you entirely ignored. I had expressed interest in helping out
figuring out a solution to the bridging issue, but of course - since I had
only been told about this privately - I had done that privately. I could've
done that publicly if you had warned about what was going to happen.

I will be happy to do everything I'll be asked to as part of my work; but
as far as free time goes, this choice makes it harder for me to contribute
to KDE and - as a result - I'll most likely fade out my free-time
contributions over time.

~Nicco

On Tue, Aug 22, 2023, 9:02 AM Joseph P. De Veaugh-Geiss <joseph at kde.org>
wrote:

> Hello KDE community,
>
> apologies for cross-posting!
>
> The time has finally come: both Telegram <-> Matrix bridges will be shut
> down in 4 weeks on *Wednesday 20 September*. Let's start the
> co-ordination process now so everything goes as smoothly as possible.
>
> For all KDE contributors: please read at least the "Five To-Dos" below
> to be informed about what will happen and what needs to be done.
>
> Below that there is some additional information about the bridging
> situation at KDE. Consult these notes if you want more background
> information about why the Telegram bridge is being retired.
>
> Cheers,
> Joseph
>
> _Five To-Dos_
>
>    1. *General*: On Wednesday 20 September the Telegram bridging to KDE
> Matrix rooms will be shut down. To make the transition go smoothly,
> teams should start co-ordinating for the shutdown now. The Matrix room
> for co-ordination is "Telegram shutdown co-ordination" at
> https://go.kde.org/matrix/#/#telegram-shutdown:kde.org.
>
>    2. *Co-ordination*: This includes: (i) migrating all contributors to
> Matrix, and (ii) deleting the Telegram rooms before the bridge is
> shutdown or -- at most -- one day after the shutdown. Keeping Telegram
> rooms open when they are no longer being used will cause unnecessary
> confusion. Importantly, do not later add a non-KDE Telegram bridge to
> KDE's Matrix rooms as that will not solve the problems from doubled user
> accounts and lack of control over Telegram; see below for operational
> issues with Telegram bridging.
>
>    3. *Action needed by Telegram room admins*: Due to the unexpected
> shutdown of the public Libera.Chat bridge, we will have to move rooms
> over to the matterbridge (ircsomebot) bridge as we work through moving
> channels over to our own Libera.Chat IRC bridge. This will require
> someone with admin in the Telegram room to ensure @ircsomebot is in the
> Telegram room with admin. This needs to be done after we unbridge the
> Matrix bridge from the Matrix side, so the room can continue to be
> bridged until the Telegram shutdown on 20 September.
>
>    4. *Are there exceptions?": There /may/ be some rooms that focus on
> interacting with people external to the KDE Community who would benefit
> by having a Telegram bridge. We are thinking teams like those involved
> in the KDE Network program: https://community.kde.org/The_KDE_Network.
> Not all will need an exception, and it may turn out most don't. We would
> like to start putting together a list of these rooms so we can review
> for potential exceptions and estimate the scale of how much support is
> needed. However, this should be kept to a minimum; see below for
> operational issues with Telegram bridging. We understand that there are
> large internal KDE communities which rely heavily on Telegram, and we
> understand that shutting down the Telegram bridge is less than ideal for
> these rooms, but the issues we have with the Telegram bridge mean we
> need to keep exceptions to a minimum and only for those teeams whose
> work has a primarily external focus.
>
>    5. *Getting a Matrix account*: We can offer KDE Contributors (usually
> those in the developers group, but will consider other requests) a
> Matrix account on our KDE Matrix Homeserver. To request an account
> please file a sysadmin ticket https://go.kde.org/systickets. However, as
> Matrix is federated you do not need to have an account on our homeserver
> to access KDE's Matrix rooms -- you can use any homeserver! A list of
> some alternative Matrix servers is available on
> https://joinmatrix.org/servers/.
>
> To co-ordinate with other teams to make this transition go as smoothly
> as possible, please reach out to the "Telegram shutdown co-ordination"
> Matrix room: https://go.kde.org/matrix/#/#telegram-shutdown:kde.org.
>
> _Additional Information Re Bridges_
>
>    * Four years ago it was decided to add Matrix to IRC as KDE's
> official IM platforms (bridged together). IRC is not planned to be shut
> down.
>
>    * Telegram is not Free Software and has never been an official
> platform for KDE communications. However, it has been used unofficially
> in a number of areas.
>
>    * EMS hosts KDE's Matrix instance and the current Telegram bridge,
> and the majority of issues our community have with Matrix are related to
> bridges. Due to the huge extra load and poor performance Telegram
> bridging has in the Matrix rooms, it was agreed with EMS that the bridge
> would be only run for about a year until people had time to migrate to
> Matrix.
>
>    * However, instead of people migrating away from Telegram, we have
> seen an increase in contributors using /both/ Matrix and Telegram, which
> has doubled the number of users we have to cope with. Having twice as
> many users as needed in the room slows everything down: longer joins,
> more state events for each user, higher chances of room state developing
> problems.
>
>    * The public Libera.Chat bridge was unexpectedly shutdown, and we
> have to move rooms over to the matterbridge (ircsomebot) bridge as we
> work through moving channels over to our own Libera.Chat IRC bridge.
> This is not as originally planned, which was to migrate to that IRC
> bridge after the Telegram shutdown.
>
>    * The vast majority of spam is from Telegram. Due to the Telegram
> bridge account being reported for spam, the account has lost the ability
> to do admin tasks in many rooms. At its worst the account was blocked
> from logging in for weeks, making the bridge non-functional. Since then,
> rooms often can't be bridged without deleting the Telegram room and
> starting fresh, but this only has about a 30% success of working
> long-term. We did not get anywhere attempting to get Telegram to help.
>
>    * The current Telegram bridge doesn't work properly so it makes sense
> to shut it down rather than trying to just change account phone numbers
> (which would require removing the bridge from all channels then
> re-adding to a new bridge, with high chance we end up in the same
> situation in the future).
>
> --
> Joseph P. De Veaugh-Geiss
> KDE Internal Communications & KDE Eco Community Manager
> OpenPGP: 8FC5 4178 DC44 AD55 08E7 DF57 453E 5746 59A6 C06F
> Matrix: @joseph:kde.org
>
> Generally available Monday-Thursday from 10-16h CET/CEST. Outside of
> these times it may take a little longer for me to respond.
>
> KDE Eco: Building Energy-Efficient Free Software!
> Website: https://eco.kde.org
> Mastodon: @be4foss at floss.social
>
>
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