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

[Albert Vaca Cintora]

KDE Connect has a Telegram group with 660 members (vs 100 on matrix). I
don't know if we are the exception with such a big group on Telegram, but
this is going to be a hit to our community :(

On Tue, 22 Aug 2023, 09:02 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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