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

Wed Aug 23 02:40:46 BST 2023

On Tuesday, 22 August 2023 22:08:34 CEST Albert Vaca Cintora wrote:
> KDE Connect has a Telegram group with 660 members (vs 100 on matrix). I
> don't know if we are the exception

It's not. Kdenlive is another example where most users on both the Spanish and 
English channels are largely on Telegram. I think you will find that developers 
tend to gravitate towards IRC and maybe Matrix, but end users gravitate 
towards Telegram and don't really want to open another account on yet another 
IM platform.

But let me try to highlight some of the issues with this proposed plan (as is) 
with some questions:

If we cut off hundreds of users from the rest of the community, will this 
action help or damage KDE's relevancy among end users? Will it increase or 
decrease the rate of adoption of our software?

It has been mentioned that this was discussed at a BoF and on a mailing list. 
How many end users, say, from the KDE Connect and Kdenlive user channels on 
Telegram do you estimate attended the Bof and how many do you estimate 
regularly read the mailing lists?

Is it right to make this decision behind the backs of the people who will be 
most affected?

How does this plan fit in with KDE's vision, mission and manifesto, all three 
of which insist we take into account the users and their needs over most other 
things?

As a reminder:

https://community.kde.org/KDE/Vision
https://community.kde.org/index.php?title=KDE/Mission
https://manifesto.kde.org/

If you have a healthy growing community of end users, already in the hundreds, 
probably surpassing a thousand users, is it sensible to cut it off?

Moving on to the schedule, do you think, we, the channel mods and admins, can 
realistically migrate hundreds of people to a completely new platform they 
probably even haven't heard of in less than a month? Do we get time to eat and 
sleep?

Do you think cutting users off will be a convincing argument that will 
encourage most of the people to migrate?

Have you thought of other strategies we can use that will render better 
results? If so, would you mind sharing them?

How many of the links to Telegram peppered all through our web pages have you 
removed and changed to point to Matrix?

If none (it is none, isn't it?), shouldn't have this been one of your first 
actions, to curb incoming new users away from Telegram to Matrix? Why did you 
not think of this? 

In view of your prior answers, do you think maybe this "plan" may not be much 
of a plan at all, that maybe it is simplistic, even harebrained, unrealistic 
and insensitive, and, if forced through, you may hurt the community in ways 
that will take years to repair?

Cheers

Paul

> 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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