Unofficial London Hackspace Discord Server

[Hiders]

Hi All,

I've created a discord server which I use with a couple of London Hackspace friends for instant messaging and voice/video calling online.

It's not an official London Hackspace server and was created because of the additional features it offers (voice/video-calling, friendly interface) which this mailing-list/IRC doesn't provide.

Here it is, so feel free to join: https://discord.gg/3KZQvsfZpt

[henry...@ntlworld.com]

Is this poster a member, or is this a scam of some sort?

[Adrian Godwin]

He asked on IRC before announcing it, but I don't actually know him IRL.

But then, who's to say I'm me ?

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[Dragos M.]

I think the easiest way to prevent scams is to create an official discord channel. 

To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/london-hack-space/CALiMYrv18YhVLcDEHkHEy2gqBq_NkHAcKBxGDQAU-y9iV7DmzQ%40mail.gmail.com.

[A Channel]

He's a member. Martin Williams and I were discussing this with him late last night in a discussion about the hackspace's social media presence 

[pad...@padski.co.uk]

The creator assured us on IRC that it would be clear that it is not official, quote ‘I've made sure to label it as "Unofficial" and will advertise it as so’ but I see nothing of the sort there… it is using our logo, our exact name and has a link to our rules.

 

Paddy

--

[A A]

“It's not an official London Hackspace server”. How would you have liked me to phrase it? 

Also, the server details make it clear it’s unofficial. If you’d like me to remove the logo/change the name, I can do that.

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[faissal bensefia]

Wouldn't it be better to use something like Matrix anyway? Discord is
a closed platform and honestly kinda just sucks anyway.

> To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/london-hack-space/071e01d83187%2445b9cc60%24d12d6520%24%40padski.co.uk.

[arthur tinsley]

Discord is great as a straight replacement for IRC(because Jesus Christ, it’s not the 90s any more), with many more features and is well supported and used extensively throughout the gaming world. However there seems to be a strong dislike of anything that’s not IRC by certain groups. Much like google groups in fact.

Hence we cling to outdated comms. But what do I know, other than both google groups and even more so IRC is massively off putting to lots of people, especially new members (was in for something like 10 Tuesday evenings in a row, and ended up showing people round, and it was pulled up at most of them…).

But again, who am I to force change in those that don’t want it! 

To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/london-hack-space/CAGdPsd6kVcx-Gb4cqhpCrwmHkO1tBFynnrcGt6TFtY04Z0tB1g%40mail.gmail.com.

[deanforbes]

At Hiders your email address and alias on IRC are not in the membership database.- are you a member and what are you hoping to achieve with your channel 

what particular interest or sub group are you hoping to serve 

@tinnerz I tried to join the discord and had issues - I personally dont have strong feeling on which tool to use apart from a desire to not have yet another channel of communication 

[Hiders]

Yes, I'm a member (HS33159). So pretty much what "tin...@gmail.com" said. It's as simple as wanting to keep in touch with London Hackspace members on a platform that is easier to use, has many more useful features than google-groups/IRC and is generally more suited to the current times.

If an official Discord server were to replace google-groups/IRC I'd have no desire to create my own, but since it seems like that isn't likely I've created one. It's unofficial and I have labelled it as so. If you'd like me to refrain from using the official logo or link to the hackspace website, I can do that.

[pad...@padski.co.uk]

Regarding its ‘branding’ we’ll let you know, the Trustees will discuss. I’m no Discord expert but I did not notice any notices when I signed up, a still cannot find any from ‘the inside’..

 

Re Arthur’s post

TL/DR show us old farts why it’s better.

Slightly longer version:

It’s not just a matter of clinging to outdated comms. Everyone (as far as I know) agrees that both google groups & IRC are a bit (or more than a bit) shit, and most (also as far as I know) would love to replace them with something better. The #1 feature I’ve seen on the wish list (please correct me if I’m wrong anyone) is integration with our member DB so we could have both public and private channels. Show me this working and I would probably be sold on it instantly. Can Discord do it? Can anything else? I don’t know but am all ears. All the other ‘integrated’ stuff we have on IRC would probably be trivial in comparison. Personally I’ve not heard of any other ‘must have’ features not covered by IRC & GG.  I’ll not ramble on repeating all the other pro & con arguments, they’re all sitting in the history of this mailing list.

As Dean says – yet another channel of communication, I now have 5 all of which have large overlaps. I would like to see progress but my definition of that is akin to ‘more integration and less work’.

Paddy

To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/london-hack-space/3da8167f-1adb-4c40-9ba6-e5965c07754fn%40googlegroups.com.

[Dragos M.]

Discord is now becoming the default community communication platform, it's what people expect nowadays and are used to, or can quickly learn. I sub to what Arthur's said, every Tuesday evening someone asks what is IRC.

Now there's no need to keep IRC or other 4-5 comm channels if we migrate to discord.

Even though I'm not an expert in discord, it has private channels or more specifically role based channels. To get a new role in discord is as easy as typing !{role_code} in the chat (a bot will have to be set to parse these).

The way this can be setup in practice:

1. All hackspace members get a !{role_code} to type into discord, this would give them a role corresponding to a hackspace member. Once set, they would have access to the private channels in which that role is subscribed.

2. Individual groups like radio, model shop, etc. can have their own roles and their own channels.

Example:

the {role_code} to get a member role in discord is HackMember_HA96AR . The new user goes into discord and types !HackMember_HA96AR  and automatically they get the member role and access to member channels.

This is an example of how the roles are shown for individual users. It's easy to view/search and all that. 

Anyways, sorry for my ramblings, writing stuff isn't my forte.

I can help with coding the website part to show the role codes, or some other stuff if need be. I think this would be a good way forward.

To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/london-hack-space/087101d83193%240b603e80%242220bb80%24%40padski.co.uk.

[Adrian Godwin]

I prefer a mailing list and IRC for all the usual old-fart reasons, but I thought as an 'unofficial' discord there was no need to argue about this - if people like it, they'll use it, there's no need for change unless it turns out to be really popular. 

An official new interface otoh causes problems : it might just die out like the discourse one did. Because it didn't really offer anything except an interface that took a whole screen instead of a corner.

I'd certainly be attracted by it if it were busy. The hackspace IRC is very quiet these days, but I think that's because the social aspect of the hackspace has died away somewhat. I regret this but I don't think it's anything to do with IRC - that's easily accessible via the various web interfaces for someone who prefers that style.

To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/london-hack-space/CAGdbARYAnat3R65p2z4p2sea9YL9VyJ_FOsRnkcpqkfQNR150g%40mail.gmail.com.

[Ant -]

Discord is like slack, you can have channels to discuss specific topics etc and unlike IRC you can see a history.  If people want to use it rather than IRC I can't see any harm in that but I find Discord gets noisy and I just end up muting it especially as I have the client on my phone and *ping* *ping* *ping* gets annoying fast and kills my battery. To my mind the primary method of comms is the mailing list and it's the only group platform I use or plan to. It's easy to use but has enough of an effort cost to post that people are discouraged from spamming it.

As an ancillary platform if it were my call I'd say live and let live. What tends to happen is a channel is made thats ranked at the top called read me or rules that is then limited to posts by an admin and you put your guidance in there which should include that It's unofficial, I think there is an email group for directors so put that in there and also that official notices on things like open days, work days, induction  tool status etc are shared on the mailing list and people should sub there to keep informed.

My opinion counts for nothing on this but my take is that when I first joined I asked questions on IRC as I figured there were people in it and I would get a quick answer. I should point out I known IRC so that was easier for me to do. I did get a response after a little while but I had to leave my desktop running to maintain chat history. With discord I could have fired it off closed the client, come back 2 hours later and pick up the conversation. We want to bring in new blood and the whipper snappers known discord so it would make the space more accessible than IRC does. You can run the two in parallel but the reality is people don't want to monitor more platforms than they need to.

IRC is mostly there to see what door bot is doing, there were many in it but few seemed active.

I'm not going to use IRC or discord but I would say discord has a stronger value proposition if you had to pick one over the other.

Kind regards 

Ant

To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/london-hack-space/CALiMYrt%3DbkZ%2B3o4q0fMTPuY2gBOz5RVhrTdYu55iArYktdiDJQ%40mail.gmail.com.

[Mark Steward]

Fwiw, I like Discord. The main concern for me is that Discord doesn't have an explicit non-profit community mission, and could choose to change direction at any time.

But this happened with our IRC server of choice recently, so I'm no longer sure that's much of a protection.

Mark

To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/london-hack-space/CAHZn-VPjjGhhZ24w-4bWZ%3DS0xn2%3D7qJMc5yPnY9bXp8Sf3GFgA%40mail.gmail.com.

[Daniel Edgecumbe]

I can't say the choice of chat server really matters. What would matter is having only one, you don't want loads of split communities.

I think as Adrian says the main difference is that the hackspace just isn't as social as it used to be. I haven't been around in all it's iterations but from the Hackney days to a few months ago was like night and day. It feels a lot more like a semi professional workshop than a sort of freewheeling semi anarchist project, which isn't really an issue but seems to logically just mean it's less social. Maybe I just came at the wrong times.

(no longer a member for disclosure if that's not obvious, I'm on the ML to see how things are going...)

Daniel Edgecumbe

On Sun, Mar 6, 2022, at 20:16, Dragos M. wrote:
> Discord is now becoming the default community communication platform,
> it's what people expect nowadays and are used to, or can quickly learn.
> I sub to what Arthur's said, every Tuesday evening someone asks what is
> IRC.
>
> Now there's no need to keep IRC or other 4-5 comm channels if we
> migrate to discord.
>
> Even though I'm not an expert in discord, it has private channels or
> more specifically role based channels. To get a new role in discord is
> as easy as typing !{role_code} in the chat (a bot will have to be set
> to parse these).
> The way this can be setup in practice:
> 1. All hackspace members get a !{role_code} to type into discord, this
> would give them a role corresponding to a hackspace member. Once set,
> they would have access to the private channels in which that role is
> subscribed.
> 2. Individual groups like radio, model shop, etc. can have their own
> roles and their own channels.
>
> Example:
> the {role_code} to get a member role in discord is HackMember_HA96AR .
> The new user goes into discord and types !HackMember_HA96AR and
> automatically they get the member role and access to member channels.
>
>

> Screen Shot 2022-03-06 at 8.06.47 PM.png
> This is an example of how the roles are shown for individual users.
> It's easy to view/search and all that.
>
> Anyways, sorry for my ramblings, writing stuff isn't my forte.
>
> I can help with coding the website part to show the role codes, or some
> other stuff if need be. I think this would be a good way forward.
>
> On Sun, Mar 6, 2022 at 7:47 PM <pad...@padski.co.uk> wrote:

>> Regarding its ‘branding’ we’ll let you know, the Trustees will discuss. I’m no Discord expert but I did not notice any notices when I signed up, a still cannot find any from ‘the inside’..____
>> __ __
>> Re Arthur’s post____
>> TL/DR show us old farts why it’s better.____
>> Slightly longer version:____
>> It’s not just a matter of clinging to outdated comms. Everyone (as far as I know) agrees that both google groups & IRC are a bit (or more than a bit) shit, and most (also as far as I know) would love to replace them with something better. The #1 feature I’ve seen on the wish list (please correct me if I’m wrong anyone) is integration with our member DB so we could have both public and private channels. Show me this working and I would probably be sold on it instantly. Can Discord do it? Can anything else? I don’t know but am all ears. All the other ‘integrated’ stuff we have on IRC would probably be trivial in comparison. Personally I’ve not heard of any other ‘must have’ features not covered by IRC & GG. I’ll not ramble on repeating all the other pro & con arguments, they’re all sitting in the history of this mailing list.____
>> As Dean says – yet another channel of communication, I now have 5 all of which have large overlaps. I would like to see progress but my definition of that is akin to ‘more integration and less work’.____
>> Paddy____
>> __ __
>> __ __
>> __ __
>> *From:* london-h...@googlegroups.com <london-h...@googlegroups.com> *On Behalf Of *deanforbes
>> *Sent:* 06 March 2022 19:26
>> *To:* London Hackspace <london-h...@googlegroups.com>
>> *Subject:* Re: [london-hack-space] Re: Unofficial London Hackspace Discord Server____
>> __ __
>> At Hiders your email address and alias on IRC are not in the membership database.- are you a member and what are you hoping to achieve with your channel ____
>> __ __
>> what particular interest or sub group are you hoping to serve ____
>> __ __
>> @tinnerz I tried to join the discord and had issues - I personally dont have strong feeling on which tool to use apart from a desire to not have yet another channel of communication ____
>> __ __
>> __ __
>> __ __
>> On Sunday, 6 March 2022 at 18:53:28 UTC tin...@gmail.com wrote:____
>>> Discord is great as a straight replacement for IRC(because Jesus Christ, it’s not the 90s any more), with many more features and is well supported and used extensively throughout the gaming world. However there seems to be a strong dislike of anything that’s not IRC by certain groups. Much like google groups in fact.____
>>> Hence we cling to outdated comms. But what do I know, other than both google groups and even more so IRC is massively off putting to lots of people, especially new members (was in for something like 10 Tuesday evenings in a row, and ended up showing people round, and it was pulled up at most of them…).____
>>> But again, who am I to force change in those that don’t want it! ____
>>> __ __
>>> On Sun, 6 Mar 2022 at 18:46, faissal bensefia <fais...@gmail.com> wrote:____

>>>> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to london-hack-sp...@googlegroups.com.____
>>>> To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/london-hack-space/CAGdPsd6kVcx-Gb4cqhpCrwmHkO1tBFynnrcGt6TFtY04Z0tB1g%40mail.gmail.com.____

>> --
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>> To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/london-hack-space/3da8167f-1adb-4c40-9ba6-e5965c07754fn%40googlegroups.com <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/london-hack-space/3da8167f-1adb-4c40-9ba6-e5965c07754fn%40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer>.____

>>
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[TekTokTV]

discord is something i have wanted to suggest for a little while, i use it constantly day in and day out and do communicate with many members of the hackspace on there

To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/london-hack-space/d1d1e9ae-10bc-4d78-9bbd-4909769f81b5%40www.fastmail.com.

[Matthew]

This comes up every couple of years and has historically been shot down, usually by the more vocal members rather than the majority. Given that the IRC  channel is pretty much dead now ( I can count the regular users on one hand ) I think it's time to seriously consider something else.

Historic arguments have included getting the critical mass to migrate. 71 people managed to find us on Libera.Chat after the Freenode exodus and the 5 active users can probably be convinced to move. There's also the argument that many of the alternatives are not "Free" software. Honestly I think most of the membership, and the general "Hackspace" community on the whole has (rightly or wrongly) become more distant from the original close links with open source / libera / freedom / whatever.

Looking around, a lot of Hackspace's appear to be using Slack or Discord. As a user I prefer slack, but it puts the onus on paying for additional featues on the "admin", per member. Discord's model is slightly different and allows users to unlock features themselves by paying. They can also "boost" (donate to) the server if they wish. Note it works fine without paying, paid features mostly include things like more emojis, improved audio/video quality, larger file uploads etc - given that IRC lacks most of these features natively we wouldn't lose much on a free tier. Discord to IRC bridges also exist. I'm not a huge fan of bridges, but given the lack of activity on IRC I can't imagine it being much of an issue.

There's also the problem with IRC that potential new members pop up via the web client, ask a question, then disconnect 30 seconds later, and when people do join they don't see any of the previous history that might have interested them. I recently joined York Hackspace's Discord server to ask about a project they'd worked on, and it was nice to poke around and see some of the other stuff they'd been working on or chatting about. It's unlikely any prospective new LHS member is going to setup a bouncer or pay for IRCCloud, especially as they're really not missing out on much at the moment. I think we should also be focusing on growing the membership, and modernising our communications would probably be a big help.

Tl;DR: Yes, its time to try something else

Tl;DR II: Google Groups is still fine though.

[deanforbes]

@Matthew whilst in principle I'm not against other channels of communication I don't support change for changes sake if we were to change channels for instant messaging would we simply end up with the same regular users but on a just different platform what's the point in that, the point raised by Arthur isn't it a barrier to entry? I'm not sure that it is (maybe it is) however actually changing would be challenging for me but I would be happy to do it if that's what was needed and I could see a benefit I dont see any benefit for me - its yet another app on my phone computer etc

 

Daniel actually as someone who is active in the workshop I'm quite pleased that the hackspace flavour of anarchy is not so prevalent we no longer have machines being brutalised on a weekly basis, we no longer have a workshop that is simply a collection of broken machines with the promise of fixing broken things, all being maintained by non-existent members or overwhelmed and abused maintainers Who are targeted and picked on, we now have a workshop that is vibrant and buzzing on the weekends and often on a couple of weeknights too the vast majority of machines are working in fact most of the time which is a drastic departure from where we were before and now becuase of the sense of community backing this up we have a range of different people who are active as in inductors or trainers on these machines as the last induction day demonstrated, we also have work days which are well attended and have been very social and buzzing.

We are still very far from even a semi-professional workshop. we still have reckless damage and people abusing kit which would not happen in  a semi-professional workshop the last incident in the last couple of weeks was that somebody chopped a section of a steel fence off the mitre saw, a saw which is designed for cutting wood, this machine was donated to the space by a well-meaning member treating equipment like this in my mind is just negligent and disrespectful- we are still far from perfect.

However, you do have a point re online and for the sofa club there is not as much noise I'm not sure you would call that not being social,

On Tuesday nights which was our social evening we have failed to gather momentum and it's often been one or two people who are  coming in and do the tours but without a group of people around them so one can't blame them for feeling a bit isolated and out there on their own there is only one way to change this that's for people like you and Adrian if this is important to you to change , you can by turn up on a Tuesday and shooting the breeze and doing tours rather than complaining on the mailing list, The hackspace is after all a do-ocracy I personally am not a speakers corner kind of guy and this holds no appeal to me, I have focused on getting the workshops in working order and believe we are largely there I've also focused on building a community around the workshop and to a large extent this has been achieved but it's still a work in progress.

[Adrian Godwin]

I don't support change in he hope that it will increase engagement. It's more likely we'll just lose what we have.

Why not let the discord go ahead as planned ? If it turns out being popular, we can consider making it primary.

To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/london-hack-space/674539cd-60ac-46a7-b337-2ecf524c0f33n%40googlegroups.com.

[Aidas Baltušis]

So IMO, the mailing list kinda works since the number of communications we have are low. The main thing I dislike about the mailing list format is having to email everybody regarding something that probably won't apply to most. The alternative is to email people directly when discussing certain issues - eg. trying to talk to other maintainers about maintaining equipment but this quickly becomes quite cumbersome. Also, last Tuesday someone was asking me how to join the mailing list and all I knew how to do is link them to here  but had no idea how to actually subscribe to it. 

Regarding IRC, I really fail to understand what's its point? You get logged out after a few minutes of inactivity. If someone replies to your question when you're logged out, you cannot see the replies. Maybe I'm missing something but how is that meant to work? 

However, out of all the platforms I have come across I think Discord seems like the most suitable one for our space. I would 100% support fully switching to it as a primary communication platform, although I know that's unlikely to happen. The main benefits would be organizing coms into channels, restricted channels for people with certain permissions, usage of bots for pulling information from the internet (e.g. pinging when certain tools are in use), and voice channels. I've been using Discord for years and it's definitely my most used communications platform. 

To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/london-hack-space/CALiMYru-wHajz-BMUZJXpH4aAA243BX5UvZ-QSeY0Ns62oyVbA%40mail.gmail.com.

[Daniel Edgecumbe]

IRC is from a different time in which people left their machines on all day. I've been connected to IRC somewhat continuously for probably 15 years now (I'm not that old either). I don't see the issue, but then I think I exist in a different world to some extent since I spend most of my time wondering why others do the things they do ;)

It doesn't really work at all for people who just use mobile phones or whatever. As has come up with on this thread, I think that's kind of the point, the emphasis of the hackspace movement in general I guess has moved away from that sort of open-source idealism.

Basically, no-one is going to start using IRC unless they're also already interested in stuff like running their own server. It's an absolute no starter. So if you want people from outside of that group, which is probably "everyone" now, it's useless.

Daniel Edgecumbe | esotericnonsense

[Adrian Godwin]

On Mon, Mar 7, 2022 at 12:03 PM Daniel Edgecumbe <d...@esotericnonsense.com> wrote:

IRC is from a different time in which people left their machines on all day. I've been connected to IRC somewhat continuously for probably 15 years now (I'm not that old either). I don't see the issue, but then I think I exist in a different world to some extent since I spend most of my time wondering why others do the things they do ;)

I'm not sure what the makeup of the hackspace is now, but it certainly has been heavily biased towards people in the IT industry. I'm pretty sure they do still have a screen (or several) constantly open in front of them. One of my objections to Discord is that it consumes more of the screen, making it harder to share with other operations. 

I've never seen that timeout mis-feature Aidus describes. It is, however, generally necessary to have a remote system that stays logged in if you want to see any history. It certainly doesn't need to be your own server, though. Mine isn't. 

We do, of course, want people from outside that group. We also firmly believe that some of the things we do haven't been bettered and want other people to appreciate why. On things like dependency on commercial enterprises, more now than ever. Mark's point about us moving from Freenode to liberachat emphasises it : it was quick and painless to migrate when we disliked new policies by a new owner at our old home. Facebook would be a lot less toxic if changing to a competitor was trivial.

 

It doesn't really work at all for people who just use mobile phones or whatever. As has come up with on this thread, I think that's kind of the point, the emphasis of the hackspace movement in general I guess has moved away from that sort of open-source idealism.

I hope not. It's what I came for and, I believe, a core part of the function : community rather than sales/service.

[Matthew]

> I don't support change for changes sake if we were to change channels for instant messaging

If you said that 5 years ago when IRC was busy I'd agree with you, but it's died a death. As far as alienating the remaining IRC users, I can get hold of Nigle, Padski and Artag via other means if required ;) but a bridge does solve that issue, in that it'll probably annoy them enough to convince them to migrate.

There does seem to be some confusion about IRC. It's been common place to use a "bouncer" since forever, that's an IRC client running somewhere always on, that you then connect to from other clients like a mobile phone and it relays the stored messages to you so you dont miss anything. But that requires the effort of running and maintaing a "server" or using a paid service like IRCCloud, which I recommend if you're in multiple busy IRC channels but probably doesn't give good value for money to sit in a single dead IRC channel.

Running the two side by side seems fine for now, assuming we can add it to the wiki alongside IRC, albeit in an "unofficial" capacity.

[Daniel Edgecumbe]

FWIW Adrian I agree with everything you say here, I guess I just don't really see it manifest in practice.

The hackspace could fix history trivially by just having logs hosted somewhere (for registered members only if you want them to be a bit more private, IRC is essentially public anyway though). You could even just have a system where the bouncers are run by the hackspace itself, you could run 100 seperate instances of a bouncer or whatever and have a fancy JS interface.

But whatever you do, people have to actually want it, because it's marginally less convenient.

It's not really my place to say, apologies, I just poked my head in here since I saw the thread. :P

Daniel Edgecumbe | esotericnonsense

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[Daniel Edgecumbe]

I should clarify that I'm not implying that "the hackspace" doesn't care about these issues (I could do it myself if I were so inclined, there's no blame here), but that people who want to use platforms like Discord don't care and probably will just continue to see this as some sort of weird hacky solution and therefore not use it.

So it doesn't actually solve the issue of "how do you unite the community on one chat platform long term".

Daniel Edgecumbe | esotericnonsense
+44 7508 603979
d...@esotericnonsense.com | https://esotericnonsense.com

[Jonathan Hodgson]

I think we need to ask the question, "what is the IRC channel for?"
Because if its purpose is to foster a hackspace community, it's effectively dead and I don't think it's ever coming back to life. There are a handful of people who use it and It's 95% bot messages about people going in and out of the space (several days can go by without a human posting anything).
And as someone mentioned earlier, every now and again someone (often a potential but not current member) comes in with a question which is generally not seen by anyone before they've given up and moved on, possibly losing us a member.
If the purpose is to watch the bots on the other hand, it works fine.

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[Jonathan Hodgson]

I don't advocate any particular system (I don't know them well enough), but I will echo Paddy's comment that tying a system to our members database so that current members have access to private channels would be a killer feature.

[Andre Amorim]

What about we set up our own metaverse space using Mozilla hubs?

https://hubs.mozilla.com/

its time for us to get into VR world.

On Sun, 6 Mar 2022 at 18:46, faissal bensefia <fais...@gmail.com> wrote:

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[Aidas Baltušis]

" tying a system to our members database so that current members have access to private channels would be a killer feature."   

That's very doable with Discord and I would happily volunteer to demonstrate it. I believe it would also solve the issue of new people not knowing where to ask about inductions

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[Benjamin Gray]

I'm keen for a slack or discord for the hackspace. the biolab uses slack and it serves us very well. 

Why dont we vote on it or something ? 

[Daniel Magliola]

If I may add my 2 cents, I'd love to see something like Discord or Slack.

I'm an old-timer IT guy, i've used IRC when I was a teenager, it was great when that's all there was.

But these days, unless you are a pretty dedicated IRC person, it's not a great option.

Several folks here have mentioned the main problem: you log in with some website, you ask a question, you get logged out, you don't notice, you log in again, your reply has gone by and you can't see it.

And yeah, as someone mentioned, we all have a screen in front of our face all the time, but it's generally not perma-connected to an IRC server.

Even if you have an IRC app on your phone, which i'd venture most people don't, if you lose connection, you lose whatever happened.

Discord allows for a much more asynchronous style of discussion, in addition to the real-time "you had to be there or you missed it", and its channels would be great for having discussions around topics / different workshops / etc.

And it's a pretty standard tool these days, as several have said, it's kind of the default "community communication tool".

I think the approach proposed by the trustees is a good one: let's let the Discord server live, see if it is actually used more than IRC, and then evaluate.

I'd encourage IRC-folks to join, though, otherwise it's not a really great test trial, in my opinion.

Anyway, just my 2 cents, and thank you Hiders for setting it up!

Daniel

On Monday, March 7, 2022 at 1:47:08 PM UTC aidasb...@gmail.com wrote:

[Daniel Magliola]

I've been thinking about these two ideas: (paraphrased because the thread is too long to find the actual quotes)

> You can set some channels to private, some users (active hackspace members) to have a "role" in Discord, and only folks with that role can access those channels

> If we can have a system with public / private parts, where it's synced to our database and only active members have access to certain content, that's "shut up and take my money" (again, paraphrasing)

This sounds very doable to me...

Discord has an API, unsurprisingly, and we should be able to sync our DB and Discord Server.

In a nutshell:

- We add a "discord handle" field to user profiles that folks can set

- When they set that, if they are an active member, they get the role added in Discord.

- When someone becomes active, if they have that set, they get the role added in Discord.

- When someone becomes inactive, they lose that role.

- Nightly sync because Internet gremlins, of course.

I could take a stab at a proof of concept for this if you wouldn't mind.

Is this the Github repo i'd be looking at?

https://github.com/londonhackspace/hackspace-foundation-sites 

I'm not very strong at Python, but I can have a play if that'd be ok with you?

Daniel

[Jonathan Hodgson]

I think that's a very worthy endeavour Daniel, thanks very much for the offer.
If you need any help with the python then I think there are probably members who can help out (I'm middling good on it, but there's probably somebody lurking who is more experienced in that language and the available libraries).
Aidas also indicated he was happy to demonstrate connecting the db with Discord, so maybe have a word with him about what he had in mind?

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[Billy]

Hi folks, :D

If you haven't met me in person, i've been a member since 2010.

I haven't been to the hackspace since the first lockdown.

---------------------

The main thing to remember in these conversations about the tools that we use, is that the different tools were created with different purposes in mind.

Each has their appropriate use-case.

We should maintain the use of all of these tools, as they all work well in their specific domains.

As the maintainers of the hardware tools that we share, are the people who are most into working with those specific tools, it will be the same for the software tool-chains that we use.

The people that are interested will be the people that maintain them.

This will be the same for the tools that haven't been invented yet. :D

------------------

As long as we can devise a standard way that we use these communication tools, so that all of the official hackspace announcements are made across all of them, then it shouldn't be a problem.

Do the same for the logging of the conversations, just like the IRC channels, and any future channels that we use.

---------------

As long as the maintainers are happy to share their skills, then we'll continue to learn and grow. :D