[Comment] My Ongoing Irritations with Google Groups

[TiddlyTweeter]

This Google Group is OUR main end-user forum. 

There are problems with Google Groups. More recently it was "dumbed-down" by Google. A lot of tools just disappeared. That just made it worse for OUR needs.

And, long term, it has proved to also have NO DECENT MEMORY. 

Search here is the Total Pits.

WHAT happens as a result of that?

A VERY common pattern that happens daily here is RE-CREATION OF THE WHEEL. 

GG lacks any easy, structured, way to interrogate the VAST knowledge-base that this GG actually IS. 

SO, again and again, you see very similar queries come up and be patiently RE-answered.

I think a much BETTER way would be to leverage off the knowledge accumulated here and direct users first to already EXTANT solutions.

I'm not sure it is possible. 

But repetition of the variants on the same question is a waste, I think?

Just comments

TT

[Saq Imtiaz]

I would like to see us move to using Discourse for discussions. In particular the search feature is very well implemented.

Professional hosting ranges $50-100 per month. Personally I think an Open Collective model for where the community chips in with recurring monthly contributions to support that would be a good way to approach it.

[TiddlyTweeter]

Ciao saq.i ...

I don't how long you been in this group?

What I do know is regularly, over a few years, the inadequacies of Google Groups has be re-hashed several times in serious posts about it.

In past discussions, some quite passionate (I wish I could QUOTE from them, but OF COURSE I can't find them!  Lol -:), led to a number of initiatives.

The most significant long-lasting one being TiddlyWiki on REDDIT, still run by Riz, https://www.reddit.com/r/TiddlyWiki5/

What emerged is the LOGISTICS of fully switching away from  this Google Group to a new forum would be VERY complicated and, finally, likely, very damaging to the existing membership base. SO, the inertia to change is necessarily huge.

MY query here is really about HOW TO MAKE THE BEST OF WHAT WE HAVE? on Google Groups.

BUT, it seems, with additional recent changes by Google to its functioning what we have right now is only the FLEETING MOMENT. Meaning, GG is good for immediate discussions but NOTHING much else. 

(Basically it is "Usenet" thread format dating back to 1631 :-) 

It is terrible on Search. 

Upvote does not exist. 

Tagging posts proved to be not adequate here.

WHERE, does that leave us?

In the same place.

With a forum that throws its own history down the drain every day. :-(

Just comments from a normally sanguine person

TT  

[ludwa6]

I share your pain, @TT... and am +1 @saq's idea about Discourse and how to fund it.  

I for one would be happy to chip in a few $/month to support this community, and- from earlier discussion thread @Tones initiated (can't seem to find it now; see the problem? :-) -i gather that there be others likewise inclined to fund the community somehow, if only we could find an equitable way to do so.  As discussed, who or what initiative gets funded, and how that gets decided is not a trivial problem... 

So funding for an improved collaboration infrastructure seems not only perfectly equitable, it also solves what must be (if TT & i  are at all representative) a problem we all share, and an opportunity for more effective collaboration.

/walt

[TiddlyTweeter]

Ciao ludwa6

As I commented to Saq, it can't be just about "is Discourse better?" It IS. BUT it is not the central issue though.

There needs to be DEEP THOUGHT about HOW you could ever transition from here to there without devastating the membership here?

FWIW, one BIG UPSIDE with Discourse is that you can logon with GOOGLE credentials. 

Might seem like a small thing, but those small things matter in easing the case for any potential transfer ...

Best wishes

TT

[Saq Imtiaz]

@TT I've been in this group on and off since 2006. I've seen some if not all of the discussions around GG shortcomings and alternatives.

I've been one of the people previously worried about losing membership if we transitioned away from GG. However especially with the recent GG changes, at this point I think GG is stifling growth and not serving existing members well either. It happens a couple of times a week on average that I lose a long post I was writing to address a users questions because the GG UI glitches out in longer posts.

I think we aren't far off the point - if not already there - where the negatives of staying on GG are outweighing the cost of moving to another platform. 

You mentioned reddit, and it is worth keeping in mind that a lot of the reddit users aren't comfortable using a Google product which is difficult to use without a Google account. A solution with multiple sign in options is a plus in this regard. Another requirements for some users on GG has been being able to subscribe via email. Discourse has pretty robust features in this regard as well which would help with a transition. 

Moving to Discourse isn't going to be a silver bullet. However it would give us the opportunity to start building towards something better with tools that help us, rather than continuing to struggle to work around the limitations of GG; which only seem to be getting worse. 

Regards,
Saq

[TiddlyTweeter]

Ciao Saq,

VERY interesting, thoughtful, post! 

I would UPVOTE it if Google Groups supported upvoting! :-)

>> start building towards something better with tools that help us, rather than continuing to struggle to work around the limitations of GG; which only seem to be getting worse. 

It is certainly true that changes Google made to Groups in the recent past simply removed functions without adding anything useful new.

Using it is increasingly inefficient.

TBH, I'm not fully sure what the best workable solution is to this REAL problem with GG. 

What IS clear is the case for CHANGE is getting much stronger.

Best wishes

TT

[PMario]

On Sunday, May 30, 2021 at 10:04:26 AM UTC+2 TiddlyTweeter wrote:

In past discussions, some quite passionate (I wish I could QUOTE from them, but OF COURSE I can't find them!  Lol -:), led to a number of initiatives.

The most significant long-lasting one being TiddlyWiki on REDDIT, still run by Riz, https://www.reddit.com/r/TiddlyWiki5/

I'm sorry to say but for me the UI there is even worse than the UI here. ... And reading threads on other groups at /r/ the "tone" of many posts isn't welcoming. eg: A common answer is: "This has been answered already", go search for it.

I think, this is a strength here in the group, that questions are answered, even if they have been asked in a slightly different way. ... At least we post a link or two. ... I think this is much more welcoming, than "RTFM" ...

 

It is terrible on Search. 

That's right. ... Most of the time, I have to search for my own name to find threads, where I replied to :/. ... Or I have to filter for "stars". I do "star" every answer or thread, that I think may be interesting in the future for me. ..

 

Upvote does not exist. 

What is this needed for? -- I personally think this is discriminating. Why should my answer be worth more or have a higher "counter" than an answer from someone else? ...

On an other platform, that starts with "s" and ends wit "overflow" the best answers for me are usually near the middle or the end of the list. ... Because most of the time, my problem isn't 100% the same to the OT but similar enough to find useful hints. ...

Why should I risk to answer a question, where I'm not 100% sure if I do get upvotes. ... Why should I risk to get "downvoted" for a "wrong" answer, just because I didn't understand the OT right.

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

I would be OK if the original author _only_ has the possibility to "mark an answer" as "This answer made it work for me" .. OR a general "I found a solution. Thanks for helping me out"

Tagging posts proved to be not adequate here.

That's right.

just my thoughts.

mario

[Ste]

Just looking at discourse home page it's free but the minimum hosting is $100 a month and they also do free free for open source projects. We is open source. Can we has free? 

I'm a little confused about what's free and what's worth $100 a month. 

[TiddlyTweeter]

Ciao PMario

I thought your post interesting and reflective ...

I WOULD upvote it IF I could, which I can't :-)

PMario wrote:

What is this needed for? --

It CAN signal EXCELLENCE.

 

I personally think this is discriminating.

Ermmm. Yes! But it is not like "racism". 

It is an expression of "preference".

 

Why should my answer be worth more or have a higher "counter" than an answer from someone else? ...

Because you are better? :-) 

Best wishes

TT

[TiddlyTweeter]

Ste wrote:

Just looking at discourse home page it's free but the minimum hosting is $100 a month and they also do free free for open source projects. We is open source. Can we has free? 

I'm a little confused about what's free and what's worth $100 a month. 

I think a far BIGGER issue is "HOW DO WE GET SEVERAL THOUSAND MEMBERS TO WANT TO MOVE THERE?" 

Just a comment

TT

[TiddlyTweeter]

PMario wrote ...

I think, this is a strength here in the group, that questions are answered, even if they have been asked in a slightly different way. ... At least we post a link or two. ... I think this is much more welcoming, than "RTFM" ...

I AGREE with that 100%. The level of PROBLEM SOLVING is very high and very friendly in this Google Group.

It is exceptionally good.

The PROBLEM is TOMORROW!

You simply can't easily find past solutions because the Search is so POOR.

That is RUINING the potential of this group!

Everything goes down the toilet within days.

 

Best wishes

TT

[TiddlyTweeter]

TiddlyTweeter wrote:

It is terrible on Search. 

PMario wrote: 

That's right. ... Most of the time, I have to search for my own name to find threads, where I replied to :/. ... Or I have to filter for "stars". I do "star" every answer or thread, that I think may be interesting in the future for me. ..

RIGHT! One THOUGHT I had (odd as it sounds) was we might in  TiddlyWiki itself make a BETTER search engine/argument for this Google Group than the default group search Google provides? GGs take URL arguments for search easily, so why don't we think about that more?

I DEFINITELY think that could be worth experimenting with. 

Best wishes

TT

[TiddlyTweeter]

PMario wrote:

TiddlyTweeter wrote:

Tagging posts proved to be not adequate here.

That's right.

 Taggery in the short time I been in this group has gone from virtually none to "open-house". "Open-house" was good in  a way in that there was more frequent usage of tags. But it was "abused" so it was stopped. AND, thereafter, taggery here went back to near silence/irrelevance.

It remains an interesting issue, I think. 

Part of the issue with TW is its potential is so VAST that tags can breed to infinitude. 

HOW would you delimit tags to a logical set? 

I'm not sure it is even possible?

Questions only. No answers on this one.

TT

[Mat]

First: Any other solution than what we have is probably more likely to split the users than to unite them. This is a main reason why I don't participate in any other group than this one (and the gh dev group). 

Second: There is reason to be skeptical of any central system. If they decide to X there's probably nothing we can do about it.

So if we are willing to pay for something, then we don't we just pay for storage and then build our own system using TW? These chats and threads are conceptually very close to tiddlers. This would:

- probably unite the community

- obviously further improve TW itself

- be under our full control and we can tailor it to our exact needs

Need a great search feature? - Probably doable. 

Extract great replies to be part of docs? - No prob. 

Google decides to put GG to rest? - Google who!? 

Discord is blocked in China? - Well, our db is mirrored on X. 

I want to upvote PMario to annoy him but also because I think he is brilliant. - OK, install the voting plugin in your representation of the community TW. 

If some of the big boys were willing to fiddle with this, I'd be happy to be one of the financial contributors. I'm not a gazillionaire but after having now used TW for almost 15 years I've realized that TW is simply a part of my identity and I will likely stick with it for many years to come. I might as well spend some money on this as anything else meaningful in my life.

<:-)

[ludwa6]

Not to keep banging the Discord drum- there's a bigger conversation here that needs to run its course -but i have to ask, since there's a question in the air about hosting:  Re this "TiddlyWiki 5" server that i have in my Discord client (has a blue w/ white "T5" icon in server browser): Where is this server hosted? Is it paid or free?  Looks like "saqimtiaz" is one of that server's more active users, so maybe @saq can give some context about this...

For my part: i joined the Discord party to access the Fission server, when i was trying to get my tiddlywiki.fission.app working, and needed support to get that working.  Got some great help in real-time from a few of the good people there, low-latency interaction being one of the great advantages Discord has over GG, and sorted the problem out right quick.  Am guessing that i acquired access to the T5 server around that time, via pointage from one of the Fission channels, but in fact i don't know the source. 

PS: Seeing as how Discord login via Google account is an option, as @TT points out w/ screenshot below, that would seem to make migration easy as can be... And maybe there's even a way to mirror discussion threads from here and topic threads over there to update one another (not blow-by-blow; just name of thread / topic).  Another practical point to consider, if & when the higher-level conversation comes down to How :-)

/walt

On Sunday, May 30, 2021 at 10:17:43 AM UTC+1 saq.i...@gmail.com wrote:

...Moving to Discourse isn't going to be a silver bullet. However it would give us the opportunity to start building towards something better with tools that help us, rather than continuing to struggle to work around the limitations of GG; which only seem to be getting worse. 

[Saq Imtiaz]

Some clarification:

Discord and Discourse are not the same. The former is primarily a real time chat, while the latter is an open source forum software.

Discourse is open source and free to self-host. Paying for professional hosting is worth it for the reliability it would bring. You own your own data, can migrate to other hosts etc, there is no reliance on any central authority. You can also extend it with plugins.

The effort and resources required to implement a good discussion system are quite substantial, and personally I think better spent on various other needs in the community.

Lastly, the user split is already a reality. Stay within the confines of GG you just don't see it. A lot of users end up on reddit or discord precisely because they don't want to use GG, and I suspect most of them don't have the best experience with the community (and possibly give up on TW early) because those channels are not particularly active.

Saq

[ludwa6]

Dooh! Thanks @saq for the helpful clarification (  /walt leaves the conversation to those who actually know what they are talking about :-)

On Sunday, May 30, 2021 at 2:57:31 PM UTC+1 saq.i...@gmail.com wrote:

Some clarification:

Discord and Discourse are not the same. The former is primarily a real time chat, while the latter is an open source forum software.

... 

[Mark S.]

Interesting topics and solutions could be entered into tiddlylinks.

I think a $1200 solution is a non-starter.  There might be enough enthusiasm for it this year, but what happens when it becomes defunded in two years? Three years? Suddenly everything is lost. Not even GG is that bad.

You might look at groups.io, a professional forum solution which has a free tier which is still very good.

[Mat]

Mark S. wrote:

I think a $1200 solution is a non-starter.  There might be enough enthusiasm for it this year, but what happens when it becomes defunded in two years? Three years? Suddenly everything is lost. Not even GG is that bad. 

 

We are IMO, unfortunately, forced to agree with this.

You might look at groups.io, a professional forum solution which has a free tier which is still very good.

I don't know the details but I feel there is a general risk in being tied up in someone elses solution. Critical word is "tied up". Who owns the data? Even if we own the data, can it be exported? For free? Forever? Etc. 

 

Interesting topics and solutions could be entered into tiddlylinks.

Let's at least explore ideas along these lines.

<:-)

[Mat]

Saq Imtiaz wrote:

The effort and resources required to implement a good discussion system are quite substantial, and personally I think better spent on various other needs in the community.

Yeah, no doubt it would be a substantial effort. But on the other hand there's no particular rush AND I think it would bring a lot of enhancement to TW itself. A most glaring lack in TW is probably "multi user capabilities" and tools for collaboration. I'm sure we lose a lot of people because of this, particularly "business" use cases. "Multi use" is of course only one aspect for a discussion system but I also think there is a lot that is already solved or at least half-solved with TW just with what we already have. 

Lastly, the user split is already a reality.

Yeah... and that is why I spontaneously dislike these new "let's change forums" initiatives. I think they are more destructive than constructive. For one, IF a move is to be done it needs the endorsement of Big J. Where he goes, the crowd has to go. So just "registering a new TW group" somewhere... poor idea.

IMO eating our own dog food would bring things closer together. It would be the flagship real life use case for a product that current doesn't really have any real official use case demo other than the "TW website". Why should a company, or even just someone with high demands, trust that TW can perform IRL?

But I know; talk is cheap, especially from someone who doesn't really know what it takes.

<:-)

[Finn Lancaster]

Hey all! 

Just checking out this thread, I would like to add my dissatisfaction with GG, which I find to be dis-intuitive and old-feeling. Looking at some ideas for a new platform, I can see that most of them cost either money, or lots and lots of time. As I feel that much of the community seems to shy-away from groups such as discord, etc, I would like to add freeflarum https://freeflarum.com

to the list. 

In short, FreeFlarum is a free forum software, which is not super-popular, but nonetheless extremely powerful. In its free tier, it offers custom domain via DNS, admins, and sign-ups. Having used it briefly for my own site a while back, I found it really easy-to-use and functional. 

What this would mean is that FreeFlarum could be added directly to TiddlyWiki.com as a subdomain, and allow anyone to sign-up and post. An issue that I see off the bat, however, is whether it’ll be around a long time, since it is hard to judge right now. 

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[Saq Imtiaz]

I had written a longer and more detailed reply but par for the course, the UI glitched out and I lost part of the post.

On Sunday, May 30, 2021 at 10:34:06 PM UTC+2 Mat wrote:

Yeah, no doubt it would be a substantial effort. But on the other hand there's no particular rush

As I said, if you stay within the GG group bubble it's easy to ignore the plight of users both current and prospective who are not comfortable with using or signing up for GG.

 

So just "registering a new TW group" somewhere... poor idea.

I don't think anyone has suggested that in this thread, otherwise I'd have a discourse up and running for TW already. At it's cheapest it costs $10/ month to self host it, closer to $20 with a higher user count. Discussion around this topic as a community is needed precisely because user dissatisfaction with GG is growing and there are actually good options available at this time.

 

IMO eating our own dog food would bring things closer together.

I've been hearing variations of this since 2008. The difference is there weren't any really well put together open source alternatives back then, there are now. 

> But I know; talk is cheap, especially from someone who doesn't really know what it takes.

It is very easy to underestimate the time and resources it would take to invent our own forum solution. Not to mention that most of that work wouldn't be universally useful and we would still need to pay for hosting and maintenance. If as a community we can't pull together $50 a month for hosting fees at this time, we definitely don't have the resources to take this on. Nor would it be the best prioritization of resources even if we did.

[Mark S.]

On Sunday, May 30, 2021 at 11:56:51 AM UTC-7 Mat wrote:

I don't know the details but I feel there is a general risk in being tied up in someone elses solution. Critical word is "tied up". Who owns the data? Even if we own the data, can it be exported? For free? Forever? Etc. 

I'm just saying that if we changed up, rather than going for these semi-broken ad-hoc solutions that were never meant to be a forum (which, as I understand it, includes discord), why not use a resource that was designed as a forum? 

With groups.io you can export data, and based on past experience it will likely warn anyone before they change policies. The "pro" version is $200/year, which is still a lot less than $1200. I'm running a nearly 2000 member forum there (it used to be 2000+, but I'm not a great motivator ;-) )  In any event, our data is tied up with GG, so no real change there.

 

[Ed Dixon]

This has been an ongoing topic forever! Just my 2 cents but we appear to be having a pretty good "discourse" in here on this subject right now. The accumulated knowledge and history of TW is right here in one place (other than GIT of course) easily searchable and while I am sure there maybe better alternatives out there, I personally just do not see the benefit in moving the entire community to a new platform even if it were possible to move the information stored here with it (possibly losing a few users in the process) not to mention the effort it would take to manage some of these other alternatives where this is set and forget basically no patching required, no server costs or server maintenance, and all eyes are on as far as spam monitoring etc? It maybe possible or is being done, but it would be good to know all the information contained in this is archived and could be moved to another platform if needed but until needed why would we want to move to a different platform when this has worked fine for I have no idea how many years but plenty I am sure. GG isn't perfect no doubt, "eat your own dog food" I have always been a big believer in but more so "if it ain't broke don't fix it". Again just my brain damaged humble opinion and admittedly ill informed to what alternatives are available but are they as time tested and reliable? (not that google isn't capable of just kill  it off at any time like they did G+ or what ever it was called but this has been around almost as long as Gmail itself I think?  Doubt its going anywhere?

[TiddlyTweeter]

eddi...@gmail.com wrote:

... easily searchable and while I am sure there maybe better alternatives out there, I personally just do not see the benefit in moving the entire community to a new platform 

Very interesting post except "easily searchable". 

NO, Google Groups search is TERRIBLE.

And WORSE than it was before.

And that is a MAJOR factor in end-user frustration. 

Please prove me wrong. 

Show some complex searches that work? :-) 

 

... "if it ain't broke don't fix it".

RIGHT! 

BUT. It is LESS than it WAS. 

The recent changes in GG function removed many functions and added NOTHING new.

Basically it is increasingly impoverished on functions.

 

... what alternatives are available but are they as time tested and reliable? ... 

Google Groups, in net history, took over from Usenet and also adopted ListServ stuff.

I have no doubt that will continue.

That is NOT our primary concern.

The ISSUE now is to what extent the current GG supports what WE need.

My (original) question was really about OPTIMISATION 

IS what we use everyday what we have already, or something new?

Just a question,

TT

 

[Jeremy Ruston]

NO, Google Groups search is TERRIBLE.

And WORSE than it was before.

And that is a MAJOR factor in end-user frustration. 

Please prove me wrong. 

Show some complex searches that work? :-) 

I think whether we use Google Groups or Discourse, the best way to search the archives will always be a straightforward web search (OK, Google search). As an experiment, I searched for a literal phrase from a message in the group a month ago, and google found it instantly:

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=+%22winter+2019%2C+when+we+were+working+on+the+Commander+plugin%22&client=safari&hl=en-gb&sxsrf=ALeKk03Qjh7fZzQxEE2_9X6csk0ZQAX5hA%3A1622469136222&ei=EOq0YJjtDI-NhbIPicKYkAw&oq=+%22winter+2019%2C+when+we+were+working+on+the+Commander+plugin%22&gs_lcp=Cgdnd3Mtd2l6EANQ8UxY8Uxg705oBHAAeACAAUGIAX2SAQEymAEAoAEBqgEHZ3dzLXdpesABAQ&sclient=gws-wiz&ved=0ahUKEwiYtZfEiPTwAhWPRkEAHQkhBsIQ4dUDCA0&uact=5

If the URL doesn't come through, it is just the result of searching for the string (including quotes):

"winter 2019, when we were working on the Commander plugin"

As ever, the difficulty is coming up with the right search phrases.

Best wishes

Jeremy

[Mat]

If someone is serious about just getting out of GG, then I guess a first thing to do is to put up some comparison table or even a wiki to collect benefits and drawbacks with each solution and pit them against each other. Including GG. One idea would be to put up a google form so people can post in proposals and describe various aspects of them.

As I said though, I'm of the firm belief that there's no point in attempting to move anywhere without the key people, notably Jeremy, coming along. So any such investigation would still only maybe convince anyone.

BTW, is there any discussion software with an API that is, or could be, compatible with TW? I don't really understand what it is I'm asking about here, but just maybe there'd be some way to interact with an external service via ones own TW? As you may recall, Mark and I recently created a solution to import+convert Google Sheets data into tiddlers. And Jeremys very recent proposal for a JSON formatted tiddler store briefly touches API aspects. Using TW as a front end to external services is a pretty darn cool idea per se and should also open up TW for a wider audience, but integrating it with some external discussion service would be a great use case with much practical value for the community.

<:-)

[TW Tones]

Folks,

I have being reluctant to reenter (and read everyone's detailed responses) this discussion, as it has being had many times. It is true there are a lot of good ideas but its like herding cats and always will be unless there were a clear leader as a replacement. 

I tried to promote the use of Yammer which I believed to meet many of the requirements, but too few people tried it to see why I thought it was a good solution. Most people argue for the system they are already familiar with (as I was with Yammer having helped build a 45,000 person yammer network) but then do not look into other peoples suggestions. I have looked at a few that have being proposed, but reviewing them is in the dark with no clear set of requirements to measure them against.

Going forward;

1. Build a list of requirements collaboratively
2. Build a  comparison table (as per Matt)
3. Community Review fills out the table
4. If there are some outstanding solutions initiate some trials
5. Ask Jeremy to support any obvious solution

If necessary set up a fund raising account to help if funding is necessary.

Be carful seeking reviews from people that there are user and developer perspectives that can be different.

Finally: Since it is taking us so long anyway perhaps we should embark on a developing tiddlywiki solution - "drink our own Champaign". In this way posts could include tiddlywiki code and other objects. This could fix some existing limitations of tiddlywiki.

Regards

Tones

[TiddlyTweeter]

Ciao Jeremy

I thought that a great example. Yes you CAN find things IF you know an exact string, BUT the issue is you  need to know the exact phrase.

AND you need to use Google for easiest hit. 

The issue that the OP was, maybe not as clear as it should have been, is I want to be able to search the vast GG archive to find solutions I DON'T know the exact title of.

To give a couple of examples ... 

• HOW do I find "all but only" what Eric Shulman has done about cloud maps?
• HOW do I find posts about "NotoWritey" (Or is it "NotoWriterly") that specifically discuss its use of regular expressions?

My contention is that we are losing history here from lack of appropriate tagging, lack of upvoting & pretty awful search (i.e. GG's native search, not Google per se).

I think the thread kinda inched towards re-hashing shifting groups. BUT my intent was not really so concerned with that.

RATHER: HOW can we make the best of what we have here in GG?

Finding solutions seems to me the premier concern in this GG. 

I'm wondering if we might in a TW design a better interface to Google that will better deliver the results users needs?

Thoughts

TT

'

[TiddlyTweeter]

Ciao Mat

I appreciate your post. Because you have the history to have nice clear opinions!

ACTUALLY in my frame of mind NOW, rather than in the past, I actually think a FIRST question might be...

 Can we delve the GG better? For the solutions that ARE there users need?

In other words, can we leverage this GG group better?

Best wishes

TT

[TiddlyTweeter]

TW Tones wrote:

... It is true there are a lot of good ideas but its like herding cats and always will be unless there were a clear leader as a replacement. 

 Lol! Right! Herding cats? Non-starter!

You probably read my last two posts.

Actually rather than focus on exit strategies I got kinda interested in whether we can leverage here better?

What does seem very clear is that in the native web interface in this GG is totally inadequate to easy probe of its own history.

I think this is an empirical matter. HOW do you FIND what you need?

IF we could more accurately probe the archives it would address a big section of the problematic.

Thoughts

TT

[TW Tones]

TT,

I was just reviewing the concept of exit strategy. I am running a test on a group I own. Google permits you to export most information they hold for you and this seems to include ALL mail in a google group. It would most likely be "big data" but it can be done it seems. Then with this available it may be possible to algorithmically or crowd source curation of the data for the backbone of a new solution. The key issue is separating content inside emails, such as with reply and forwarding where a whole or part of the conversation accrues in the text of each email but it is not insurmountable. It may also be possible to get something out of the mail archive. 

I am not pretending this is easy, and a concerted effort and project would need to be mounted.

Regards

Tones

[TiddlyTweeter]

Ciao TW Tones

I hear you.

AND I do SEE that GG got impoverished ... recently the following  ...

• Easy ability to email a poster privately went AWOL ...
• CODE blocks just disappeared
• Ability to RE-EDIT posts went away
• Taggery is mainly currently pointless (complex issue in TW on any platform)
• and more ...

That is a LOT practically.

That said, MY view now is focused on can I FIND what I need when I need it?

 

YOUR EXIT approach is interesting.

Simply from my previous experience I'm inclined to the view we NEED first to prove GG is a total heap of problems for OUR needs.

OR provide an additive method to FIND.

Just thoughts

TT

[Jeremy Ruston]

I was just reviewing the concept of exit strategy. I am running a test on a group I own. Google permits you to export most information they hold for you and this seems to include ALL mail in a google group. It would most likely be "big data" but it can be done it seems. Then with this available it may be possible to algorithmically or crowd source curation of the data for the backbone of a new solution. The key issue is separating content inside emails, such as with reply and forwarding where a whole or part of the conversation accrues in the text of each email but it is not insurmountable. It may also be possible to get something out of the mail archive. 

I am not pretending this is easy, and a concerted effort and project would need to be mounted.

The way I have approached this is to use my email client to copy all the TiddlyWiki Google Groups messages to a new “mbox” file, and then use a little tool I wrote a couple of years ago to convert the “mbox” file into tiddlers (most email clients apart from Outlook store messages in mbox files).

https://github.com/Jermolene/mbox-to-tiddlers

A wiki I made in July 2019 with all the messages thus far to the main TiddlyWiki group is 17.7MB, and contains just under 7,000 tiddlers.

Best wishes

Jeremy.

[TW Tones]

Jeremy,

Great work. So the data extraction is possible. My test of export google groups did also generate an MBOX file.

I will follow your steps eventually to see what the tiddlywiki results looks like. Once in tiddler form, that is when my skills can click in to see how we can engineer a useful resource, to then "mine the history" for useful information.

However If you have the opportunity to do a fresh export from the GG, convert to tiddlywiki and share (Privately fine), perhaps via a cloud share, I can look into this further, perhaps at least a historical wiki if we abandon GG. I imagine we may be able to strip previous replies content lower down in the email to reduce the size substantially.

I am interested in how searchable the result will be, how we can curate and extract meaningful information, if re-export to other tools becomes possible etc...

As usual I expect ultimately we will need a hosted wiki, possibly on node/bob so we can use lazy loading and multi-user/access models unless other solutions are on the horizon?

Regards

Tones

[TiddlyTweeter]

Ciao Jeremy

Interesting post!

There is NO doubt YOU can do 102 tech things before breakfast!

MY concern is the Google Group default interface MR/S NORMAL faces everyday WITHOUT having a trained dynamic gnome clutch its spawn.

HOW do we help a normal user FIND what they need here WITHOUT saving posts continually, like you, in a parallel system?

Just a comment

TT

[Jeremy Ruston]

Hi TT

I have answered this before. There are only a few solutions to finding things in a group:

* to have human curators indexing the information that flows through the group

* to use the group’s built-in search engine

* to use Google (or another general search engine)

Your comments suggest that the second and third solutions aren’t working for you, and so that only leaves the first option.

MY concern is the Google Group default interface MR/S NORMAL faces everyday WITHOUT having a trained dynamic gnome clutch its spawn.

HOW do we help a normal user FIND what they need here WITHOUT saving posts continually, like you, in a parallel system?

You must surely realise that I wasn’t suggesting that “Mr and Mrs Normal” should do what I did in order to find posts? Why phrase things in that way? It seems pointlessly confrontational.

Best wishes

Jeremy.

[TiddlyTweeter]

EEK. I have to think about that!

VERY surprised/upset you wrote that!

Confrontational? I have NO intent that way whatsoever.

Merely, in  the context of the OP, we do need SOLUTIONS in place,

Not promissory notes.

I'm NOT sure it can be addressed in GG directly.

But there IS an issue in that you CANNOT currently, easily, find what you need.

That question remains real.

Best wishes

TT

[Jeremy Ruston]

> EEK. I have to think about that!
>
> VERY surprised/upset you wrote that!
>
> Confrontational? I have NO intent that way whatsoever.

My post was in response to Tone's query about exporting from the Google Group. Your reply was phrased as if I had proposed the mbox route as a response to your original post, as a way for Mr/s Normal to find posts in the group, and that you disagreed with me.

> Merely, in the context of the OP, we do need SOLUTIONS in place,
> Not promissory notes.
>
> I'm NOT sure it can be addressed in GG directly.
> But there IS an issue in that you CANNOT currently, easily, find what you need.
>
> That question remains real

And I’ve now given you my considered answer a couple of times: if Google isn’t sufficient for finding stuff, the only remaining answer is manual indexing/curation.

Look around you at what other communities do. Sadly, there are no magic, secret tools out there.

Best wishes

Jeremy.

[Doug Holton]

Just FYI, you can import all previous posts from this google group into a discourse site, and it even preserves the authors with staged user accounts:

https://meta.discourse.org/t/importing-mailing-lists-mbox-listserv-google-groups-emails/79773

One new deal breaker for me with google groups is that now I can't reply from the browser on my phone. This is some new change that happened in recent months I guess. Yes, I can subscribe to emails and reply that way, but my gmail is already clogged enough as it is and this list is very high traffic.  For forums like this I prefer to read and interact with it on the web, or else use discord/slack.

But for those who do prefer to interact mainly via email, reply-by-email is enabled by default in discourse hosting.

I think the default behavior is that discourse will occasionally email you about topics you've missed since your last visit to the site, which I like (but you can turn that off, too).  There is a discourse app, too, where I can see and interact with all the discourse sites I'm a member of.

For finding things, in addition to the regular search which seems better than on google groups, there is a 'docs' feature, or of course that's where one could link to an official tiddlywiki-based knowledge base that is manually curated:

https://www.discourse.org/plugins/docs.html

Discourse's managed hosting service offers an 85% discount for educational/non-profits, so perhaps it would only cost $15/month, or else $45/month if you want more features like docs and to have them to migrate the google group for you.  I'd be happy to donate to help cover those costs, as I'm sure would many others here.

https://www.discourse.org/pricing

Another transition strategy with less risk/friction would be to do like you did with the tiddlywiki dev list.  Keep and preserve the google group, but open up a new discourse site.  If or when the discourse site takes off, start directing people there and gradually fade out the google group, optionally importing historical posts at some point in the future.

[Mark S.]

Someone could use Jeremy's approach and then periodically post the result to tiddlyhost (or wherever).

Then anyone who wanted to "curate" could do so simply by making a reference to a prior thread or prior project. No barrier to contributing. Eventually everything that is worth mentioning will become searchable.

[Finn Lancaster]

Going back to some different ideas of using TW as the new “forum,” I also think this would be the best idea. 

Both TW’s “hackability” and the large dev user-base would allow customization further than any other site such as discourse can offer, since we could build a solution and tailor it to our every need. 

Someone (too lazy to find the name, lol) had mentioned using a kind or “crowdsourcing” solution to manually add everything from the GG to TW.

Expanding upon this even further, I have thought of a simple JS script I could write to export all the GG data by URL to a JSON format. From there, the script could easily tweak the data to allow it to be imported into TW. 

For any of you interested, just let me know, and I can start a shared GitHub repo with a bare-bones implementation of this code I will write, and allow any of you more tech-savvy readers to use it and apply it. 

( FYI, the script would have to export maybe 100 GG at once, instead of running through each of the tens of thousands of q and a on here. Each run of the program could then append the new results to the existing file.)

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[Mat]

Mark S. wrote:

Someone could use Jeremy's approach and then periodically post the result to tiddlyhost (or wherever).

Then anyone who wanted to "curate" could do so simply by making a reference to a prior thread or prior project. No barrier to contributing. Eventually everything that is worth mentioning will become searchable.

(my highlighting) 

Hey - that's a really cool idea: One makes a reference here in GG, just like we do already sometimes, and that would automatically add "cred" to a tiddler, once it is imported because the reference is a link. And it could be a link to another GG post either sitting here in GG or it could be a link to to another tiddler in the accumulating wiki! Either way, it'd make the targeted post have a higher ref count. 

And it wouldn't even have to be limited to GG posts! If there's some importing or scraping from other sites (github, reddit...) those could also be included. 

Come on! This is a super cool idea! But could a TW handle that much data?

<:-)

[Mat]

flanc...@gmail.com wrote:

For any of you interested, just let me know, and I can start a shared GitHub repo with a bare-bones implementation of this code I will write, and allow any of you more tech-savvy readers to use it and apply it. 

A proof of concept would definitely be interesting!

<:-) 

[TW Tones]

Folks,

Just as Jeremys reply on MBOX, I think my reply has not being read as intended. Personally I was keen to explore the data that can be obtained from the current GG group, it is not so much to create a solution as to research a solution. If we could extract it elegantly it could be in a process of 

• replacing GG, 
• simply extracting (curating) content to post elsewhere
• Adding a search layer
• Providing a community overlay
• and others

Of course I could list  a few tricks off the top of my head but there are a lot of opportunities

• Curation can simplify and reduce the content to a manageable level
• You could always link back to the original thread
• You may be able to display the live and current thread along side or inside a curated list.
• Admin must be minimised or you will not get adoption (little or no moderation)
• At some point we are likely to abandon GG

Interesting that discourse and others may ingest the existing group.

Tones

[Florian Felix]

Hey all, 

this has been annoying for me, too. I thought, discourse isn‘t that old (or other open source hostable solutions), so probably it’s easier to stay here. But GG is crap. 

I think discourse is a good Solution that can be implemented first on the side, if some „main“ people are willing to commit to do so. I mean mostly Jeremy and people who are actively developing and discussing stuff, the core community. Discourse  can imo be a good discussion forum for people who are already a bit committed to a project and want to discuss it more deeply. The better searchability and more asynchronous, forum–not–feed approach quite naturally allows for deeper accumulation of knowledge which will be accessible for newbies as well. I also often am afraid that if a question of mine won’t be answered fastly, it will just drown in the endless feed...

so i think a Good first step is moving discussions regarding more specific projects to discourse which are a bit more technical and not so much of concern for newer people. For example the developers group, discussion about next releases, etc. discourse can be helpful bridge between purely technical GitHub and social media, it has some functions that also enhance that afaik. If people register that they can get their deeper questions answered more thoroughly on discourse, because it has a better interface and the more expert people usually hang out there, they will move there, but not out of idealism.

most discourse forums demand a login, which can be a bit offputting for complete newbies. So outlets on „mainstream“ Networks should be maintained – Reddit, the matrix channel (which is a bit undervalued :( ) , maybe this here... 

discord channels are also quite popular – in order to provide easy accessibility for people that are less experienced.

Also I would believe someone in the tiddlycommunity could set up an instance? There are several projects involving servers, right?There also already is a tiddlywiki subgroup on fission, but I don’t think that’s for general purposes (?)

TiddlyTweeter schrieb am Sonntag, 30. Mai 2021 um 08:34:37 UTC+2:

This Google Group is OUR main end-user forum. 

There are problems with Google Groups. More recently it was "dumbed-down" by Google. A lot of tools just disappeared. That just made it worse for OUR needs.

And, long term, it has proved to also have NO DECENT MEMORY. 

Search here is the Total Pits.

WHAT happens as a result of that?

A VERY common pattern that happens daily here is RE-CREATION OF THE WHEEL. 

GG lacks any easy, structured, way to interrogate the VAST knowledge-base that this GG actually IS. 

SO, again and again, you see very similar queries come up and be patiently RE-answered.

I think a much BETTER way would be to leverage off the knowledge accumulated here and direct users first to already EXTANT solutions.

I'm not sure it is possible. 

But repetition of the variants on the same question is a waste, I think?

Just comments

TT

[Soren Bjornstad]

Jeremy's concerns seem to focus around search, but I actually haven't found Google Groups search to be that bad (you have to pick "sort by relevance" instead of "sort by date" after every search or it is just about useless, though – if you think it's bad and you haven't tried that, do). However, the editing experience, while it used to be tolerable, has become horrendous since the latest UI “upgrade”. I regularly have the screen get corrupted or lose data (wtf, how did this become acceptable), and doing code formatting is a huge pain now.

In terms of migration difficulty...I've been part of the Anki open-source community on and off for many years, and it has moved from Google Groups to TenderApp (actually a tech support system, but it worked OK for discussions too, and had an awesome API back when that was rare) to Discourse, and there don't seem to have been significant problems getting the community to come along with. Unless we have a substantial contingent of core members who refuse to switch platforms, I'm not convinced this is going to be a huge problem. For people who drop in and out, having to learn one new platform over another one doesn't seem like much of a change unless the new platform is significantly harder to use. How many people are actually already familiar with Google Groups nowadays?

I'm not a huge fan of Discourse either, though, FWIW, and a pure TW solution would be harder to implement and probably harder for new users to use. So not sure I have much of an opinion on whether we should move. If we decided to, I'd be willing to chip in for hosting costs.

[Charlie Veniot]

Although I preferred the previous incarnation of Google Groups, I'm liking the simplicity of this incarnation.  I like anything that has a feel of minimalism, even if it has some warts.

For complex searching of the group, I'm quite happy going to advanced Google Search, for example:  https://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:groups.google.com/g/tiddlywiki+filter+macro&hl=en&as_qdr=all

And every time a question of any kind happens again, I find it puts the question in a new light, so repetition is good because of the potential for updated insights/features.

The questions are just as valuable as (maybe more so than)  the answers.

To me, Google Groups combined with Advanced Google Search (when needed), strikes a pretty good balance.

[TW Tones]

This is where a TiddlyWiki solution offers a lot more. 

Having a career in Knowledge and information management, support and troubleshooting - one thing I picked us is the questions are as important as the answers. The smart way is to capture the questions asked, those without answers become needed new knowledge, the quicker a question is answered the more the way to ask the question is identified as profitable so help the interrogator learn how to ask questions based on successful questions before. It is auto-curation. 

GG is a mailing list, it can be used to harvest knowledge, but it not only has little to help curate the knowledge it sometimes actively works against it, it is not possible to develop even tentative "source of a given truth" or the unabridged info.

My use of google groups could be a harvesting/curation process but I cant take responsibility for it because I need a living. I thought I would build a blog that provides an index into the information posted in GG going forward, news and observations, references and commentary, but few were interested, perhaps they did not have the same vision I have for a blog.

As Charlie shared IT'S ALL WRONG, especially documents, says Ted in 2011 tells me we need innovation to escape the bounds of a email list. Interesting something google should do but does not belying their lack of innovation (at least that they share publicly) 

Tones

[Jeremy Ruston]

Hi Soren

Excellent points, thank you. 

Jeremy's concerns seem to focus around search, but I actually haven't found Google Groups search to be that bad (you have to pick "sort by relevance" instead of "sort by date" after every search or it is just about useless, though – if you think it's bad and you haven't tried that, do).

Search isn't actually a particular concern of mine; earlier in the thread I was trying to tease out TiddlyTweeters concerns about finding things. My point is that moving to new forum software is not going to be a panacea for TiddlyTweeter's concerns, which I think can only be addressed by human curation.

However, the editing experience, while it used to be tolerable, has become horrendous since the latest UI “upgrade”. I regularly have the screen get corrupted or lose data (wtf, how did this become acceptable), and doing code formatting is a huge pain now.

I generally compose via email but my understanding is that it is no longer straightforward to make monospaced blocks, which does indeed seem pretty poor.

In terms of migration difficulty...I've been part of the Anki open-source community on and off for many years, and it has moved from Google Groups to TenderApp (actually a tech support system, but it worked OK for discussions too, and had an awesome API back when that was rare) to Discourse, and there don't seem to have been significant problems getting the community to come along with. Unless we have a substantial contingent of core members who refuse to switch platforms, I'm not convinced this is going to be a huge problem. For people who drop in and out, having to learn one new platform over another one doesn't seem like much of a change unless the new platform is significantly harder to use. How many people are actually already familiar with Google Groups nowadays?

I am actually not too concerned about moving the community over. When the time comes, we'll close the GG to new posts.

I'm not a huge fan of Discourse either, though, FWIW, and a pure TW solution would be harder to implement and probably harder for new users to use. So not sure I have much of an opinion on whether we should move. If we decided to, I'd be willing to chip in for hosting costs.

I'm using Discourse a fair amount on other projects. It seems to be a nice, well polished piece of engineering, but is conceptually somewhat old fashioned. I think it would constitute an improvement, but perhaps not by as much as we might hope.

Best wishes

Jeremy

On Thursday, June 3, 2021 at 7:07:18 PM UTC-5 flohit...@googlemail.com wrote:

Hey all, 

this has been annoying for me, too. I thought, discourse isn‘t that old (or other open source hostable solutions), so probably it’s easier to stay here. But GG is crap. 

I think discourse is a good Solution that can be implemented first on the side, if some „main“ people are willing to commit to do so. I mean mostly Jeremy and people who are actively developing and discussing stuff, the core community. Discourse  can imo be a good discussion forum for people who are already a bit committed to a project and want to discuss it more deeply. The better searchability and more asynchronous, forum–not–feed approach quite naturally allows for deeper accumulation of knowledge which will be accessible for newbies as well. I also often am afraid that if a question of mine won’t be answered fastly, it will just drown in the endless feed...

so i think a Good first step is moving discussions regarding more specific projects to discourse which are a bit more technical and not so much of concern for newer people. For example the developers group, discussion about next releases, etc. discourse can be helpful bridge between purely technical GitHub and social media, it has some functions that also enhance that afaik. If people register that they can get their deeper questions answered more thoroughly on discourse, because it has a better interface and the more expert people usually hang out there, they will move there, but not out of idealism.

most discourse forums demand a login, which can be a bit offputting for complete newbies. So outlets on „mainstream“ Networks should be maintained – Reddit, the matrix channel (which is a bit undervalued :( ) , maybe this here... 

discord channels are also quite popular – in order to provide easy accessibility for people that are less experienced.

Also I would believe someone in the tiddlycommunity could set up an instance? There are several projects involving servers, right?There also already is a tiddlywiki subgroup on fission, but I don’t think that’s for general purposes (?)

TiddlyTweeter schrieb am Sonntag, 30. Mai 2021 um 08:34:37 UTC+2:

This Google Group is OUR main end-user forum. 

There are problems with Google Groups. More recently it was "dumbed-down" by Google. A lot of tools just disappeared. That just made it worse for OUR needs.

And, long term, it has proved to also have NO DECENT MEMORY. 

Search here is the Total Pits.

WHAT happens as a result of that?

A VERY common pattern that happens daily here is RE-CREATION OF THE WHEEL. 

GG lacks any easy, structured, way to interrogate the VAST knowledge-base that this GG actually IS. 

SO, again and again, you see very similar queries come up and be patiently RE-answered.

I think a much BETTER way would be to leverage off the knowledge accumulated here and direct users first to already EXTANT solutions.

I'm not sure it is possible. 

But repetition of the variants on the same question is a waste, I think?

Just comments

TT

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[Saq Imtiaz]

However, the editing experience, while it used to be tolerable, has become horrendous since the latest UI “upgrade”. I regularly have the screen get corrupted or lose data (wtf, how did this become acceptable), and doing code formatting is a huge pain now.

I generally compose via email but my understanding is that it is no longer straightforward to make monospaced blocks, which does indeed seem pretty poor.

 

Jeremy just so you are aware, the issues with posting via the web interface go beyond just difficulty in making monospaced blocks. Like Soren, I often experience that the UI glitches out and I lose what I have written. Combined with the difficulties in replying from mobile, I find myself rarely having enough motivation to participate in the group now. 

I've tried to attach a screenshot of what writing this post was like... 

[Stobot]

Oof, I have had minor annoyances with Google Groups posting, but sounds like nothing near what you guys (Soren / Saq) have been having. That does make things more urgent in my opinion. 

Plugins

As we contemplate migrating the community to another platform, aside from making it nicer / more stable to post, and making it easier to find posts, I'd personally be most interested in the potential for using the same platform for "plugins". I bring this up, because this could/would compete with the current links.tiddlywiki.com effort. Don't get me wrong, I love the concept, but I think it could be improved on, and I think those improvements would be easy/built-in on another forum platform. Most notably to make it easy for *all* users to upvote to get some ranking going. I think this is helpful for the new-user experience. When I start with other software that has user-plugin capabilities (image editing software paint.net - forums.getpaint.net for instance) I'll usually go to the plugins and expect to see the most common popular ones up top and look at those first. The thing about *user-generated* plugins is that you don't know if those plugins work now, or if they'll continue to work. But, as a shortcut if you know they're very widely used, and greatly liked you can feel a little more confident that someone is either maintaining it, or would take it over if it became abandoned. I realize that there is a way for people to contribute (reading the "How To Contribute" page now), but given that it requires doing a "Github pull request" which even *I* don't understand, let's just agree it could be a bit easier for new users without developer backgrounds. 

Maintenance

On a related note, there's discussion here about some level of maintenance of the information - Jeremy has brought it up a couple of times in this thread. Obviously one way to get that is to have a good ranking / voting system like I mention above. I'm also curious if anyone here has any knowledge of "free internships"? At my company we have an intern program that's obviously not free, but I feel like I've heard of some voluntary open-source software companies having / working with people who are willing to work on a free internship - basically just for resume building. Maybe that's something that somebody here knows could be an option?

[TiddlyTweeter]

Stobot wrote:

Oof, I have had minor annoyances with Google Groups posting, but sounds like nothing near what you guys (Soren / Saq) have been having.

Never forget ME. I wrote the OP  :-) 

That is RHYMING SLANG too :-)

Issues are very much about HOW to OPTIMIZE search in the GG.

Jeremy & Soren found it more trivial than me.

It is an ongoing saga.

Best wishes

TT

[TiddlyTweeter]

 saq.i...@gmail.com wrote:

Jeremy just so you are aware, the issues with posting via the web interface go beyond just difficulty in making monospaced blocks. 

IF you ONLY use this GG though EMAIL then you WON'T know what got LOST recently ... (and other functions too ...)

• CODE sections 
• Ability to PRIVATELY REPLY to posters
• Ability to RE-EDIT for spelling errors (a serious disaster for bad sMellers, of which there are many, including me)

Just observations

TT

 

[TW Tones]

ha Ha "bad sMellers," Totally agree, I am one of them, not to mention typos

Seriously being able to edit the top post was a great way of summarising the results that come out in the thread. A Simple standard to update the top post when a question is answered, and the answer etc... would add great value.

On discourse, Its A chat not likely to have longer more serious content, thus fragmented and harder to read. Has its place but in my mode not as a replacement to Git hub.

I still hole a light for Yammer, but I do not want to waste my time explaining why if few people even try it. As a knowledge curator it would be ideal. Many little groups and blogs can be created with the owners extracting links and even build collaborative documents. Its only gap was code blocks.

Tones

\

[Charlie Veniot]

I'm sorry, and squirming such that I can't help myself:  who is Yammer, and do his eyes light up when you hole the light ?

Yeah, I'm a bad sMeller too.  And a gudder-heeyoumured tinker too.

This is what happens when folk can't edit their posts.  To me, potential for hilarity which just has me loving this version of Google Groups a little bit more ...

[Soren Bjornstad]

Tones, I think you are confusing Discord and Discourse as happened earlier up the thread. They are totally unrelated and Discourse is for long-form writing and discussions, not chat.

[TW Tones]

Soren,

My mistake.

Tones