Creation of an official Discord server for the Node.js project #872
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Previous discussion: #53 |
Cool. Also the state of Discord and its features today vs 2018 has been very different. |
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I'm +1 on the incorperation of a Discord server, as like you mentioned, it gives the community a quicker way to connect, as not everyone will want to make new Slack account / download an IRC client Not to rush things, but if we were to do this, we should probably reach out to Discord's legal team and get |
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FWIW I'd be unlikely to move over to Discord -- it would be an additional communication platform and I wouldn't create a new account there (or anywhere else) just for Node.js. |
No one is forcing you there 🙏; You don't need to be there if you don't want to, and I agree yet another platform, but that would be for the community 👀 We definitely don't need all collaborators to be there. And to be honest this could be a pilot program to see how it succeeds. |
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The third "goal" mentions potentially shutting down Slack, or is that specifically the non-OpenJS Foundation one? |
It was an idea to slowly phase out the "Node Slackers" slack server that Jordan maintains by himself, but he said that he is not interested in shutting in down so that's fine 🤷 But we would be able to let the OppenJS Foundation Slack at least for Node.js to be more for collaborators and contributors and less for asking support/help. Which it is also not used much for that, but still some people ask support there. |
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This doesn't sound like an improvement to me. We already have the official Slack workspace, and GitHub of course. Adding another official channel means yet another place to check. |
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Growing a community on Discord is useful. The official OpenJS slack is for our communication, while Discord would be for end users. I think it would become quite popular, too. It's also a great marketing channel, and what I would set up today instead of the unofficial Node.js slack. The fundamental question is who will moderate this and provide Node.js knowledge to the users. |
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I agree that growing a community is useful. There are probably already existing communities, though, so we would kind of be in competition with them. |
Each one has different roles. It's agreeable that we see users asking/seeking help on the help repository and other platforms, including OpenJS Slack. The idea is that people will naturally switch over to Discord over time. It's ridiculous how popular Discord is nowadays for hosting tech communities. I still believe many users would use our help repository, but I can see many of them going over Discord. |
I don't mind if we ask for volunteers to set it up (I wouldn't mind at all). Still, ultimately, I believe the Moderation team would be responsible for moderating it + some volunteers. We can draft something more concrete. There's some energy lift in setting it up. |
For better or for worse, I haven't found any big community. That said, smaller-ish multi-purpose communities might focus on Node or more considerable general-purpose programming Discord servers with channels for Node.js. (The only community that comes to mind is Nodeiflux. Which has 14K members) The main difference between the official one and the other is that the former is an official community consisting of collaborators, ambassadors, streams, announcements, etc. People tend to go to official communities because they are official. Since there's no official JavaScript Discord server, I can see people with JavaScript interests going over our Discord. After all, it is also the most popular language (JavaScript) among teenagers, young adults, and even folks who code Discord Bots 🤷 |
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There are also benefits in being an official community, as Discord gives some perks to Community servers. |
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I am all in for that! |
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As an early adopter of Discord, I appreciate its use for small communities. However, I'm wary of the future of the platform, which is funded by venture capitalists. We're starting to see more and more attempts at return on investment at the expense of the user experience. Even if it's extremely popular today, I wonder about its long-term future. As mentioned by @targos, there is already a well-structured Node.js Discord server, perhaps it would be interesting to discuss with them how to define it as an official Discord in order to avoid creating a new community, dividing instead of bringing together. To prepare for the creation or investment of a large community, I think it's very important to think seriously about moderation (who's in charge, the time that can be allocated to it, the rules). You also need to define the aims and intentions of such a community, whether it's to :
How to ensure that the community is attractive and engaged, so that what happens there can be followed without being drowned out. |
That is also a valid alternative :) but we need to claim ownership of that server. I'm all fine with keeping the current people managing to remain there, but there would need to be changes 😅 (Possibly from channel structure, branding, roles, and all sort of other things; But I doubt that coordinating/working together with the existing Nodeiflux community would be impossible) |
We have experience managing communities. (Not to mention we do have members of the Node.js community with real community management experience, myself included) We understand that this is something complex and that requires care/attention, so we wouldn't do this on a whim.
We don't have Staff. But we would have volunteers to manage it.
This is all written on my opening post 👀 and I agree with all these items. |
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I may have forgotten this part while writing my post, sorry 😅. By ‘Staff’, I didn't mean employees but rather something like active, permanent members who take care of managing the Node.js project. |
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Heyo 👋 I've had a nice chat with @vcarl which is the admin of the Nodeiflux Discord Server, and we had some really cool collaboration happening there ✨ I'd say they are inclined into collaborating with us to transform their server into Node's official Discord Server, but the caveat is they definitely need to be part of the process (which I 100% agree, otherwise it'd sound as a hostile takeover) I believe there's lot we can gain and experiences that can be shared on how we can shape such a community into a successful place for Node's community :) Since this requires TSC input, I want a vote for:
Nothing must get released/published without the explicit approval of the TSC and explicit 👍 of the Foundation regarding our being 👍 in legal, branding, and marketing matters. Please react with 👍 or 👎 (and if possible, why if a 👎 so we can address your concerns) regarding whether you're in favor or against the proposal above. cc @nodejs/tsc (I'm also adding to the TSC agenda for visibility and if discussions need to be done) |
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@ovflowd I like your idea of endorsing/helping existing communities and helping them grow. I'm wondering if we can keep the current "management" and let them moderate and be involved in a less direct capacity e.g.:
We can call it "officially endorsed but not official" and link to it in the website or something similar.
My primary concern with an official Node.js discord server is (as usual) this . The OpenJS slack server is currently in a pretty bad state IMO and for me to be comfortable with Discord I would need (several) people to be willing to moderate it consistently.
The moderation team is ~4-5 active people, even if we get to 10 active people I'm not sure most of them would be interested or have capacity in moderating another space but I'm not sure since discussions about slack and other spaces were a long while ago. That said, if the moderation team agrees I think it would be an effective body in enforcing the CoC. |
That's definitely what I was going after. But we should also allow the Node Moderation team to have elevated privileges there so that we can enforce moderation in case we need to.
I love this!
I believe Nodeiflux had a great track of moderating their community well. I believe a pilot can be done. I also believe we can have volunteers to moderate there, which will have moderating powers there and only there.
I hear you, and I could help being that bridge. I'm pretty sure @vcarl would do their best to enforce our CoC policy there if they agree with adopting our CoC policy, which is the Contributor Covenant 2.0. As an official server, it also means it lies under the Foundation, but I believe we can delegate moderation to their team. We do not moderate the OpenJS Slack, although it is an official Node.js space. The biggest +1 of having it as an official server is Discord itself can promote and showcase the official community server, and by being verified, there are extra perks. + I'm pretty sure more people will feel compelled to join it as an official. |
Not that I'm aware (it being an official space) |
🤔 |
Where's this implication coming from? Is the assumption that users who currently use IRC would definitely want to migrate to Discord? Are we maintaining IRC right now because we don't have a Discord community?
FWIW, monitoring the various GitHub repositories and the OpenJS Slack is already way more than I, and perhaps most collaborators, can handle. If the goal is to shift some traffic from OpenJS Slack to Discord, that's fine by me, but if it doesn't fully replace an existing channel, I wouldn't expect any collaborator to engage with and/or monitor yet another channel.
If the main aspect of having an "official" (or "officially endorsed but not official") server is just labeling it as such while not requiring us collaborators to ever engage there, I don't see a problem with this as long as those acting upon this initiative don't misrepresent what the Discord server is and, most importantly, moderate interactions there appropriately. As @benjamingr hinted, we certainly can't expect the existing moderation team to take on another space. |
We don't maintain anything, we don't have an official IRC server. It's not an implication, just a suggestion based on the assumption that there are fewer users on IRC.
My assumption is that you shouldn't monitor Discord. It's a place to hang out. And I'd say we would redirect community users to Discord instead of Slack.
I'm 100% fine with that. |
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I believe we have an initial agreement here. Can we get this discussed by the TSC? Also cc @mhdawson since I wanted to involve the ambassador initiative in this |
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@ovflowd -> since I wanted to involve the ambassador initiative in this. Do you want to get together or did you have specific things you wanted to add to the program description in https://github.com/nodejs/node/blob/main/doc/contributing/advocacy-ambasador-program.md ? |
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@ovflowd do you want to come to the TSC meeting to present/discuss the initial agreement? Reading through the thread I can guess what that is but and not 100% sure I would get it right. |
I think the only relevant pieces are that Ambassadors would have a role on the Discord, be there at their criteria/convenience and be able to host streams + promote their materials if wanted. Definitely something we can fine tune :) (Im just throwing some random ideas) |
Sure, Id be more than happy to jump at the next TSC meeting to chatter about this. |
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@ovflowd sounds good. |
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@ovflowd We briefly discussed during the TSC meeting.
Our understanding is that marking the existing server as "official" would primarily help the existing Discord server in the ways you described and perhaps make it easier for people to find a Node.js-related Discord community. Secondarily, it would allow us to share announcements in some official capacity (as opposed to engaging with the Discord community like before). This sounds like it's good for the community overall, and as long as this doesn't require any active involvement of Node.js personnel, there were no major concerns. We had one small (and hopefully, purely hypothetical) concern. Is this marking it as official something that can be undone, if necessary? While I am sure this won't happen, if the Discord server does not end up living up to our community standards, would we be able to sever ties without forcing the server to shut down entirely? |
Yes, we can always reach out to Discord support and revoke the verification (server verification, which marks it as official) |
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Great! I'm glad this is coming together! I look forward to the beginning of this server! |
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Alrighty, @nodejs/tsc let me know if we can start pushing this forward :) |
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@ovflowd you need to say something like "if there are no remaining concerns, I'll go ahead and do such and such on such or such day" if you want this to move forward. |
Oh yeah, let me rephrase: If there are no remaining concerns, I'll proceed with my plan from here: #872 (comment) More specifically:
There's nothing set in stone yet; hence, I will report back on updates and if other things are needed from the TSC side, and how things progress. |
I don’t think the concerns from #872 (comment) have been addressed yet? Namely, what the plan is for moderation of the new space and whether @nodejs/moderation has the capacity to take this on. |
As a new member of the moderation team, I doubt I'll have dedicated time to monitor a Discord. |
We did address those concerns, yes. Pretty much the plan is (as stated in previous comments):
(Some of the items above I just came up with as ideas) |
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Hi everyone, I have a few clarifying questions:
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I believe Node.js Collaborators could be given a "Node.js Collaborator" role and triagers a "Node.js Triager" role. This was already something I wanted to do.
I'm not sure about that. Although I believe we could disable GitHub Discussions as they are rarely monitored/viewed and moderated anyways. Discord has a better platform for making Discussion/Help threads. cc @nodejs/tsc |
An upside of using GitHub is that org members can ping collaborators or teams when it seems appropriate, and we can also get folks from libuv and V8 involved rather easily. Some of the most knowledgeable contributors almost exclusively interact through GitHub, so directing users away from GitHub might be directing users away from those. |
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FWIW I was specifically referring to GitHub Discussions |
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My response also applies to GitHub Discussions :) |
But I assume that Discussions was used for general chat. I assume help requests can still be directed to node/help and feature requests/bugs to node/node So I assume, it would still make sense to disable Discussions, maybe? IDK 🤷 I'm fine either ways, but I'm fond of reducing the number of parallel platforms we have for people to write something. And if GitHub Discussions are mostly used for general discussions, Discord is an ideal place... I know there's a tradeoff of "but it's all on GitHub, no extra account needed", and I'd say yeah. I think in the end it boils down to, "do we really want to have GitHub Discussions?" has anything important happened there for the last X period of time? |
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From the discussion so far, my understanding was that the Discord effort was around providing support for those that already use Discord as their communication channel. I don't think we should anything that would require Node.js collaborators to join Discord in order to be involved in day-to-day work of the project. I guess I'm just agreeing with what @tniessen said in part. For any discussion where we want project collaborators to be involved, we should not push those discussions to Discord. |
That is a correct assessment. My point was unrelated (somewhat) and more an open question: Do we need GitHub discussions? Are we using them? Do they serve for some specific purpose? And no, we won't require collaborators to join Discord although they are more than welcome and invited to join :) |
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FYI, we've started drafting a temporary "Beta" server to use as a template and then apply to the existing Discord server. I'll follow-up with more updates once I have. |
Discord is a massive hub for collaboration, communication, and projects to reach their audiences.
It's becoming trendy for massive open-source projects and tech companies to have Discord Servers (ie, Cloudflare, Sentry, GitHub Education, etc.)
The upcoming Ambassador Program gives us even more reason for allowing users to interact with Node.js ambassadors and take a closer part of the community.
The goals of such a Discord server are simple:
Running a Discord server could be better for our community and our ability to reach the outer layers of our community.
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