Hyperledger's Transition to Discord Proposal

Background

Hyperledger is considering switching chat services. Hyperledger had previously considered moving to Element/Matrix, but that migration was canceled due to its inability to manage Hyperledger's volume. A Task Force was formed to research current chat channel usage in the community and explore options. This proposal recommends Hyperledger move from RocketChat to Discord. 

Rationale

Why Move At All?

RocketChat has provided significant challenges for many community members with onboarding and user experience. Some of the challenges include log in issues, requiring a LFID to join, lack of usage of many channels. It is also a more costly platform than alternative platforms. Currently, there are many unused channels as well. In the interest of providing Hyperledger community with an easy communication mechanism. The goal for Hyperledger's chat channel is to allow the community members to collaborate easily and easily onboard new community members into the chat channel.

Why Discord?

There are a few high-level reasons for selecting Discord as a recommended chat platform for Hyperledger

1. Easy to use platform: The feedback generally from users has been that onboarding and using Discord platform is an easier user experience. An LFID login is not required to joining Hyperledger's Discord platform.
2. Some familiarity already across the community: Many Hyperledger community members are already familiar with it and using it for different work: We are hoping to make it easier for Hyperledger community members to work 
3. Cheaper than RocketChat: The costs are significantly lower than RocketChat to use Discord.

Feature Comparison between RocketChat and Discord can be found here. 

Cost Details

Discord is less expensive than RocketChat. Expected costs are:

Rocket.Chat: $150/mo, $1800/year

Discord: $100/year for maximum server boost

Proposed Migration Plan

1. Send communications to Hyperledger community (publish blog post, notification in newsletters, and send notes in RocketChat channels). Give communication switch 1 month transition timeline. There should be communications on a weekly basis.

2. At the end of 1 month transition timeline, RocketChat will be archived and all communications will be directed to Hyperledger's Discord instance.

Communications should include:

1. Directions how to onboard into Discord and link to training for using Discord

2. Clear timeline expectations on RocketChat Archival

3. Mailing list to reach out to with questions/issues

4. Benefits for switching to Discord

Updating Links

The following are known places that will need to be updated to reflect the change to the Discord links:

1. Hyperledger Website
2. Hyperledger Landscape
3. Hyperledger Wiki

Channel Cleanup

As part of the migration, we will also be taking the opportunity to clean up the channels.

Suggested Channel Organization and Naming

Categories

Discord provides the ability to group chat channels in categories. As such, we recommend the following categories:

• A single category per project
• TSC - These are channels related to the TSC
• Special Interest Groups - These are channels related to special interest groups
• Working Groups - These are channels related to working groups
• Labs - These are channels related to Hyperledger Labs
• Community - These are channels related to a specific community (e.g., community-india, community-meetup)

There are expected channels listed below for the respective groups. In addition to these channels, community members can add additional channels if they need.

Channels

Within the project category, we recommend a consistent set of chat channels. 

• project - A text channel used by any one interested in the project to discuss topics and questions related to how to use the project.
• project-contributors - A text channel used by the contributors to the project to discuss topics related to the development of the project.
• project-announcements - An announcements channel used to make announcements about the project

Within the TSC category, we recommend the following channels:

• TSC - A text channel for discussions with the TSC.
• TSC-announcements - An announcement channel for announcing decisions made by the TSC.
• tfname-tf - A separate text channel for each task force created by the TSC.

Within the Special Interest Groups category, we recommend the following channels:

• signame-sig - A separate text channel for each SIG.
• signame-sig-subgroupname - Optionally, a separate text channel for each subgroup within a SIG.

Within the Working Groups category, we recommend the following channels:

• wgname-wg - A separate text channel for each WG.

Within the Labs category, we recommend a single text channel named labs that would be used by anyone interested in Hyperledger Labs. In addition, a text channel will be created for any lab requesting a channel. The name of the channel should match the lab name. 

Within the Community category, separate text channels can be created for each specific community. The name of the channel should be prefixed with community- (e.g., community-india, community-meetup)

Chat Channel Expectations

The expectation is moving to Discord that this is the sole home for Hyperledger community's activities. We expect all Hyperledger community members and groups, including Special Interest Groups, Working Groups, Projects, etc. to operate their Hyperledger business on Hyperledger's Discord instance. We will be providing training and instructions to all teams to move their business to this chat channel forum. We understand there are some region-based challenges with using specific tools. We will accommodate those community members as needed.

The Task Force recommends that the Technical Steering Committee monitors the usage of the official chat channels and encourages adoption for those who weren't using RocketChat and haven't started using Discord. We would recommend Graduation Criteria for projects will have to demonstrate active usage in the Discord chat channel.

We also recommend that projects report to their chat channel usage in their quarterly reports through 2022.

Questions to be added to Quarterly Report:

Have you migrated your conversations to Discord? Yes/No

Have you had success moving your community to Discord? Yes/No

FAQs

• What is Discord's Authentication mechanism? Need to create account with phone number or email
  • Will I still need a LFID?
    • No, you don't need an LFID to login to Discord. You can still use your LFID to login to the Wiki.
  • Will I need to log in to the server? 
    • Yes
  • Is Anonymous review of chat available?
    • No
• Will the search engines be able to see messages in Discord?
  • No
• Can Discord be accessed across geographies?
  • Yes, but it not available in China
• How can I create canned responses for Discord?
  • Is possible
• How does search work in Discord? Are the messages available to search engines?
  • search within discord yes, external engines no.
• Is there a limit to the number of messages that can be stored in Discord? How long is history of previous chat available?
  • No, unknown but chat channels do not appear to be deleted for over a year.
• Will we be able to access the Discord server through https://chat.hyperledger.org?
  • Sort of - we can do an embed or a redirect
• How does Discord work with LFX Insights?
  • Not yet, on roadmap.

Follow-Ups

The Task Force will set up 30, 60 and 90 day reviews of the migration to assess progress of the adoption of the new chat channel. If there are further recommendations to assist the migration, the task force will share with the TSC.

References

You can review the Chat Task Force notes and materials here.