Investigate upgrading Slack about foundation

[Urigo]

This sounds great to us, we have our community on Discord and we thought to maybe move it over to the official Slack.

First question - would that mean we'll get to keep the full history on Slack?

Also in order for us to move, we would love to get at least one channel where we can announce things to our community - meaning permissions to @channel for only a specific channel. Would that be possible? if not, we can just ask an admin before doing it or have some kind of procedure?

Also with the new Slack design, we can have sections for groups of channels, here is a suggestion for managing those channels, making it easier for the community to navigate:

• Section - general
  • #introductions-where-to-start (instead of the crazy flow of people in general, here they could get guidance on where to post what, and introduce themselves)
  • #announcements (from the GraphQL foundation)
  • #meta-improve-this-forum (talks about how to improve the Slack)
• Section - Get help
  • #help-and-support ( & stack overflow feed)
  • #jobs
  • #inclusiveness
• Section - Education
  • #what-should-I-write-about (a place for people who want to write content)
  • #language-x-translations (a single channel for each international languages, arabic, Polish, etc...)
  • #tutorial-x (a channel for tutorial creators to offer for their learners)
  • #useful-links
• Section - Locations and events
  • #upcoming-events
  • #country-x (a channel for specific countries/cities)
  • #meetup-x (channel for individual GraphQL Meetups, maybe merge with country/city when possible)
  • #conference-x (a place for members of the community that are present at the same conference to meet)
  • #public-speakers (a place for speakers, people who want to be speakers and people who are looking for speakers)
• Section - Open source
  • #how-to-contribute (Help people get their first steps into contributions)
  • #reponame (facebook/relay, apollographql/graphql-server, graphql/graphql.github.io, etc...)
  • #I-made-this (community shows what they've done)
  • #working-group
• Section - Architecture
  • #subject (Authentication, subscriptions, caching, schema-design, etc...)
  • #programming-language-x (Python, Javascript, .NET, Java, etc...)
• Section - Companies (we can maybe also create sections for each foundation company member)
  • #company-name (#hasura, #appsync, #apollo, #the-guild etc.. )
• Section - Social
  • #twitter-feed (following #graphql)
  • #reddit-feed (following /r/graphql)
  • #linkedin-feed (following #graphql)
    #random

I suggest also to create a map of all channels on the graphql.org community page, to give newcomers a short guide on where to find what.

Would love to hear your thoughts and feedback!

[benjie]

Discord FTW? They specifically have an OSS plan: https://discord.com/open-source

A year or two ago I evaluated all the big players in OSS chat for Graphile: gitter, Spectrum, Slack, Discord and a few others. Discord came out on top (by quite a margin), and I have not regretted my decision. GraphiQL is using Discord too; I think @acao is happy with it?

One minor thing if you go with Discord: don’t make the server public; instead get a (free for OSS) vanity invite URL. This way you don’t get random gamers joining, only people who discover you through the GraphQL projects. Ours is https://discord.gg/graphile

One small caveat of using Discord: gamers already use it, and some gamers have potentially offensive handles which they’ll auto-join with. Most are happy to change their handle within the community, but it’s the one thing I’d change: make them explicitly choose a handle before joining the community rather than using their default.

[acao]

i’ve found it to be very useful so far, and as more companies and oss projects switch over, you see more formalized user names

we don’t tend to have any random gamers joining, or even spammers. it’s been an incredibly productive choice for us

one feature i wish it had were the ability to archive and/or merge channels but that’s not a huge deal

[Urigo]

It's really a shame they didn't agree, I wish I knew people there as well..

But I agree Discord is great.
If we decide to go with Discord, just like with the newsletter, we (The Guild) would love to simply hand over our channel and all permissions to the foundation.
It's already aimed at GraphQL in general and has similar structure to the one I described above.

[brianwarner]

Just confirming that I've requested a non-profit plan from Slack. I will let you know what they decide, and whether GraphQL is approved.

[Urigo]

@brianwarner can we start with ordering the channels better even before we get an answer?

Or maybe if the answer is negative we'll just create a new one on Discord?

[brianwarner]

The answer was negative, at least through the folks I asked. Unfortunately they require a 501(c)3, being an open source project isn't sufficient.