Slack Migration Discussion

[jberkus]

Describe the issue

This issue is to discuss the changes to Kubernetes Slack which will be announced Monday Morning. If you have feedback on how these changes will affect your team, need help, can offer help, or have ideas for tools and workarounds, please post them in a comment there.

Announcement Here

FAQ Here

[jberkus]

/sig contributor-experience
/area slack-management

[AverageMarcus]

👋 Hey @jberkus

I just have one question, the communication mentions "Private Channels are not backed up to our archives because they can't be." does that mean that public channels are already being backed up somewhere? If so, where? If not, can we request specific channels be backed up?

On a side note - would have been nice to have had longer then a week's notice for this. We have some maintainers on vacation this week so might be hard to ensure everything from the history that we need to keep is actually saved before Friday. 😞

Edit: I've just seem this short timeframe looks like it's coming from Slack rather than Kube team

This week, they let the CNCF Projects staff know that they cannot continue to host us the same way.

[AverageMarcus]

Actually, I have another question - Is this change only the Kubernetes Slack or does it also effect the Cloud Native Computing Foundation workspace too? If only the Kubernetes one do we have the option of migrating our channel to the CNCF workspace?

Edit: As mentioned below, YES this does also effect the CNCF Slack workspace with the same timeframe.

[raesene]

I know that the choice of future platform is not an easy one, and it's likely there is no perfect solution, but I do have some specific concerns about Discord as an option.

At the moment Discord give away a lot of functionality for free, which is great, but isn't likely to be sustainable long term. If Kubernetes/CNCF groups are going to be on free tier (i.e. CNCF isn't making payment to discord for them), it feels like there's a very real risk that we'll have to migrate again at some point in the not too distant future when Discord reduces the functionality of free accounts to improve revenue.

I do recognize that this could be seen as a bit of Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt, but given the history of VC backed companies degrading features over time to improve monetization, it feels like it should be a consideration.

[AverageMarcus]

Adding on to Rory's comment - I am also uncomfortable about Discord not allowing separate identities between different servers. I like to keep my personal and professional self separated and cannot do that with Discord.

Edit: As mentioned below, this is no longer the case and I had totally missed it.

[markmandel]

Disclaimer - I work at Discord.

I am also uncomfortable about Discord not allowing separate identities between different servers.

You can have totally different accounts between servers:
https://support.discord.com/hc/en-us/articles/4412732047127-Discord-Account-Switcher-FAQ

I do this now in fact.

You can also have per-server profiles as well:
https://support.discord.com/hc/en-us/articles/4409388345495-Per-Server-Profiles

To allow you to change how you present between servers as well.

[ErikThorsell]

I concur with @raesene and @AverageMarcus and would like the group to consider whether something like Mattermost can be a reasonable alternative. I, for one, prefer MM to both Slack and Discord.

I steer away from Discord whenever possible, mostly due to them pushing Nitro in my face whenever they have a chance.

[embik]

You can also have per-server profiles as well: https://support.discord.com/hc/en-us/articles/4409388345495-Per-Server-Profiles

It should be noted that this is a "Nitro" feature, so you'll need to have a paid account for it:

Per-server profiles are a new customization feature for Nitro users!

(just for completeness' sake, the account switcher looks sufficient for the use case to be honest)

[markmandel]

Ah, that is a fair point for per-server profiles (I have Discord privilege, and unsurprisingly, I've paid for Nitro for so long I forgot 😄 ), but as you say, account switching solves this issue.

[AverageMarcus]

Oh nice! I had totally missed that account switcher thing. That lessens my concern a little but I also just dislike Discord as a "professional" chat platform. It's way too focussed on gamers and makes me uncomfortable using it.

But lets not turn this issue into a Discord-specific discussion. :)

[embik]

One of the questions I had from reading the FAQ: It states that we are too big for Matrix because of "size and level of traffic", I wonder if there is any more information available regarding that? Because my feeling (not backed up by any data) is that Kubernetes Slack is mostly "big" in user numbers, actual messages on public channels (excluding DMs etc, ofc) seem to be relatively manageable (I've joined a lot of channels and feel like I can keep up with the volume of messages across them). My IRC channel list was more active in message volume back in the days.

Is there anyone in the community familiar with Matrix architecture that could maybe also chime in?