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Create an RChain Worldwide Community Forum Service

Open ghost opened this issue 8 years ago • 85 comments

Last Update: 14/10/2018

Benefit to RChain

RChain Members will greatly benefit from the creation of a worldwide community forum.

On the worldwide community forum, we can share ideas, ask questions, talk about everything we care, things like governance and meetups and perhaps most importantly, get to know each other and grow as a community.

Specifically, the usage of Discourse will help in the creation of an archive of the conversations in the Markdown file format, which is a very versatile file format, in a sense that it allows for easy conversion to multiple other file formats and design styles.

Through the addition of plugins (from the official Disourse plugins repository) we can add very cool features, now and in the future. (these will be added progressively)

Furthermore and perhaps as important, the usage of the RChain Worldwide Community Forum will lower the barrier-to-entry for the majority of people and migrate conversations that should not take place on GitHub (which is a developer centric platform), to it.

Budget and Objective

Estimated Budget of Task: [April: $2500, May: $0, June: $2500, July: $3000, August: $1819] Estimated Timeline Required to Complete the Task: [200 days] How will we measure completion? [Have >=200 registered users on the forum.]

The objective is described above in the Benefit to RChain section.

Legal

Task Submitter shall not submit Tasks that will involve RHOC being transacted in any manner that (i) jeopardizes RHOC’s status as a software access token or other relevant and applicable description of the RHOC as an “asset”—not a security— or (2) violates, in any manner, applicable U.S. Securities laws.

Notes

  • The forum is now in bootstrap mode. All new users will be granted trust level 1 and have daily email digest updates enabled. This will be automatically turned off when 50 users have joined.

Tasks (Alpha Phase)

Tasks (Beta Phase)

Tasks (Final Phase - Release Candidate)

IOU

  • [ ] Fix 3 Redis warnings, specifically:
    • [ ] "The TCP backlog setting of 511 cannot be enforced because /proc/sys/net/core/somaxconn is set to the lower value of 128."
    • [ ] "overcommit_memory is set to 0! Background save may fail under low memory condition."
    • [ ] "You have Transparent Huge Pages (THP) support enabled in your kernel. This will create latency and memory usage issues with Redis."
  • [ ] Google PageSpeed Insights testing and fixing.
  • [ ] Check and fix dead links.
  • [ ] Install and setup the Discord Translator plugin.
  • [x] Clean up Docker.
  • [x] Update Ubuntu repositories.
  • [x] Upgrade Ubuntu repositories.
  • [x] Remove unnecessary Ubuntu packages.
  • [x] Upgrade Ubuntu packages.
  • [x] Clean up Ubuntu packages.
  • [x] Backup Discourse.
  • [x] Create a DigitalOcean Droplet Snapshot.
  • [ ] Post relative documents in their respective languages.

Members contributions are tagged accordingly.

ghost avatar Apr 09 '18 15:04 ghost

A couple thoughts, not necessarily critical issues:

How does this relate to https://forum.rchain.coop/ ? It will compete, in some ways. Is it important to have both of these?

How does it relate to other coop IT infrastructure #428? Clearly there's an emphasis on self-hosting, which I support. But should the hosting migrate to the same platform as the membership website?

dckc avatar Jun 08 '18 14:06 dckc

@ICA3DaR5 what's the status with this? I haven't seen you address Dan's concerns yet, and I'm not sure you intent to proceed with this.

I'll close it now (to keep the issue list sanitized), but you can reopen it once you're ready to work on it again!

pmoorman avatar Jun 25 '18 13:06 pmoorman

@dckc The forum I am building is a community-driven forum, it will host all efforts of the community. https://forum.rchain.coop/ is very developer centric. Hosting is not an issue, if it's asked I will migrate it to the same platform as the membership website.

@pmoorman I am actively working on it. At the moment I am migrating some membership-created content. Temporary domains is: https://rchain.gr/

I'll update the issue later today!

ghost avatar Jun 28 '18 12:06 ghost

Well, developers are a large part of the RChain community, so if what you're building will host all efforts of the community, it will host developer efforts, and so it will compete with forum.rchain.coop.

As to hosting: it's not just a question of what you're willing to do. It's also a question of what existing coop IT staff (including those contracted at pyrofex) are willing to do in the long term. I wonder if they would be happy to host two forums. There's also a question of whether they would happy with whatever technology choices you're making. I encourage you to include them early and often.

dckc avatar Jun 28 '18 17:06 dckc

@dckc IMO there is a need for a forum outside of developers.

Domain: https://rchaincommunity.xyz/

ghost avatar Jun 28 '18 18:06 ghost

What about this bounty program in github?!It works like a forum and it is community driven. I don't think start a new forum would be a good ideas. You have to teach people to learn how to use it and everybody has to take time to learn .It is really redundance. I suggest you can start a new "topic",community in developer forum instead of building one. In coding world, we all want our codes DRY（don't repeat yourself）. It takes less time and effort to maintain our codes. I think we apply this rule to our governance and project maintain.

zsluedem avatar Jun 29 '18 00:06 zsluedem

I wonder if you/we could convince the folks running developer.rchain.coop to use discourse. It's much nicer.

dckc avatar Jun 29 '18 02:06 dckc

I'll agree with @dckc and @will here that we'd probably be better of (especially in terms of maintainance) to improve on what we have, rather than to add new stuff.

I agree with @ICA3DaR5 that the current developer forum isn't very welcoming to non-developers. If we can channel our efforts to pursue the suggestions by Dan & Will, that would be awesome (= create new topics in the dev community, and explore changing to Discourse)

pmoorman avatar Jun 29 '18 07:06 pmoorman

Nah

On Fri, Jun 29, 2018 at 00:09 pmoorman [email protected] wrote:

I'll agree with @dckc https://github.com/dckc and @will https://github.com/will here that we'd probably be better of (especially in terms of maintainance) to improve on what we have, rather than to add new stuff.

I agree with @ICA3DaR5 https://github.com/ICA3DaR5 that the current developer forum isn't very welcoming to non-developers. If we can channel our efforts to pursue the suggestions by Dan & Will, that would be awesome (= create new topics in the dev community, and explore changing to Discourse)

— You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub https://github.com/rchain/bounties/issues/588#issuecomment-401268348, or mute the thread https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AAAHtQM8CnyO7zf8RIb4Af27VXd6tHcwks5uBdLEgaJpZM4TMxH6 .

will avatar Jun 29 '18 07:06 will

oh, wrong Will! Should have been @zsluedem of course...

pmoorman avatar Jun 29 '18 07:06 pmoorman

@zsluedem A forum is much easier to use, especially Discourse. More people have experience using forums than using GitHub. GitHub is developer-oriented by design.

@dckc Let me finish this first, make it look nice and include everything I want to include in it, then the next step would be to test it and take suggestions/comments. After that we could talk with the folks running forum.rchain.coop, as you probably have already figured, I am better at doing/creating stuff than negotiating/public relations.

Issue updated.

ghost avatar Jun 29 '18 13:06 ghost

This has been completed, with an IOU of a few things like more categories and plugins, which I'll add during the month of testing (July). The forum is ready for people to start using it. Let's start utilizing it as a Beta for this month -> https://rchaincommunity.xyz/

$0 budget for the month of July and forward. Hence the IOU!

ghost avatar Jul 07 '18 15:07 ghost

@ICA3DaR5 I do think multiple forums are a good idea. Just as in the world at large there are many newspapers, many different development tools and so on. Imo the value of this particular forum will be unknown until we see the usage of it. But it certainly might be a good venue for moving the bounty system out of Translation and into community building, commentary and discussion. So as far as value to our Cooperative, I feel only time (usage) will tell. As far as an experiment with potential to increase the quality of participation in our Bounty system, I endorse it. @jimscarver @zsluedem @dckc @pmoorman please look again at the issue and the work product and vote as you see fit.

@ICA3DaR5 will continued maintenance be required? If so is there a plan for maintenance, moderation and so on?

Thanks! -allancto

allancto avatar Jul 07 '18 18:07 allancto

I am a little confused. A $2500 budget was paid in April and now there is another $5000 budget for June. I do not understand what the additional work involved and am inclined to vote a much lower budget. I am uncomfortable paying in advance for future work. I do support a community forum but who controls it? It should be managed cooperatively by several trusted members not one person.

jimscarver avatar Jul 07 '18 19:07 jimscarver

@allancto I will continue to maintain it with full transparency. I will open another issue with a $0 budget for the IOU part and for the maintenance. We can discuss about moderation on Site Feedback.

@jimscarver Vote as you see fit. I spend a lot of time setting it up securely and thoughtfully and @zero-andreou alpha-tested it. Please post the management comments at the Site Feedback. I am just the creator of it, not planning to be the one who controls it. Discourse has a trust mechanism built in (https://blog.discourse.org/2018/06/understanding-discourse-trust-levels/), which we can tweak during this month of Beta testing.

ghost avatar Jul 07 '18 23:07 ghost

I voted a budget of $500 but still the rewards seem way out of line. I am changing my vote to zero as I find your justification to be uncompelling. It seems to me the setup was already covered my the $2500 already received.

jimscarver avatar Jul 08 '18 13:07 jimscarver

Going along with @jimscarver comment above, I've voted $500 until it's clearer how the higher budget is justified. I also agree that we shouldn't pay for work that's still to be delivered.

If more work needs to be done in July, let's pay for it in July.

@ICA3DaR5 I think the main problem here is that from your comments it's hard to understand where all this time/money went, and how it's justified. If you can explain better, the higher budgets might be perfectly justified.

pmoorman avatar Jul 08 '18 17:07 pmoorman

@jimscarver you are correct that the total budget for this project was $7500, which i consider very inexpensive relative to its potential. @jimscarver @pmoorman it's my assessment that over time this will prove to be of great value to our Cooperative. For context please add up all the budget numbers to date for Translation and for custom forums paid for by our Bounty system. In addition think about the effect these custom forums have had in terms of siloing and fragmenting our worldwide community, rather than bringing us together.

  1. The project already has users, people posting in the forum.
  2. The project in itself lessens the need for manual translation, and if automated translation can be added will imo be much better than manual translation.
  3. The project gives us the potential to reverse the trend @pmoorman calls "siloing" and get all our different language communities talking together. And a fast onramp for new communities

I've created an issue already to improve this Forum in #829. We have found that Translation has been a large expense for our Cooperative (monthly expense during Jun was ~20k). It's my belief that automated translation done right will have better usability than manual translation and will also provide translation of all of our documents almost instantly and at low cost.

@jimscarver you raised an excellent question about trustless moderation. I hope that the Worldwide Forum will become so heavily used that moderation will become an issue, that would certainly be a signal of success! I encourage you to formulate those ideas into another FIP (Forum Improvement Proposal) to upgrade this forum and experiment with ideas around Cooperation at Scale.

Thanks! -@allancto

allancto avatar Jul 08 '18 19:07 allancto

I respect all of the opinions of the community. Nevertheless that's the amount of USD that I value my work, therefore I stand by my vote. Everyone is free to vote and I respect those votes as well.

@allancto Please validate your comments by voting.

I will open another issue for the IOU part, which everyone can vote for July.

ghost avatar Jul 08 '18 20:07 ghost

@ICA3DaR5 @jimscarver looked at the content in the forum and believes it may currently contain plagiarized or otherwise improper content. Whether that's true or not there should be an explicit projection of cost of moderation in this forum. It appears that the voting to date approves half of your requested budget, leaving the other half till next month voting, which may be appropriate until these questions are addressed. Perhaps that's what you mean by the "IOU" till July. Thanks! -@allancto

allancto avatar Jul 09 '18 01:07 allancto

@allancto I forgot to add sources on the English and Spanish content, which I will do in the next 2-3 days. I have added sources on the Greek content.

That's exactly what I meant with the "IOU".

ghost avatar Jul 09 '18 16:07 ghost

Making it more clear that https://rchaincommunity.xyz/ is in draft state is URGENT.

Right now, pages such as https://rchaincommunity.xyz/t/introducing-rspace/80 are copied from elsewhere without attribution. And they bear the RChain cooperative logo, with no disclaimer. These pages are visible via a Google search and anyone who finds them that way will not have the context of this issue. Without this context, the pages are just plain plagiarism.

(the translations need links to their source material too.)

dckc avatar Jul 11 '18 04:07 dckc

The title and "Benefit to RChain" speak of a community forum, but I see only one participant. Please either

  1. change the objective to include something about community participation or
  2. change the title to "set up forum service" or some such and change the "Benefit to RChain" to explain why forum software installation benefits the community.

dckc avatar Jul 11 '18 04:07 dckc

@dckc Attribution was added on the English blog posts yesterday! We are doing Spanish today, that's the only one left. We were aware of these issues and fixed them.

I will edit this issue tomorrow properly. Thanks a lot for your comments!

ghost avatar Jul 12 '18 19:07 ghost

@dckc

Updates:

  1. Added sources to the English, Spanish and Greek Blog posts on the forum.
  2. Added links from the Medium posted Spanish and Greek Blog posts to the forum.
  3. Added links from the forum posted Spanish and Greek Blog posts to Medium.

ghost avatar Jul 12 '18 20:07 ghost

Updates:

The Italian team added sources in the blog posts.

ghost avatar Jul 13 '18 13:07 ghost

Updated the issue to better reflect completed work and future work.

ghost avatar Jul 13 '18 14:07 ghost

Let's talk about the Discourse Translator plugin. Do we want to use it? If so, which of the following services and pricing?

I suggest we use the Free Microsoft Translator tier for now.

Here's some information...

Noticeable Features

  • Each post is only translated once per locale which saves us :moneybag:.
  • The Access Token is cached on the server for faster translations.
  • Translations are rate limited to three per minute (as of now).

Translation Services Supported

Microsoft Translator

Microsoft Translator Text API is a cloud-based machine translation service supporting multiple languages, reaching more than 95% of world's gross domestic product (GDP).

Pricing

Free S1 (PAY AS YOU GO) S2 S3 S4
Price (per month) $0 $10 (Per million characters) $2,055.01 $6,000.00 $45,000.00
Maximum characters included in tier 2,000,000 N/A 250,000,000 1,000,000,000 10,000,000,000
Overage rate (per million characters) N/A N/A $8.22 $6 $4.50

Google Translate

Translation API provides a simple programmatic interface for translating an arbitrary string into any supported language using state-of-the-art Neural Machine Translation. Translation API is highly responsive, so websites and applications can integrate with Translation API for fast, dynamic translation of source text from the source language to a target language (e.g., French to English). Language detection is also available in cases where the source language is unknown. The underlying technology pushes the boundary of Machine Translation and is updated constantly to seamlessly improve translations and introduce new languages and language pairs.

Pricing
Translation $20 per 1,000,000 characters*
Language Detection $20 per 1,000,000 characters*

*Price is per character sent to the API for processing, including whitespace characters. Empty queries are charged for one character. Google charges on per character basis, even if the character is multiple bytes, where a character corresponds to a (code-point). For example, translating "こんにちは" to English counts as 5 characters for the purposes of billing.

ghost avatar Jul 21 '18 22:07 ghost

@ICA3DaR5 I don't really know how to proceed with allocating budgets on this issue for the month of July.

For me —as I've said before— much of the value of a forum is in the users, rather than in the software. Do we have any indication already that people are actively using the forum? Do we have a plan on how to increase usage and activity?

I'm standing by for further suggestions from your side on what kind of budgets you think are justified here.

cc @kitblake @AyAyRon-P

pmoorman avatar Jul 30 '18 16:07 pmoorman

@pmoorman The forum is not ready yet. So I haven't pushed to market it yet. I don't want to push for an unfinished product. It's quite there though. Most likely it will be production ready by August 08.

I have a some thoughts in mind for the marketing side, we could and should discuss this further, maybe on a separate issue. In fact, if someone wants to market it, he/she should create another issue and do it!

If you value the usage/users from day zero, how do you expect people to develop/setup things like the forum? How do you expect people to start building larger things?

Step one is to build something, step two is to market it.

Is it fair to post hours worked and an estimated budget researching, configuring and setting up on August 07 or should I do it today for up until today?

My estimation as of today is > 500 working hours in total, including the previous months.

ghost avatar Jul 31 '18 14:07 ghost