Create a Community Server for Commons (Discord/Matrix/Zulip) ?

[Kota-Jagadeesh]

In recent days, nearly every open-source project has an active community where contributors and maintainers discuss and meet up. I recently reached out to @nicolas-raoul and i came to know that there’s currently only GitHub and the Commons-L mailing list for communication (https://lists.wikimedia.org/postorius/lists/commons-l.lists.wikimedia.org/).

This issue is for proposing a community server (Discord/Matrix/Zulip or similar) to make it easier for new contributors and beginners to stay connected, engaged and keep all of us interactive, which could help improve the project and open-source flow.

A quick reminder: I’m currently comfortable with the present system as it is, but I think a Commons community space focused on juniors and new contributors and even us could boost activity and engagement.

This is just my suggestion; if you think it’s irrelevant we can close this issue. If you find it relevant, we can discuss and decide. All ideas are welcome.

[psh]

I created a Discord server a while ago to find out more about the tech - https://discord.gg/YrTWksxj - welcome to see if it's the kind of thing that meets the need. There's really nothing there yet, but, welcome to poke around and play with it.

[misaochan]

Back in the day, we used to have a community Hangouts group - but after the feature was deprecated by Google, I don't think we ever replaced it. We do have Zulip, but I think we mostly just use it for specific groups (e.g. communication with the Outreachy/GSoC intern, or between core developers previously).

So if we want to do this, we can either (1) use Paul's discord server, or we can (2) open up a public channel for our existing Zulip.

Also, if we do have a community server for new contributors, we would need a volunteer to check it regularly and answer the questions there. :)