<rcurtin[m]>
I'm looking into new solutions for internal contributor team chat (to discuss, e.g., GSoC organization applications or NumFOCUS finances/details, this type of thing), but I guess all I am coming up with is to make a new mailing list... what do other people think?
<zoq[m]>
I guess org discussions are not internal?
<rcurtin[m]>
Yeah, I was reading about it... if you enable discussions on a repository, everything is public. [This post](https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/46970) suggests something that to me is truly absurd:
<rcurtin[m]>
> Right now the best option for a private discussion would be creating a private repository and enabling discussions in it and only granting access to those users that you want to have access.
<zoq[m]>
Okay ...
<zoq[m]>
I guess we could do that, not saying this is the best solution.
<zoq[m]>
Not sure team discussions worked for us that great, I think a few people missed them, for various reasons.
<rcurtin[m]>
Yeah, and we did not use them much either. I could make a new "private" mailing list too (ignoring the fact that the mailman2->mailman3 rewrite was a disaster, it does still at least kind of work), or, maybe a private Matrix room? (but not all contributors use Matrix)
<zoq[m]>
Yeah, was thinking about a Matrix room as well.
<zoq[m]>
But I guess, a mailinglist would be the easiest from the standpoint of everyone has a mail client.
<rcurtin[m]>
That's true, but there are potential additional issues... the mlpack.org mailserver often gets blocked by Outlook, so e.g. Kartik sometimes does not get my emails and there's not much I can do about it
<rcurtin[m]>
One option is to move the mailing lists to a third party sender, but I'm not sure how many free mailing list services are out there (I just haven't looked into it). I think Google Groups got shut down, not sure
<rcurtin[m]>
As much as that workaround seems insane, I have to wonder if that actually is the best choice... the one thing all contributors have in common is a Github account, whereas with email we might have problems due to mailserver issues, and with Matrix not all of us are here
<zoq[m]>
Agreed, seems like the best option right now.
<rcurtin[m]>
Ok... I'll get that set up maybe today or tomorrow. Honestly I think we can just use Issues instead of Discussions, given that our rate of messages is so extremely low (like 1 every other month or so)
<zoq[m]>
Yes, good point
<rcurtin[m]>
I hope whatever PM came up with this idea is happy with their promotion and bonus. Sigh. I shouldn't complain because Github provides a lot for free, but it looks more and more like the too-many-features nightmare that is JIRA every day... (and Gitlab is going the same direction)
<rcurtin[m]>
It's still way better than Trac, but I liked Github when it was simple 😃
<zoq[m]>
I mainly use the core features, repository to commit code, PR and issues.
<rcurtin[m]>
Right, exactly, and those work great... but then they add more and more and there are more and more warts... like e.g. there is both Azure Pipelines and Actions and they kind of do the same thing but have a different interface (and Azure Pipelines might enter you into Microsoft auth hell)
<zoq[m]>
Ohh true, in my experience for new projects there is really no alternative; if you want that your project gets noticed. Most people go to GitHub to search for something, and none or only a few go to GitLab or bitbucket, etc.
<rcurtin[m]>
Yeah, that is definitely true. So we are stuck with it 😃
<rcurtin[m]>
maybe that is what we should do with our NumFOCUS funds?? 😂
<zoq[m]>
Read the article, and tested the tool from the post on a repo that I found strange, the tool works, that is what I can say.
<zoq[m]>
Not a tool to buy stars, but to see if stars a bought.
<rcurtin[m]>
I read about that tool, yeah; thought about running it on mlpack but didn't bother to actually set it up. I wonder if we have any fake stars?
<zoq[m]>
From the article GitHub is pretty good in detecting fake accounts.
<zoq[m]>
And premium stars are expensive.
<rcurtin[m]>
Yeah, we would probably need a NumFOCUS SDG for that 😂