waartaa -- open source web-based chat

[Ratnadeep Debnath]

Hi all,

On Wed, Apr 9, 2014 at 7:25 PM, Matthew Miller <mattdm at fedoraproject.org> wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 09, 2014 at 02:41:52AM +0530, Ratnadeep Debnath wrote:
>> >> Oooooooooooooh!!!!! Great idea! Getting up and running on IRC has
>> >> been a barrier for some new contributors, particularly in the design
>> >> space. This would be really nice!
>> > I convinced prospective Flock speaker Ratnadeep Debnath to join this mailing
>> > list for further discussion. Hello, Ratnadeep!
>> Thanks Matthew for inviting me to this list :)
>
> Yes -- and thanks for the overview. What do you think about how this fits
> into
> http://blog.linuxgrrl.com/2014/04/01/a-proposal-for-fedoras-website-considering-fedora-next/
> ?
>
> I'd love for the Flock talk to be not just an overview, but a presentation
> of how it fits into our new web site. :)

Yes, of course, it will be more than just an overview :).

I and Sayan[1] have been brainstorming on building features which can
fit to the requirements of open source communities for quite some time
now. Some interesting ideas also came up when we were discussing with
students who have applied to Waartaa for GSoC 2014. Assuming that we
have waartaa running for Fedora at irc.fedoraproject.org, let me
elaborate the ideas we have so far come up with, which will be useful
for the Fedora Next project.

[EasyStart] Permalink to IRC channels
============================

Permalinks to IRC channels, say,
irc.fedoraproject.org/chat/server/Freenode/channel/fedora in a project
pages will make it no brainer for a new user to join an IRC channel
and start communicating.


[Intuitive and easy] UI endpoints for 80-90% for IRC functionalities
===============================================

We try to expose as many IRC functions as possible to the UI along
with command options for advanced users. That said, we'll also have in
page docs to help users learn various IRC commands and concepts.
Something like Mozilla's GCLI[2] tool can be used to implement in page
docs.


[EasyStart] Wizard for (first time) users
=============================

Whenever a user joins irc.fedoraproject.org (powered by Waartaa), the
user can be shown a wizard (inspired by
http://www.whatcanidoformozilla.org/) to dovetail the user to join
proper channels without bombarding with info (bunch of server names,
channel names, etc.). May be we can show the groups listed at "Join
Fedora" page[3] and then the channels specific to each group under
them.


[Administration] Managing channel logs archives and minutes of meetings
=====================================================

We'll be working on to build an extensive channel chat log search
framework this summer, either as part of GSoC or ourselves. This will
come very handy to archive channel logs in a way that it can be
queried. Also, we could integrate zodbot with Waartaa so that we can
store and browse through meeting logs in a better way, unlike the
current meetbot log page[4] for Fedora. Our log search framework would
help to query through the meeting logs very easily.


Beautiful and intuitive
===============

One of the prime focus of Waartaa is to create a beautiful and
intuitive open source communication tool at par with or better than
the proprietary communication tools. I believ that Máirín can help
Waartaa in this regard :)


I believe, the above ideas, if implemented properly, will make
community communication over IRC lot more fun and memorable :)


Please share your ideas and feedback on how to make Waartaa better so
that it could be of use to Fedora Next and the community in general.


[1]: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Sayanchowdhury
[2]: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Tools/GCLI
[3]: http://fedoraproject.org/en/join-fedora
[4]: http://meetbot.fedoraproject.org/

Regards,
rtnpro
-- 
Ratnadeep Debnath,
https://www.waartaa.com
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