Moving from Framagit (and Framapad)
Here is a big topic I have no idea how to solve, and I admit it put a big pressure on my shoulders
A. Framagit/Gitlab
Most of issues with it are related to the end of life of Framagit. This end is not clearly annouced by Framasoft, but I see they are slowly removing the service in their plan of De-Frama-tify the internet. Therefore, the service becomes more and more limited and I totally understand it. In short, we will have to move platform soon.
- Moving issues: Moving all the commits is not a problem, but moving all the thread of episode creation and bug reports doesn't sounds easy. It also rename many things, breaks many links, etc...
- Creating new account: All new account created since a big year have no confirmation emails, they are silently activated in background after 24 or 48h and rejected later if user doesn't login. This is the strategy by Framasoft to reject the big wave of bots creating new accounts. But this security probably also silently rejects many new contributors. I had many feedback about it and it is bad for welcoming new contributors.
- Email notification: It doesn't work well, when I quote someone, or 'all' keyword, it rarely delivers the emails. I had feedback about it.
- Geographical restrictions: Framasoft, with their limited resources for managing servers sometimes have to ban full countries to reduce spam/bots wave attacks. (eg. Vietnam was totally removed from the IPs for a while and it was super problematic for the Vietnamese translator).
- Using issues as forum threads: On Gitlab, every threads are issues, if someone wants to communicates they'll work on a lang, I advice on the documentation to open an issue. Same for new episode creation. It works, but at the same time it feels like I'm not using the right tool to manage the contributions as a whole. Issues doesn't invite for discussion, creations, etc...
B. Framapad/Etherpad
The workflow is nice and compact and it is easy to find other host of Etherpad or any 'pad-like' system. So, no pressure in case we have to move. Most of issues are related to authors authentification, archiving and notification.
- Background colors: it's the system used by Framapad to do the difference between authors. It works well for 3 or 4 contributors, but quickly the color overlaps for more, it doesn't scale well and it's hard to do the difference between a yellow author and a bright orange author. It's also hard to remember the name of who contributes. Especially on the little vote with "+". (mouse hover the text displays the author's name, nice, but still difficult.
- No update notifications: If someone made a pass over a version, they have to announce it on Framagit, if they don't, no one knows the document received an update...
- Can't archive work done: It's not possible to export the result of the document with all the colors of the authors. The document expires after a year (temporary hosted) and the export only bake the resulting document as a non colored document. I think it is unfair because it wipes a trace of all the efforts done on proofreading and all the versions tested.
That's all.
Thank you if you have ideas on what tools or solution to adopt and what can be done for the smoothest move.