[RESOLVED] Question: Forum/mattermost/Facebook - Why aren't we out there?

[yereverluvinuncleber]

This forum is a good place to request help but forgive me if I'm wrong, we don't seem to push our presence anywhere else. I don't see a thriving VBForums VB6 Facebook page nor do we maintain a mattermost instance where the main devs can chat and talk about VB6 goings-on.

I see that there are a few VB6 groups that seem active with various chaps posting images and links of VB6-derived software (mostly it would seem from India, a place that seems to have a relatively thriving community with no associated presence here). I do also see a pre-existing VBforums FB page that has very little in it related to what we do here, it looks like a hijacked or badly maintained FB page.

On some other groups I am a member of, we have a forum, a wiki that can be edited by approved members for storing sticky information and a mattermost chat instance that we can use that is divided into rooms, one for devs, another for town square chat and another for off-topic &c. All the developers and interested parties can have a voice there and usernames/passwords created and provided as required using rules defined by the group. Some just take the forum user/pass details and bridge that across.

In my experience such a chat instance is very dynamic and exudes/inculcates creativity.

Is there a reason why we don't have such an extension into Facebook nor Mattermost? I would suggest that the Mattermost chat would be most applicable if it were divided along similar lines to the forum, VB6, VB.NET &c but it could be just set up for VB6 to see how it goes... and if it works.

It obviously can't be set up by just one person, it needs to be done as a group and perhaps therein is the problem. Is this a group or a disparate bunch of people who come together due to one similar interest? I know loosely-coupled groups that exist along similar lines that manage to do this sort of thing successfully.

Just a thought...

[DataMiser]

mattermost? I have never even heard of that. Facebooks comment system does not exactly lend itself well to the types of things one would post here. I like what we have here much better.

[yereverluvinuncleber]

Not hearing of something does not reduce its capability just your knowledge of it. It is worth investigating. It promotes more of a 'team' effort and it does not impede use of the forum.

Chat vs forum posting, different methods for different types of discourse.

eg. If you have a login on the ReactOS forum, you can use that on the ReactOS mattermost instance at https://chat.reactos.org/reactos/channels/off-topic

All the ReactOS main members are present all the day (and others) and they comment or respond when they desire.

[DataMiser]

So it's a chat system? hmm I thought those had pretty much died out about 20 years ago

[yereverluvinuncleber]

So it's a chat system? hmm I thought those had pretty much died out about 20 years ago

No, as the subject of this post suggests they still exist and are blossoming within the open source communities.

They simply matured and the interface improved, user control &c. Mattermost allows bridges to the old IRC and other clients, allowing them to all interact, "one ring to bind them all" &c.

It is almost a communal workspace where you can discuss development and it helps if you are all on one subject, thus the groups you see pictured. If you can - or want to work as a team it is very useful.

eg. The ReactOS team have buildbots that are set up to build the o/s automatically as new PRs and bugs are fixed, code developed, the output is piped to one of the rooms and so all users have a real-time activity feed.

It isn't quite Microsoft Teams but it is free to FOSS or some community groups and relatively easy to implement.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mattermost

[DataMiser]

Well it is interesting that some people still like the chat programs, I don't like to use them anymore. I prefer to use tools like skype, teamviewer, email, instant messaging or just an old fashioned phone call.

[DllHell]

i think there is a few reasons

1. the vb6 community is dying. People are moving on to other things. There is no one to "push our presence" too so no one is going to put in the work to bring in zero new people.

2. The people working on bigger projects don't seem to want to work together so there isn't a needed to collaborate in a single place.

[techgnome]

I don't think it's either of those ... it's more probably that we have better things to do than hang out on a chat board all day. Hell, I had to get off of discord because I found it too distracting, and the only reason I'm on Slack is because we use it for work. The forum format allows people to deal with the topics in the time and manner of their choosing.

-tg

[dilettante]

Sounds to me like some kind of Code Leech Superhighway. Lots of Audry II's all shouting "Feed me, Seymour!"

[dilettante]

We've all seen their threads here. They start out with a useless title and a post that makes no sense.

After days of socratic dialog we have a 60 post thread to answer "How do I calculate 2 + 2?"

Chat expedites the agony and the slugs keep their lowball jobs.

[yereverluvinuncleber]

i think there is a few reasons

1. the vb6 community is dying. People are moving on to other things. There is no one to "push our presence" too so no one is going to put in the work to bring in zero new people.

2. The people working on bigger projects don't seem to want to work together so there isn't a needed to collaborate in a single place.

I think DLLHell has it spot on.

[DataMiser]

Another reason is that many VB6 coders are older and have no interest or time for chat boards. I used them a lot back in the mid 90s phone calls were expensive back then so I often talked to some of my long distance friends using private chat programs. I never liked the ones where there would be several people in them, to much chaos. In the last 20 years however I have spent maybe a total of 5 minutes in a chat board.

[yereverluvinuncleber]

Mattermost as I have seen it used, is not simply 'chat', although that is what it promotes, in an actual usage it appears to be a more work/project orientated tool. Describing it as a simple 'chat' tool denigrates what it can achieve.

Well, all I can say, is that for a well-coordinated community and a group who are willing to act as a group, it really works as a community tool allowing intelligent discourse, significant progress to the group's goals and is probably the most beneficial tool allowing the group to meet its aims.

I have always had this naive assumption that this community here is a group - but I really do know that it isn't. It is often just a place where some come to rip a strip off others or to pontificate over some preferred technology. If you do that on chat in the places I am referring to as examples, then you are quickly dealt with silenced temporarily or completely, depending upon the infraction.

I know this forum is a graveyard in many respects where ghouls roam and torment the living but for specific niche groups that have one single aim, then it really could work, for example a group working together to develop RC5/6 or any other similar user/technology grouping.

If it hasn't been done for this forum already then I can assume the people in this place really can't get it together as they are so disparate in their aims and often so objectionable in the manner they discourse, so that it just can't happen. We've all seen that in so many posts here.

Oh well.

[jdc2000]

That screen capture of ReactOS pretty much answers your question as to why people are not using it. I would hate to try to dredge through that mess to try to find any useful information. It looks like a lot of chaos to me.

[yereverluvinuncleber]

Well it isn't.

a. It isn't ReactOS, it is Mattermost.
b. Your understanding of Mattermost is faulty but perhaps not unexpected due to your lack of experience.

[OptionBase1]

There is a huge difference between:

1. Popping in to a site to help answer a question occasionally
and
2. Being involved in live chat, wiki's, project collaboration, etc.

In my opinion, being willing to do #1 and have no interest in doing #2 isn't a commentary on how "thriving" the VB6 community is. It is about interest, priorities, and time. To me, #2 sounds more like work.

Some people like to spend an hour here or there volunteering at a soup kitchen. But that doesn't mean they would like to work in a school cafeteria.

That being said, if you think something like this would be beneficial and you want to get something started, good luck to you.

[yereverluvinuncleber]

Quite agreed except I make no commentary on how thriving this community is, I think this is a surprisingly thriving community.

But the community appears to me, more like this:

[jdc2000]

a. It isn't ReactOS, it is Mattermost.

The web site address says ReactOS.

b. Your understanding of Mattermost is faulty but perhaps not unexpected due to your lack of experience.

My understanding of the screen capture is just fine. It is hard to read, cluttered, and time consuming to extract any useful information from. This forum is much easier to read in a much shorter time. Most of us do not have hours per day to dig through web sites for answers to questions.

[OptionBase1]

This site has been around for 20+ years. Go start up a competing site with all of the social media/chat/interactive/project management/wiki stuff tied to it and I'll check it out in 2041.

[yereverluvinuncleber]

The more I watch of the full video the more I think it applies to the whole VBforum, especially the Philosophers' football. So here it is is full, the VBforum at the Olympic games:

[yereverluvinuncleber]

The web site address says ReactOS.

As I said, lack of understanding...

[DataMiser]

As I said, lack of understanding...

You seem very quick to accuse others of lack of knowledge or lack of experience.
The fact is that screen shot you shared does not have any reference on it that I see to anything called mattersmost It does show reactos in a few places. It appears it is a chat on the development channel through reactos.org. One of the many problems with chat programs or formats is that if you get more than 2 or three people in there it is hard to keep track of. people typing screen scrolling, you read something give a response and the thing you are responding to may not even be on the screen anymore and you may have missed up to several comments along the way. It really is chaos which is why I stopped doing it long ago.

Yes I have experience with these things and that experience tells me to avoid them whenever possible and use other methods instead.

[techgnome]

Why aren't we out there?

By "we" do you mean "we" as in the VBForums community? or by "we" do you mean "VB developers in general?"

-tg

[jdc2000]

If the web site is "mattersmost", it better have a url of mattersmost.org or mattersmost.com or mattersmost.net. I would not be visiting a web site with Amazon logos and listings that had an address of buycoolstuffhere.com.

[yereverluvinuncleber]

Not accusing, just pointing it out. It was of no importance. You have all demonstrated why Mattermost won't work here.

[OptionBase1]

Glad we could help.