Subject: Re: [Tools-discuss] Trial chat service: xmpp

From: "Adrian Farrel" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 14 Oct 2020 20:39:19 +0100

Nice clean web interface and account created OK (now I have 4 xmpp accounts 😉 on different servers, but Google is getting more and more grumpy about supporting jabber)
Linking to my installed client (pidgin) was a bit crumbly - the web page found pidgin and opened it, but couldn't install the account.
But it worked fine manually.

One question: will the meeting rooms still be [email-masked] or are they moving to [email-masked] (to be replaced by [email-masked])?

Thanks for the work.
Adrian

-----Original Message-----
From: IETF-Announce <[email-masked]> On Behalf Of Robert Sparks
Sent: 14 October 2020 18:45
To: [email-masked]
Subject: Trial chat service: xmpp

In addition to the trial instances of the matrix and zulip chat services,
we have deployed a trial instance of an xmpp service that allows local 
accounts
to be registered, allows guest account access, and provides a web client.

These services are available at xmpp-trial1.ietf.org.

As noted earlier, we are deploying these services to gain operational
experience and get community feedback about how well they meet the need for
IETF-related chat.

We have clear evidence from the IETF 107 post-meeting survey
(https://www.ietf.org/media/documents/ietf-107-survey-results.pdf) that many
IETF participants find jabber a significant problem.  This is partly due to
difficulties in finding a free jabber service and partly due to client 
issues.
There are two paths to try to resolve these problems, one is to improve the
IETF jabber service and the other is to switch to an alternative groupchat
solution. This addition explores the the first path.

This install has very little local configuration or customization.  As 
with the
other trials, over the next few weeks, we will be exploring 
reconfiguring the
service to use datatracker credentials for sign-in.  Bridging between the
systems is already being explored. Please remember that one consequence of
these explorations is that there will likely be times, outside of meetings,
when accounts will be disrupted or even removed and will have to be 
recreated.

We would like feedback on how well any of these services meet chat needs 
during
meetings, both the full online IETF 109 meeting, interims, adhocs, and 
hallway
conversations.

Around December, we will assess our experiences and the feedback received to
inform which chat services we provide in the future and how we will operate
them. In January, these trial instances will be taken down. We do not 
intend to
preserve or migrate any account configuration or chat history from the trial
instances as we move forward.

The chat services are intended to be explorational and informal. However,
please treat them as contexts where contribution rules apply (See
https://www.ietf.org/about/note-well/).

Please send feedback on the services to [email-masked]

There are several community members who have put in significant effort
helping us to set up these trial instances. Please join me in thanking
Tim April, Matthew Hodgson, and Matthew Wild for their assistance.

Robert Sparks - Tools team project manager

_______________________________________________
IETF-Announce mailing list
[email-masked]
https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf-announce

---

From: Spencer Dawkins at IETF <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 14 Oct 2020 14:44:01 -0500

Hi, Robert,

> Robert Sparks - Tools team project manager

Thanks to all of you for your work, but especially on the XMPP instance.

I think I'm good for now, but there have been times, and I've had
computers, where XMPP/jabber was problematic. I hope this makes XMPP more
attractive to the community, so we can really see what its strengths and
deficiencies might be.

Best,

Spencer

---

From: Robert Sparks <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 14 Oct 2020 15:16:54 -0500

On 10/14/20 2:39 PM, Adrian Farrel wrote:
> One question: will the meeting rooms still be [email-masked]
Those have not moved.
> or are they moving to [email-masked] (to be replaced by [email-masked])?
>
> Thanks for the work.
> Adrian
>
> ___________________________________________________________
> Tools-discuss mailing list
> [email-masked]
> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/tools-discuss
>
> Please report datatracker.ietf.org and mailarchive.ietf.org
> bugs at http://tools.ietf.org/tools/ietfdb
> or send email to [email-masked]
>
> Please report tools.ietf.org bugs at
> http://tools.ietf.org/tools/issues
> or send email to [email-masked]

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 16 Oct 2020 12:57:47 +1300

First comment is that when I connected to https://xmpp-trial1.ietf.org to create an account, with Gajim already installed, the "open the app" button didn't work.

It seems that installing Gajim back when this laptop was new didn't automatically set the association with xmpp: in Firefox. Setting it manually seems to be very obscure if at all possible.

OK, so I went the manual account creation route. I'm [email-masked] if anybody cares. It would be good if the invite pages suggested a test chat room to try.

I've managed to join [email-masked] but my test messages seem to have vanished into a gravitational singularity, ditto a 1:1 message to someone else in the room. However, when I rejoin the room as [email-masked], I can see those messages were in fact displayed.

So right now jabber.org seems to work better than xmpp-trial1.ietf.org.

    Brian

Regards
   Brian Carpenter

---

From: Matthew Wild <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 16 Oct 2020 09:07:19 +0100

Hi Brian,

Thanks for the feedback!

> It seems that installing Gajim back when this laptop was new didn't automatically set the association with xmpp: in Firefox. Setting it manually seems to be very obscure if at all possible.

May I ask what version of Gajim you have installed?

Secondly, yes, we should probably remove the "open the app" button,
and probably change the text on the "Install" buttons to "Select". The
correct flow would be to select Gajim from the software list (even if
you have it installed already), it will then guide you through setting
up your account with instructions tailored for Gajim.

Only a select number of clients are currently compatible with the
generic "Open the app" button on the first page, but based on feedback
a lot of people with existing installations are drawn to clicking it.
It is unfortunately impossible for the web page to know whether it is
compatible with your software or not, so it's probably better to
remove it and guide people through the software-specific setup
instead.

> OK, so I went the manual account creation route. I'm [email-masked] if anybody cares. It would be good if the invite pages suggested a test chat room to try.

I believe an up-to-date version of Gajim (and other modern clients)
should have automatically joined the hallway room, but I'll
double-check this is working correctly.

> I've managed to join [email-masked] but my test messages seem to have vanished into a gravitational singularity, ditto a 1:1 message to someone else in the room. However, when I rejoin the room as…

That is a weird issue. I can only suggest making sure that your Gajim
is up to date, but I shall definitely double-check this is working as
expected.

> So right now jabber.org seems to work better than xmpp-trial1.ietf.org.

It's great that you have an account there, you must have had it a
while! jabber.org doesn't currently have open registration so isn't an
option for most people. Of course if people do have existing working
accounts on other servers, federation means there is not a great need
to set up an additional account on the trial server.

Thanks again for your feedback!

Regards,
Matthew

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 18 Oct 2020 16:29:31 +1300

Yes, I updated Gajim to version 1.2.2 and things seem to be working better. I can join the hallway twice with my two diferent IDs (jabber.org and xmpp-trial1), and talk to myself. That's about all I can hope for on Sunday afternoon in NZ. Personally I've always found jabber pretty reliable since somebody advised me to use Gajim, so I'm not inclined to spend effort on testing alternatives.

What's a bit sad is that almost all of the ~80 jabber contacts I have accumulated over the years now appear to be permanently off line (even allowing for my time zone).

Thanks
   Brian

---

From: Michael StJohns <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 20 Oct 2020 19:57:50 -0400

Just FYI -  Mozilla Thunderbird (mail client) has a built in XMPP 
client.  Tools -> Chat Status -> Show Accounts to add an account.  You 
might want to think about adding it to the list of clients.

Mike

On 10/14/2020 1:45 PM, Robert Sparks wrote:
> We would like feedback on how well any of these services meet chat 
> needs during