Migrating from Slack (free instance) to Discord

[cybette]

Quoting @mairin from the #community channel in the InstructLab Slack workspace:

👋 Have not filed an issue around this yet, but I am proposing we move (gently, in a planned & coordinated fashion) to Discord from Slack. Our Slack instance has a 30 day history timeout and Discord does not, and a lot of AI communities are centered around Discord. We had a reason to not use Discord up front (we thought our IBM friends were not able to join us there due to a corporate policy) but it turns out that isn't the case (anymore?) so there's nothing really preventing us from moving besides making sure we do so in an orderly fashion.

@RobotSail and I are leading this proposal / planning with @cybette’s support. If you have any questions / concerns / etc. please hit us up either here if you feel comfortable, or in a DM!

[cybette]

Previous discussion on this issue for reference: #279

[lhawthorn]

For migrating in an orderly fashion - what's the plan? We have 1,000 users in the InstructLab Slack instance (can pull 28dau stats if that helps us). How will we migrate them? Are we not concerned about losing folks in the migration?

I will note for the record that our concerns focus on losing project history. We make very little use of the project email lists. Would making better use of them for decisions made, etc., help mitigate the problem?

[cybette]

We have discussed that OSPO will not be able to support bridging due to legal concerns over Slack and Discord ToS. Without a bridge we would have to try and migrate all current 1000+ Slack users to Discord to maintain the community. In order to do so we'll need a phased approach. Here's my proposal, please feel free to comment:

Preparation (2 weeks)

Server Prep:

• Audit Slack for list of channels, key integrations/bots, and export/backup data if possible
• Create channel structure on Discord to mirror what we have on Slack, set up roles and permissions (but do not ask people to move yet!)
• Configure settings to make the experiences similar to make migration easier (e.g. meeting reminders, emoji packs? 😄 )

Communications:

• Nov 26: share and discuss issue during the weekly community meeting
• Draft new guide for Discord (similar to the Slack guide)
• Creat migration FAQ
• get consensus from the Oversight committee

Initial Rollout (2 weeks)

• Dec 10: if the first phase progress as planned, we can announce during the community meeting and more widely
• Publish the Discord guide and migration FAQ
• Provide early access to maintainers, CoC committee, oversight committee, and other key community members
• Conduct training sessions if necessary (e.g. moderation)
• Add a migration support channel on both Slack and Discord
• Test integrations/webhooks to make sure they work as desired
• In the second week start inviting active community members (@here in Slack channels)

Community transition (4 weeks)

• Invite the rest of the community (@channel on Slack)
• Update Slack channel topics with the news and point to Discord guide and migration FAQ
• if a Slack channel has a different corresponding channel on Discord, make sure it's mentioned in the channel topic
• Monitor both Discord and Slack during the transition, especially the migration support channel
• Note that this will probably happen over the year-end holidays, so resources may be sparse
• Provide step-by-step video guide if possible
• Ping all Slack users again after the new year to catch the stragglers

Slack deprecation

• Set deadline for shutting down Slack workspace
• Send final reminders on all communication channels (Slack, mailing lists, social media, during meetings)
• Final backup of Slack data before deleting (or archiving) Slack workspace

[cybette]

For migrating in an orderly fashion - what's the plan? We have 1,000 users in the InstructLab Slack instance (can pull 28dau stats if that helps us). How will we migrate them? Are we not concerned about losing folks in the migration?

I am concerned, and we will lose some. Hopefully with the plan I outlined above we will be able to get most people across. We also need at least 500 members on Discord before we get server insights.

[lhawthorn]

Thank you for this research @cybette. Any clue how we get a backup of our Slack data? I thought this was only available to paid tier Slack users but I am also admitting my ignorance. :)

[cybette]

We can only export data from public channels with the Free plan, but I think that's good enough for our needs.

[lhawthorn]

Thank you for the research, good to understand all of our options.

[mairin]

@cybette does no bridging between slack and discord apply as well to usage of the paid slack/matrix bridge as a mediary? [i dont know if the matrix slack bridge has agreements in place]

[nathan-weinberg]

Someone from the Maintainer team needs to own migrating the reporting of the E2E jobs.

I did the initial implementation but I'm not interested in owning these migrations, lest people decide later we want to switch platforms again.

I'll let someone with more Discord experience volunteer for this.

[RobotSail]

@nathan-weinberg Based on our conversation today, we plan to run Discord as a trial for a few months to see how well it fares. Moving the e2e jobs doesn't have to be immediate, but it's something that's fairly straightforward to do and many servers already have integrations configured for this.

[RobotSail]

#409 and #410 are related to this

[github-actions]

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