[UbuntuWomen] IRC and Matrix

[Elsie Hupp]

I was going to ask if Ubuntu Women uses Matrix, but I did some digging, and I see that Ubuntu Women uses Freenode, which is bridged with Matrix by default.

The Freenode Ubuntu-Women Matrix rooms appear to be as follows:

https://matrix.to/#/#freenode_#ubuntu-women:matrix.org
https://matrix.to/#/#freenode_#ubuntu-women-project:matrix.org

No, I don’t know why there are two IRC channels with nearly the same name.

I was looking at the ubuntu-women.org homepage, and it only references the IRC channels, so it might be worth updating it to reference the IRC-bridged Matrix rooms, as well.

FWIW if one of the administrators of a Matrix-bridged IRC channel logs into the bridged Matrix room and links their registered IRC nickname to a Matrix account, they can assign a full-Unicode display name for the room (i.e. “Ubuntu Women” rather than “#ubuntu-women”), and they can assign an avatar image for the room. (They can similarly assign a display name, avatar image, and other metadata to their personal account.)

An administrator could also remap the Matrix room address to just #ubuntu-women:matrix.org rather than #freenode_#ubuntu-women:matrix.org, and they could publish it to the main Matrix.org directory for easier discoverability.

In my limited experience recently joining IRC-linked Matrix rooms (with little to no previous IRC experience), the initial setup (i.e. linking a registered IRC nickname to a Matrix account) is kind of a pain, but Matrix is ultimately much easier to use, and it supports additional features like message attachments and audio and video calling.

Matrix (or at least Element) also supports “Communities”, which are sets of rooms that have been grouped together for convenience, but this feature doesn’t seem to be particularly thoroughly implemented, yet. Communities can unilaterally add rooms, and rooms can belong to multiple communities, so it might be useful to have, say, a “Linux Women” community (if their isn’t one already), that could bring together a variety of  women-oriented rooms, such as Ubuntu Women, Debian Women, GNOME Women, etc. (It could also make sense for there to be an Ubuntu community that would list all of Ubuntu’s Matrix rooms in one place.)

I dunno who administers the #ubuntu-women and #ubuntu-women-project IRC channels, but if someone who does reads this email, how does this sound?

And if anyone wants to add me personally on Matrix, you can find me at:

https://matrix.to/#/@elsiehupp:matrix.org

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Elsie Hupp