Future of message stream feature

Development
#1

Hi devs,

We need to decide what we want to do about the message stream feature. It’s the ability to send messages to users or groups.

It was disabled in Loading... (voted in [xwiki-devs] [Proposal] Disable Message Stream by default in platform distribution + XE).

We never really answered the question at Re: [xwiki-devs] [Proposal] Disable Message Stream by default in platform distribution + XE

We have several options:

  1. Consider that the feature is deprecated and mark it as such in our documentation, and then we remove it altogether when we can. This also means that we can close as won’t fix all issues at Loading...

  2. Consider that the feature is just not core and do the work of moving it as an extension (it’s substantial work so we need to be sure that the feature is useful before doing this). This would mean moving the jira issues at Loading... into a new jira contrib project later on.

  3. Consider that the feature is core and useful (but just requires some love) and that we will come back to it at some point. In this case we just don’t do anything until it gets put in the roadmap in the future.

Do you have opinions?

My opinion:

  • I’d be fine with 1) as I think we’d need to redo it differently
  • I’m also fine with 2) but it’s substantial work and before doing this we could ask this forum and/or XWiki SAS for example to see if anyone is using that feature nowadays
  • I’d be -0 or -1 for 3)

Thanks

1 Like
#2

Some work has already been done in that direction with Discussion Application which has even been released here: https://extensions.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Extension/Discussions%20-%20Message%20Stream/.
I’m not sure it’s been tested a lot, but I think there’s already a good basis to have something working without spending too much energy if needed.
So I’d be for removing the feature from XS in favor of this new one. Now I think it would be a fresh start of the feature so I’m not sure I’d keep the jira tickets.

Thanks

#3

I would definitely advise for more testing before using it :slight_smile:
Especially as it was developed during v1, and we are now in v2 of the Discussions app.

Regarding the initial question:

  • +1 to consider the current implementation as deprecated
  • For option 2, we’d need external opinion (e.g., from the community and sponsoring companies) to see if there is a need. So -1 unless we identify a need
  • -1 for option 3