Forum creation : toggle for allowing federation

[estellecomment]

Context : when creating a public forum, you can choose if

• it will be visible to all users of the federation (the forum is "federated", or "allows federation") or
• just your own homeserver, for example : only users in "dinum", or in "intradef", etc (the forum "doesn't allow federation").

There is a toggle for users to choose when they create the forum.
Problems :

• It is not always easy to understand (users call support asking to change the setting because they got it wrong).
• Different instances may have different needs for federation of forums. Intradef (and others ?) have asked that the toggle be present, and that the default be "no federation".
• the toggle is hidden until the "forum" option is chosen. When the user choses the option, the toggle appears. This may be surprising, which makes it harder to understand. (see screenshots below)

Possible solutions :

• hide the toggle, and make all forums federate by default, for all instances that are ok with that : simplify for as many users as we can. We need to check with the correspondants to decide which instances are ok with this.
• reverse the direction of the toggle, to avoid the double negation which could be hard to understand : use "Allow users from all instances" instead of "Forbid users outside my instance" (this should be user-tested to be validated)
• what should the default be ?
• if the toggle is available for a given user, then show it all the time (do not make it appear/disappear). This should be user-tested to check if it's clearer.

[estellecomment]

Current implementation in Tchap-web v2 : All users except instance "Agent" will see the toggle.

Before selecting "forum" :

After selecting "forum" (the toggle appears):

---

Proposed implementation, to be discussed, in tchap-web tartine (v4) :

• toggle is always visible.
• toggle is inverted : "Allow users from all instances" (rather than "Forbid users outside my instance")
• only instances which insist they need the toggle will have it, the other will have federation on by default.
  

[estellecomment]

Can we count, in the existing forums in Tchap, which have federation or not ? (to know if it's an important feature to users or not)

[estellecomment]

I think that we need more data to decide :

• what users have done so far : federated or not ? Numbers !
• how do users understand the concept of federation ? Do they understand what homeservers are, since we have hidden the concept in Tchap ? Do they know the option of federation for forums exists ? What do they use each type of room for ?
• new interfaces : are they ok removing the toggle ? Is the inverted toggle clearer that the original or not ? Is the text clear ? Should we divide into 4 types of room ?

Realistically, with the work that the web team already has to do to reimplement all tchap features, I don't want to spend much time (for now) researching this question. Even though I think it's worth it ! So I'm not taking the lead on solving this question, until we're done with Tchap Tartine (web v4).

[odelcroi]

After one year, we haven't received much data or feedback on this toogle switch.
By now, it is only available on "intradef" on web
However, it is available for all on mobiles, which is an issue that will be fixed
"Forum" creation is not an event we have isolated from the stats, issue here : tchapgouv/tchap-stats#52