It is still useful the Mozilla Etherpad?

[Mte90 (Daniele Scasciafratte)]

I just had these thoughts and wanted to talk with the whole community about how the Mozilla Etherpad instance is used.
Since New Pad, New Paste now Etherpad require a logged account (Fxa, GH and so on) but has also an expiration of 7 days.

With these changes this user cases are not possible anymore (and all of them involve the expiration):

• Call notes, you need to copy and paste at the end of the call somewhere else maybe in the forum, so every week/biweek/month there is the need to do a new etherpad and put the call skeleton
• Event organization, in the past was used to track the needs or planning an event that will be in the next months or also inside the Reps portal as screen to track the organization. Now doesn’t reference anymore the mozilla instance or generate the link because of that reason
  
  
• Roadmap or other planning, well as it is something on long term is not possible anymore
• A lot of Mozilla discussion in the past was on Etherpad and public but now are on Google Documents that as default are blocked to everyone that doesn’t have a Mozilla email (like the NDA volunteers or at All Hands).

So as community that has a Google account for our needs, like also for our YouTube channel, we switched to Google Documents.

Also, Etherpad because is integrated with Fxa offer the opportunity to do documents public just to people part of groups like NDA or others offering a very granular permission system, and more transparent by design.
Mozilla ideal is Lead by example but I think that there are lot of “easy” changes that can improve the experience across all the Mozillians (not just the employee).

It is your turn now

[mkohler (Michael Kohler)]

I think it’s generally still useful.

@Mte90

Call notes, you need to copy and paste at the end of the call somewhere else maybe in the forum, so every week/biweek/month there is the need to do a new etherpad and put the call skeleton

This is IMHO a good thing. Etherpads are not really searchable. They are however still good for mass-editing during a call. I think using Etherpads for calls and then transfer them to the Wiki is the best way to go.

@Mte90

Event organization, in the past was used to track the needs or planning an event that will be in the next months or also inside the Reps portal as screen to track the organization. Now doesn’t reference anymore the mozilla instance or generate the link because of that reason

This simply just does not autocreate a link anymore. You can choose whatever tool you want to, including Etherpad if it fits your case. Fair, we probably should have removed the “Leave blank to create one for you” as well.

@Mte90

Roadmap or other planning, well as it is something on long term is not possible anymore

For this again, I’d say this should be documented on the Wiki after reaching a certain stage. This makes it way better discoverable.

[Mte90 (Daniele Scasciafratte)]

@mkohler

This simply just does not autocreate a link anymore. You can choose whatever tool you want to, including Etherpad if it fits your case. Fair, we probably should have removed the “Leave blank to create one for you” as well.

It was just as example of the use about event organization, for that you need that a document is reachable on long term and with etherpad now is not possible anymore.

@mkohler

For this again, I’d say this should be documented on the Wiki after reaching a certain stage. This makes it way better discoverable.

Community roadmap as example or other guides doesn’t suit very good on wiki during the work, maybe at the end yes. During that work you cannot c&p every week in the etherpad and work on that with the community, at that point you need Google Documents…

[satdav (David)]

I still use it I agree re data would be great if it can be kept on it longer