Gitter was public by default but now it is private by default

[pdurbin]

In my mind, Gitter was the poster child for SLOPI communication. When you arrived at their website, you'd see a bunch of projects on Gitter and you could click on them and see all their conversations, all without logging in.

Yesterday Gitter migrated to Matrix: https://blog.gitter.im/2023/02/13/gitter-has-fully-migrated-to-matrix/

Great, and good job, everyone. I still love Gitter, but I'm afraid something was lost. 😢

Now when you go to the Gitter home page you no longer see a list of projects using Gitter. 🤔

More importantly, perhaps, the default changed when you create a room. Under Gitter rooms were public by default. Under Matrix/Element, rooms are private by default. 🤔 There's nothing nefarious going on. That's simply how Matrix/Element works. Basically, Gitter had something unique, public by default, and when it was folded into Matrix/Element yesterday it lost this.

From a SLOPI perspective, this means that I don't think we can simply say "use Gitter" anymore. Instead, we should qualify this recommendation by saying something like "use Gitter but make the room public". This is quite a difference! Instant friction. The opposite of "don't make me think", I'm afraid.

For reference, a link that shows the old Gitter and how rooms were public by default: https://gitlab.com/gitterHQ/webapp/-/blob/develop/docs/rooms.md#room-creation

I'm not sure how long those docs will be around so here's a screenshot:

[pdurbin]

I created a pull request to add a qualification about Gitter in the README:

• add "with public logs" to Gitter #35 #36

I also started a thread in the Gitter room pointing here: https://matrix.to/#/!IxQMqGgyzZgHKssexF:gitter.im/$iH-ZiH70yUQVQdQLRknFQ0la_3_3WIZIKTiqavJizUc?via=gitter.im&via=matrix.org&via=aria-net.org