On Wed, October 4, 2023 04:16, Axel Beckert wrote:
Hi,
On Tue, Oct 03, 2023 at 08:57:57PM -0700, J.C. Cleaver wrote:
Along the lines of the previous update, I've reactivated a Facebook page that I'd set up for the project a long while back (which FB had hidden over time), as well as created handle accounts on various social media services:
https://facebook.com/XymonMonitor
New accounts have been created here, primarily for #hashtag and @account reference purposes at the moment:
https://twitter.com/XymonMonitor https://instagram.com/XymonMonitor https://reddit.com/u/XymonMonitor
Might be my bubble, but does anyone in IT still use these platforms, especially Twitter and Reddit?
I agree that both of those have had their... controversies, however there does seem to still be a lot of tech activity going on there. Twitter is still a mechanism for going viral (accidentally or not) so I figured it would be good to have a presence there at least for tracking and comms. It also could be useful for very quick, one-off questions and support response.
As far as Reddit goes (forgot to mention that Xymon has had a subreddit for a while: https://reddit.com/r/xymon/ ) there's definitely activity in various subreddits adjacent to the monitoring space (if not r/monitoring itself). "sysadmin", "devops", "linux" pick a keyword. Xymon does get mentioned from time to time in discussion, so I think anything that helps increase visibility is probably a good thing for the project.
In 2023, I'd kinda expected a Fediverse (e.g. Mastodon, Firefish, etc.) presence instead of a new account on the centralized and dying Twitter platform.
Good question is though which Fediverse instance might be a good one for Xymon. I would _not_ take the biggest generic ones (like mastodon.social or mstdn.social), but a medium sized one with a good reputation for reliability and a more or less fitting topic, floss.social or fosstodon.org maybe.
(There also exists a Mastodon instance named monitoring.cafe. It seems to be an instance for a monitoring community, but rather new and not yet open: https://monitoring.cafe/about ??? I've asked how their plans are: https://chaos.social/@xtaran/111176160822935709)
This is a good idea. I'm a bit of a newb when it comes to Mastodon, but I know there's a lot of distributed discussion going on. If the community agrees there's one that makes sense to set up for, I agree that would be very helpful.
I know back in the day #xymon at irc.freenode.net was a place people idled in, although I just checked and it's empty now. Not sure if others have moved over to LiberaChat or not.
Other options for communication would include a public Slack (easy enough to set up, and familiar for a lot of enterprise folks who have to live on it whether we like it or not), or Discord (for a different crowd); That said, there's a limit to the number of rooms a human can pay attention to (and apps my cell battery can keep running).
These don't have to all be public/user level, either. If I set up a Development Slack, for example, would others be interested?
Then again, I've _never_ used Facebook nor Instagram. (Not sure who's worse these days, Musk or Zuckerberg???) So it really might be just my bubble.
Facebook probably won't get a huge amount of visibility, but I figured it would be good to at least reactivate that presence for longevity's sake. IG and WhatsApp (which I forgot to post) was really only set up because Facebook/Meta kept nagging me to do so as soon as I reactivated the Page. I personally can't see much reason for IG tagging, but if people would like to send shots of their dashboards and/or NOC rooms with Xymon up, that could be fun.
One thing I've noticed on IG is that their interests ad seem to microtarget pretty well once you're in the ecosystem, and I do keep getting spammed with monitoring software ads (Datadog, IIRC) and sysadmin resources, so it seems there's a market of *some* type to be reached there.
(I'm drawing the line at TikTok though, thanks.)
For completeness' sake, I also set up a YouTube page (https://www.youtube.com/@XymonMonitor ) I won't have time any time soon to deal with video content, but there are actually a couple of small Xymon videos on YT out there already. And with the plethora of Xymon/Hobbit presentations people have made, I think there might be an opportunity for explainer-style videos, or simply presentation recordings, in the future.
Again, placeholders for now.
Regards, -jc