Local user group category with sub-categories

I would like to propose a new category for local user groups, with sub-categories for each group.

This would allow these user groups to have a central place of discussion rather than having to set up their own mailing lists. Rather than having posts in this category directly, I also propose that local user groups make a request to have a sub-category set up for them. Within their sub-category, these groups would be free to do things like post news only locally-relevant and speak in their native language.

More specifically, I would like a sub-category, ROSJP, for the Japanese user group. We need a place where local users can feel free to post in Japanese without feeling like they are polluting a non-Japanese-language board. Otherwise, we find that Japanese users tend to feel like using Japanese is forbidden and don’t participate.

While I recognise there may be fears of splitting the ROS community, the fact is that there are a large number of ROS users who do not feel comfortable communicating in English. I feel it would be good for the central discussion board of ROS to provide these people a home in their own language.

Discourse allows the administrator to set site-wide defaults for email/subscription preferences. The entire local user group category should be disabled by default, and users who find a relevant sub-category can enable that one only if they choose to do so.

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Thanks for the suggestion @gbiggs I’ve setup a c/local and c/local/japan

Can you propose a welcoming blurb for About the ROS Japan Users Group category specific to ROSJP? And I’ll drop it in there.

I have suppressed the Local category from ros-users@ notifications. And I’ve found an option to turn off the digest for that category. However I think that option will truely turn off digest options generally not just default digest options. So I think that people sticking with mailing list mode will have to mute it if they want it to not notify them.

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Thanks for that! I’m getting the blurb checked by a native speaker, to avoid embarrassing myself. It should be ready shortly.

I think it is a very interesting proposal. :thumbsup: Currently, each local ROS user group have their own community, and so that information is scattered. I think it is a good idea to collect ROS users from all over the world into one forum. Good! I also ask to make a Korean ROS user group as a sub-category.

@tfoote Here’s the text for the ROSJP category.

日本のROSユーザグループ(ROS Japan Users Group)のカテゴリです。ROSに関するどんな話題でも、日本語で話がしたい方はこちらをご利用ください。

ROS Japan Users Groupのウェブサイトは下記の通りです。
https://rosjp.connpass.com
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Thank you for your rapid response, @gbiggs and @tfoote
I’m one of organizer of ROS Japan Users Group and very happy to add regional subcategories.

@tfoote Please rename the subcategory to “ROS Japan Users Group”. It’s an official name. rosjp is short name (or hashtag).

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@youtalk and @tfoote, I think that it makes sense! It would be nice to unify the names of the categories like “ROS Country Users Group”.

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I’ve created the category: ROS Korea Users Group - ROS Discourse
Can you propose a blurb for the about? About the ROS Korea Users Group category

@gbiggs I’ve updated it with your suggested blurb.

@youtalk Thanks for the clarification. I’ve updated the name. I hope this can provide a useful forum for the group.

Please both of you help kick off some discussions to seed the categories. There’s little more intimidating than an empty category.

I’d rather not be prescriptive, but let people choose their own naming pattern. With ROS Japan Users Group and ROS Korea Users Group setting the standard I suspect that others who are interested will do the same. To my ear that template doesn’t parse immediately, because it’s not the ROS version of the Country User Group, but the Country version of the ROS User Group which is why I originally proposed the transpose.

There are also other levels of regionality that might make sense sometimes big cities have a community. Sometimes states or regions too. See the regional meetups on the wiki. Sometimes local flair, plays on words can add some levity.

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Can you please also create “ROS Ukraine Users Group” as a sub-category

@Andriy Yeah, Have you been involved with the existing group already? And can you suggest in intro blurb for it?

+1. This can actually help the entire ROS community.

I usually websearch with a prefix like (site:ros.org OR site:github.com) to reduce/remove false-positives. Works great for that purpose, but clearly this doesn’t grab info from outside of those domains. With language groups discussions joining the same domain, we can even find some debug discussions only happening in a certain language group (and maybe provide back answers if possible).

Hey @tfoote,

Yes, I am actively involved in community.
Here is the text for ROS Ukraine


Це сторінка для дискусій і оголошень групи ROS Ukraine Users Group.
Зокрема тут можуть публікуватися різні події пов’язані із ROS в Україні і світі.
Офіційна сторінка групи ROS Ukraine Users Group https://www.facebook.com/groups/279366215828155/


Thank you in advance :slight_smile:

Andriy

Hi @tfoote,

Here is the text for ‘ROS Korea Users Group’


대한민국 ROS 유저 그룹 (ROS Korea Users Group)의 ROS 공식 Discourse 카테고리입니다.
ROS의 관한 내용이라면 자유롭게 한글로 이야기를 나누실 수 있습니다.


@Pyo I’ve added the text to the about.

@Andriy The ROS Ukraine Users Group has been created at: https://discourse.ros.org/c/local/ukraine Also I’d strongly suggest making your facebook group open to be able to gather new participants. Many people will listen in on forums for quite a while before contributing. If they can’t listen in they’ll often disengage.

@tfoote Thank you for advice. Fully agree with them and of course Facebook group is public and all posts are visible for everyone.

Could you please change title from “ROS Ukraine User Group” to “ROS Ukraine Users Group” to be consistent with the rest of the groups :slight_smile:

Sorry for the typo, fixed.

Note that I still cannot browse the facebook group as linked from the description.

@tfoote thank you very much for fixing typo :slight_smile: And you are right. Unfortunately public Facebook groups are not accessible without account.
So I guess in this case discourse category will be nice place for 100% public information to community.

Hi @tfoote

Please make a category ‘ROS Russian Users Group’ in Local Groups as well. We would like to have a possibility to create our own topics.

There is a description for “ROS Russian Users Group”:

Эта ветка форума - официальная дискуссия проектов ROS для группы пользователей ROS Russian Users Group. Если вас интересует ROS, то вы можете свободно взаимодействовать и общаться в этой группе на русском языке.
Для мгновенных сообщений присоединяйтесь к чату в Telegram по ссылке Telegram: Join Group Chat

Thank you for your time!

Regards
Kirill

Hi Kirill,

Thanks for the suggestion. Could you please make the proposal for the ROS Russian User Group in a new thread? And before we create a new subcategory it would be great to see that there are a few other members who also can express interest in that thread so that we know there’s demand for the group. Until there’s a large amount of traffic to filter out we generally would prefer to keep communications concentrated for higher visibility.

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@tfoote ,
Could you please make the proposal for the ROS China User Group in a new thread? It is unbelievable there is no User Group while China has 13 billion people, in fact , there are many robot software developers who use ROS in China , so I hope you can add a subcategory - ROS China User Group ,
in additions , welcome to facebook group , https://www.facebook.com/groups/263581007543255/
thx in advance