MCOSI Meeting Briefing – November 30th 2019

Minds Community Open Source Initiative (MCOSI) held it’s recent meeting on Saturday, November 30th. This meeting was attended by Medworthy, Luculent, Mindsgaming, Realmindschan (four founding members of the MCOSI), Censorshipsucks, NearMiss, Csharpner (three new members of the core MCOSI team), Xander (Minds quality assurance officer) and Fretzcapo (an experienced community member and MCOSI associate).

Medworthy opened the meeting by welcoming Minds recently recruited quality assurance officer (Xander), as well as the four new members (which includes the above names and Rodgercooper. Unfortunately Rodgercooper couldn’t attend this meeting). Medworthy then invited Xander to provide information about recent changes to the Minds services and platform.

Xander explained about Pro service (at the time of this blog article publication, the Pro is in a beta stage but as from Wednesday November 27th is ready for community usage, which several members have already registered and started to use this new service). During this discussion a number of points were raised including an issue with the analytics console (the platform’s interface does not currently have any associated links to this function, which would allow for straightforward accessibility to the analytics console), the lack of a button or link within the Pro channel pages which would allow community members to easily message the Pro channel owner (similar to the message button which is available within the standard channel pages) and the lack of having a profile statement within the Pro channel section (which again, is included within the standard channel pages).

Also during this conversation there were concerns raised in relation to the current pricing structure for the Pro service. We also had a brief discussion about the wire donation system, which is now only available via the Channel pages (the previous /wire address URL has been discontinued, which now limits the ability for community members to have the ability to include the /wire URL within profiles statements, posts and blog articles), as well as having a discussion about an automated issue report form, which could (in theory) reduce the need for the official Minds Help and Support (H&S) group, which would possibly limit further information being provided by both the staff members and community members. The usage of this report form could also possibly reduce support from the various community volunteers that currently provide advice and support within the official H&S group, as well as possibly reducing the current transparent nature of reporting issues and bugs.

We then moved on to have a short discussion about the current jury facility, which we discussed recent issue that has been causing problems with the jury reward system and agreed that the overarching jury process needs further reviewing (Xander mentioned that various issues in relation to the NSFW / “Not Suitable For Work” functionality should be resolved by the time of the next MCOSI meeting). We also had a discussion about the current video transcoding issue which is currently being dealt with (re: Gitlab: epic#106, link provided below), as well as issues surrounding the uploading of large image files (Gitlab: engine#1132).

We finished the meeting with a discussion about the current SMS (Short Messaging Service / text messaging) based Two Factor Authentication (TFA) functionality. As many community are aware, the current TFA function is causing problems for various individuals, in which community members may not receive their authentication information within a short time period (which could be caused by poor mobile phone service provisions). Back in April, Medworthy published a suggestion within a H&S post for an alternative solution, which would element the need community members to be reliant on phone based SMS provisions in order to login to Minds.com whilst still having the ability to further secure their accounts using an alternative TFA facility. With the support of the wider community and staff members, the MCOSI aims to further encourage the implementation and support for this alternative TFA functionality within a future update of the Minds.com platform (further information can be viewed within Gitlab ticket: engine#274).

Minds Community Open Source Initiative continues to work with both the wider community and the Minds staff members. Both the MCOSI and Minds Inc. welcomes feedback from community members,  as well as encouraging members to actively participate within the development, support and usage of the open source Minds social media platform.

References & Other Resources:

* Minds Community Open Source Initiative

* Analytics Console Accessibility
   (Gitlab Ticket: Front#2302)

* Missing "Message" Link Within Pro Channels
   (Gitlab Ticket: Front#2303)

* Lack Of Profile Statement Within Pro Channels
   (Gitlab Ticket: Front#2304)

* Wire Donations / Contributions Are Only Available Via Channel Section
   (Gitlab Ticket: Front#2305)

* Possible Issue With Large Image File Sizes
   (Gitlab Ticket: Engine#1132)

* TOTP Authentication For User Login
   (Gitlab Ticket: Engine#274 – Alternative TFA Facility)

* Transcoder Improvements
   (Gitlab Roadmap: Epic#106)

* Minds Pro

* Minds Analytics Console

* MCOSI Meeting Agenda – November 2019

* Minds Community Open Source Initiative First Anniversary

* Introducing Minds Community Open Source Initiative