[Xymon] Xymon social media presences

[J.C. Cleaver]

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