[Imports] The place where imports are required to post reviews has changed.- or an april fool ?

[Minh Nguyen]

Vào lúc 23:48 2023-07-06, Marc_marc đã viết:
> it's an april fool or is this an unintentional gaffe?

Sorry, it's Christmas in July, not April Fool's. ;-)

> you put out a call for comments here
> and the next thread says that people on the forum voted,
> without a call for a vote on the mailing list.
> of course ppl from the forum vote for the forum.
> I have run an unanoncement vote with myself and got 100%
> in favor of the mailing :) so what ? april fool ?

James did post an notice to this list about the vote on the day that 
voting started. [1] It's unfortunate that you were unable to participate 
before the poll closed. I myself just barely noticed the poll on the 
last day, despite checking the forum regularly, because the wiki's 
proposal process doesn't require a pre-closing reminder to be sent to 
either medium.

> Unfortunately, experience with talk-fr and tagging has shown
> the damage this kind of choice can do:
> some people don't migrate, so the community becomes poorer
> and more fragmented, and those on one media can't communicate
> with those on the other media.
> Instead of a proposal "against the list", we need to integrate
> the 2 media into a single discussion forum, which is what Discourse
> will allow when it matures, we just need to give it time to overcome
> its teething problems.

For what it's worth, some of us are investigating on the talk page 
whether it would be feasible to synchronize this mailing list with the 
forum's #import and #import-proposal tags, which should hopefully avoid 
the fragmentation you describe. [2]

> what's even more worrying is the fact that there's hardly a single 
> person among those who have taken the time to review import requests 
> over the last 12 months. you can tell them they have to do it on the 
> forum from now on, but that's not how it works. if a volunteer doesn't 
> want to use an interface that they find unsuitable, they won't do it. 
> and the unreviewed import will be approved, without the quality 
> improvement that the review provided.

As Martin pointed out in an earlier thread [3], you can often get a more 
timely, higher-quality response from a regional community's mailing list 
or forum category than from a global mailing list or forum category. I'd 
expect this to be true of imports, for which a local reviewer has the 
benefit of context about the state of the map and past import attempts.

Although the proposal refers to an #import tag, the first thing an 
import proposer would choose is a regional category, if available, 
falling back to a global category. For communities that have set up 
their own forum category, discussion about a proposal will therefore 
involve them directly, and more likely in their language. This is only 
fair since they would be directly affected by an import.

Over the years, subscribers to this list have undoubtedly gained a lot 
of practical experience in evaluating data licenses and postprocessing 
techniques. It would be a shame to lose that expertise as the center of 
gravity moves to the forum. If it's any consolation, you can cross over 
and respond to topics in any regional category regardless of where you 
normally map. And if we manage to set up that synchronization, then you 
won't have to.

[1] 
<https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/imports/2023-June/007234.html>
[2] 
<https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Special:Redirect/page/307070#Forwarding_discussions_to_the_mailing_list>
[3] 
<https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/imports/2023-June/007233.html>

-- 
minh at nguyen.cincinnati.oh.us