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

[Minh Nguyen]

Vào lúc 02:20 2023-07-07, Marc_marc đã viết:
> Le 07.07.23 à 10:57, Minh Nguyen a écrit :
>> Vào lúc 23:48 2023-07-06, Marc_marc đã viết:
>>> 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.
>>
>> James did post an notice to this list about the vote on the day that 
>> voting started. [1]
> 
> subject "[Imports] Migrating Imports RFC to Community Forum"
> isn't a call to vote, it's a request for comment

In that case, the poll was slightly biased in favor of the mailing list. 
The subject line on the forum read simply, "Imports community 
category?", which is why I didn't notice the poll any sooner.

A bigger factor in turnout would probably be that weeklyOSM normally 
doesn't report on import proposals here or anywhere else, whereas it's 
probably the way that most people find out about feature proposal RfCs 
and polls.

>> 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 hear his opinion, but I don't share it
> the local community is in the best position to know whether importing 
> this data makes sense (quality, freshness, etc.)
> however, the global community is in the best position to ensure that
> the rules are respected (licence, consistent tagging at global level)
> there are plenty of examples of problems, from post offices in France, 
> untranslated building:xx, schools, emergency points in Switzerland,
> tree with postal addr and all imports reverted despite the fact that
> the few local people agreed that "the data licence may be good,
> we're not going to waste time checking that".

I agree that the global community can complement the local communities. 
We're also seeing that play out with service=driveway2, about which the 
global community has been more vocal than the Japanese community until 
recently. [1][2]

>> 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.
> 
> This is obviously no consolation, or even a solution.
> there is a lack of people to detect import problems before they occur.
> believing that the solution is to make these people waste more time
> than they need to, on the pretext that there are plenty of people 
> willing and able to do an import but who don't know how to send
> an email, is a farce.

Likewise, I don't buy the argument that a typical import proposer would 
give up because of the mailing list workflow. They're more likely to get 
discouraged by the responses they get here, or the lack thereof. :-) 
However, I do think it's a barrier to others who may be less technically 
proficient but have something useful to say about the dataset or 
proposed tagging. You deserve that context too as you evaluate a proposal.

Some on this list may be aware that the U.S. community has been 
maintaining its own imports-us list for some time. I don't know how it 
came to be, but for years Mailman has gotten utterly confused by 
crossposts across imports, imports-us, talk-us, and talk-us-*, as people 
attempt to combine this list's review with a review from the local 
community.

We can of course say "don't do that", but it's just an example of how 
the technology can sometimes stand in the way of substantive 
discussions. Discourse will be no stranger to technical pitfalls either, 
but I don't see as much momentum around solving the mailing list's 
warts, such as by upgrading to Mailman v3 and Hyperkitty.

[1] https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk/2023-June/088322.html
[2] https://community.openstreetmap.org/t/100549/

-- 
minh at nguyen.cincinnati.oh.us