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

[Mike Thompson]

On Fri, Jul 7, 2023 at 12:43 PM Minh Nguyen <minh at nguyen.cincinnati.oh.us>
wrote:

>
> 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. :-)

It seems that the people that participate in the imports mailing list are
very particular when it comes to imports and automated edits, and while I
generally agree with that, I can see where some might have different
views.  To highlight the differences I have stated the extreems:
* "It is better to have an empty map rather than introduce all but the
smallest fraction of erroneous data through an import or automated edit" vs
"the lack of data itself is an error, and therefore as long as at least 51%
of the imported data is accurate the map is better off with the import."
* "If the data to be imported is unlikely to be maintained by the
community, then it is better that the import not take place." vs "at least
we will have valid data until it goes stale, and we will worry about that
then."
* "If one is going to go to the trouble of doing an import, one might as
well capture all of the relevant information from the imported data into
the appropriate tags." vs "capture the most important information in tags,
worry about the other information later"
* "The data must have an appropriate license, or a statement that the data
can be imported into OSM with our ODbL license from someone who has the
authority to make such a statement." vs "someone at the government office
responded to my email and said that the data is 'available to the public'
or such and such government agency that owns the data has an open records
policy"

I can't help but think one of the real reasons for moving the discussion of
imports to the forum is that people don't like the answers they get on the
mailing list.  While we can have different views, the approach should be to
openly debate those views on the official channels, not do an end run and
change the venue where one might get a more receptive response.

The fact that apparently more people are subscribed to the imports part of
the forum vs the imports mailing list is really disturbing.  If someone
cares about this community and imports, shouldn't they subscribe to the
official communication channel about imports, even if they also subscribe
to one or more unofficial channels as well?  The fact that they don't,
indicates to me that they don't care about the community, or have been
misled to believe that the imports mailing list isn't the official channel,
or that perhaps there is no official channel, and as long as an import is
discussed somewhere then it is ok.

Mike




> 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
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Imports mailing list
> Imports at openstreetmap.org
> https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/imports
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/imports/attachments/20230707/9c9782e2/attachment.htm>