[Imports] Migrating Imports RFC to Community Forum

[James Crawford]

> Imports are also difficult to do right. I think that someone who 
> cannot be bothered (in the best case) or lacks the technical 
> capability (in the worst case) to tackle a mailing list is never the 
> right person to execute an import. We can't have an importer tune out 
> mid-process because they have encountered an issue and are unwilling 
> to fire up an archaic JOSM plugin to fix it.

Good point. I wanted to elaborate on this with some thoughts that I've 
had: I believe a category on the discourse could have a post with a 
detailed template that users can follow when posting about their import. 
Time and time again I witness prospective importers making mailing list 
messages without even linking their wiki page, and often also not 
completing all steps that are expected before writing the list. I see 
other users constantly asking for more context to be provided, and 
requesting basic tasks be completed that should have already been long 
done. Having a template to follow can make it easier to understand what 
is expected from a post, rather than having to go into the mailing list 
blind.

> Neither is Discourse of course - it can still happen that you get 
> buy-in on Discourse and then you find out that local mappers are 
> overwhelmingly against what you are doing, just they weren't on 
> Discourse. 
Sure, it's damn near impossible to get good levels of representation in 
OSM discussions, due to the disconnected and spread out nature of the 
community. But I will say that I've never seen any other channel of 
communication have the same level of international participation except 
maybe discord, but for obvious reasons I don't suggest moving formal 
discussion there! While you are right that a user unable to use a 
mailing list probably shouldn't be importing, is it fair to say that 
those users should be excluded from the discussion?
> Plus, I have heard people say that if you are on a low-bandwidth 
> Internet connection, Discourse is a huge step back compared to a 
> mailing list. It is possible that Discourse is excluding people too - 
> just different people from those excluded by mailing lists.
I can also see this possibly being a problem. however, you should 
definitely take a look at this discussion 
<https://meta.discourse.org/t/tutorial-for-using-discourse-over-email/111308> 
about using the discourse forum as a mailing list. I'm not sure if 
that's what you're referring to in the other part of this message, but I 
think that'd be great for bridging the gap.
> Having said that, I am typing this in my thunderbird email client 
Me as well!


Thanks for the input,

--James Crawford (SherbetS)
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