[Imports] Migrating Imports RFC to Community Forum

[William Edmisten]

I'm also in favor of migrating to Discourse.

> 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.

I've only been participating in this mailing list for a few months, but
here is my opinion as a newcomer:

I actually think this speaks more to a lack of tooling around imports than
the skills or persistence of the importer.
Although there may be some benefit to gatekeeping the import process, I'm
skeptical of the claim
that preference/ability to use a mailing list has much correlation with
being able to execute a good 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.

Again, I think this is an issue of poor tooling. Ideally, an import would
not be bottlenecked on the user who proposed it,
and would not rely on anything "archaic" to resolve issues.
I will move this thought to a separate topic, I don't mean to derail the
current thread.

> I believe a category on the discourse could have a post with a detailed
template that users can follow when posting about their import.

That sounds like a great idea, that would benefit both the user proposing
the import and the community discussing it.

Best,

William Edmisten (wcedmisten)

On Mon, Jun 19, 2023 at 9:55 AM James Crawford via Imports <
imports at openstreetmap.org> wrote:

>
> 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)
> _______________________________________________
> Imports mailing list
> Imports at openstreetmap.org
> https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/imports
>
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