[Imports] Migrating Imports RFC to Community Forum

Wed Jun 21 14:36:51 UTC 2023

Hello Mike, James, and readers,

At the State of the Map US conference earlier this month TomTom presented some research they did on the community communication channels used by OSM users. They used scraped data to analyze the most popular communication channels - the mailing lists were used much less than the community forum, discord, mastodon, telegram and the OSM US slack. So, while the mailing lists are important, they are just one small piece of the communication puzzle with a smaller audience. 
They also found that most replies on the various platforms are from the same handful of "supercontributors", while there were 3x-10x as many readers, the demographics were also very different for each communication platform. Unfortunately, I do not believe the session was recorded.

That said, if you are subscribed and reading this, everyone is welcome to share thoughts and opinions, what are yours?

Personally, I support the use of the community forums to track information about imports, it's all-around easier and a much nicer layout, etc. If this mailing list was subscribed to the import section of the forum so when a new post is made (i.e. a new thread, not every single response) this mailing list receives the post via email with a link to the forum thread, and to start a response. 

Regards,
Phil (PCarew_EG)

-----Original Message-----
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Sent: Wednesday, June 21, 2023 4:00 AM
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Subject: [External] Imports Digest, Vol 168, Issue 5

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Today's Topics:

   1. Re: Migrating Imports RFC to Community Forum (James Crawford)
   2. Re: Migrating Imports RFC to Community Forum (Mike Thompson)
   3. Re: Migrating Imports RFC to Community Forum (James Crawford)

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Message: 1
Date: Tue, 20 Jun 2023 08:06:18 -0500
From: James Crawford <sherbets at disroot.org>
To: Mike Thompson <miketho16 at gmail.com>
Cc: imports at openstreetmap.org
Subject: Re: [Imports] Migrating Imports RFC to Community Forum
Message-ID: <4595e444-fc22-585d-8203-78568b1ef887 at disroot.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"; Format="flowed"

On 6/19/23 19:09, Mike Thompson wrote:
> How specifically are mailing lists difficult to "understand"?? It is 
> pretty simple, if you want to say something, make sure you reply to 
> the list, and type your response.? That is it.? Nothing complicated.
Well, I will say I was definitely a mailing list newb for some time. I had lots of trouble understanding the thread structure and the replying to list stuff. And messages like the one William sent following this one also were confusing, where your whole message was copied at the bottom of the page, and then cited separately in his message. The learning curve is higher, and? the functionality is less like I mentioned.
> Do you have metrics on how many people are subscribed to the lists or 
> are you just going off of how many different people typically respond 
> on a given thread?? I am not sure that a "very small group of users 
> have full oversight", only that a small group of users speak up.? I 
> suspect that a lot of us just read the postings and seldom respond.
See William's message :)
> A bigger issue with regards to imports is that I suspect that many 
> imports are taking place without following the established guidelines.
This is one of a few different things I'm working on to crack down on imports that don't follow the guidelines.

Thanks,

--SherbetS (James Crawford)
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Message: 2
Date: Tue, 20 Jun 2023 08:27:40 -0600
From: Mike Thompson <miketho16 at gmail.com>
To: James Crawford <sherbets at disroot.org>
Cc: imports at openstreetmap.org
Subject: Re: [Imports] Migrating Imports RFC to Community Forum
Message-ID:
	<CALJoUkvBDgzt1mEGqDxGuJEEJPhin7y_-X-eowfVs3KibcSm+g at mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"

On Tue, Jun 20, 2023 at 7:06?AM James Crawford <sherbets at disroot.org> wrote:

>
>  I had lots of trouble understanding the thread structure
>
How messages are formatted is almost completely up to the individual author
and the email client.  If you are replying to a message you are free to
retain, delete, or cut/paste/rearrange the content of the original
message.  The list serve software simply forwards your message to all who
have subscribed, provided you have subscribed as well (depending on the
settings for the specific list) and have not been blocked.  Your email
client may, or may not, group messages with similar subjects together, that
really does not have much to do with the list server.

> and the replying to list stuff.
>
In regards to replying, the list address is just like any other recipient.
 It is safest to just "reply all."

And messages like the one William sent following this one also were
> confusing, where your whole message was copied at the bottom of the page,
> and then cited separately in his message.
>
That is the result of how he and his email client choose to format the
message.  My understanding is that the prefered way is to only reply
inline, and delete those parts of the message to which you are not
specifically responding.   However, if you do it differently, most people
will still get your point.

> See William's message :)
>
Thanks William, I will respond later.

This is one of a few different things I'm working on to crack down on
> imports that don't follow the guidelines.
>
Good luck.   I think too many people have the attitude that they are going
to do "whatever they want", including discussing their import on a
non-official channel - if it is discussed at all.

Mike
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Message: 3
Date: Tue, 20 Jun 2023 22:30:51 -0500
From: James Crawford <sherbets at disroot.org>
To: imports at openstreetmap.org
Subject: Re: [Imports] Migrating Imports RFC to Community Forum
Message-ID: <99bd8574-e8a6-72b7-b981-eb85ea8bc579 at disroot.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed

Is voting an appropriate option on a decision like this?

If so, where should I submit a vote?

--SherbetS (James Crawford)

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