[Osmf-talk] First Meeting of Diversity and Inclusion Special Committee

[Kathleen Lu]

Speaking personally, when you already have email (personal and work), slack
(for work and professional), Twitter (personal and professional), and
WeChat (personal), WhatsApp (OSM), adding yet another messaging app simply
gets to be too much. There's nothing wrong with Telegram, but if my friends
and family aren't on it, it's a pretty significant hurdle to download, sign
up, remember to check it... For me, the barrier to OSMUS slack was much
lower because I was already using slack, and I only caved to downloading
WhatsApp because of SotM. I imagine someone used to Telegram probably feels
the same way about my normal communication channels, maybe even including
email.

On Fri, Feb 14, 2020 at 7:51 AM Andy Townsend <ajt1047 at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 12/02/2020 19:58, Michal Migurski wrote:
> > 4) Some aspects of the diversity discussion foreground
> > northern/western participation channels by (for example) wondering why
> > other communities aren't participating in Talk@, SOTM, or other
> > locations. I’m interested in trying to flip this question to ask why
> > core board and community participants aren't showing up in forums like
> > geographic Telegram groups or other locations called out at
> > https://openstreetmap.community ? In a recent post, Allan commented
> > that he was often greeted with surprise by local communities who had
> > no experience of an OSMF board member reaching out and saying hello.
>
> I've occasionally dipped into a couple of Telegram channels when I've
> needed to contact the community in places where that's the most-used
> communication channel, but using the mobile app's a bit challenging for
> a traditionalist like me - it's a pain to sign in to, you're continually
> saying no to information you don't want it to access, and the UI for
> access from a desktop web browser's pretty awful too.  I end up using it
> in a similar way to the way that I use OSM US' Slack - as a way to
> contact people who are mostly there and often not in other channels, but
> I certainly wouldn't use either unless I absolutely had to.
>
> Another problem with Telegram is that at least one OSM community
> worldwide has struggled to access it (see
> https://forum.openstreetmap.org/viewtopic.php?id=67507 for more info).
> Obviously this is more generally a potential threat to any centralised
> infrastructure, but it seems to be an issue with Telegram now.
> Obviously people are welcome to talk about OSM wherever they like
> (Facebook, Tiktok, comments below the line in the Daily Mail - all
> places I'm unlikely to darken the door of) but it doesn't mean that it's
> a good idea to try and have meaningful conversations there and only there.
>
> Best Regards,
>
> Andy
>
> (from the Data Working Group, but writing in a personal capacity)
>
>
>
>
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