[Tagging] I am reverting an edit to the "Names" page on the Wiki -- where to discuss that topic

[Peter Elderson]

The tagging list discussions tend to reflect the discussions on other platforms nicely.
I value that, and often take points raised here back to other forums. I see other mappers do the same. Conversely, points raised in a local community are checked against international opinions. There is a cloud of impact around the ML list, which I value highly. You don't get that on a wiki talk page.

Fr Gr Peter Elderson

> Op 25 aug. 2022 om 08:12 heeft stevea <steveaOSM at softworkers.com> het volgende geschreven:
> 
> Dear OSM Community:
> 
> We use many, many media in OSM to "communicate amongst ourselves."  We could argue forever about how influential each of those either are or might be, but I have little cheer we get wide agreement doing so, because we will forever disagree on the metrics we use to weigh each of the inputs and longer-scale, wider-scope influences.
> 
> Briefly, because "a few dozen" Contributors to "a" mailing list might seem quantitatively insignificant, it might also be exceedingly significant, because of wildly hard-to-quantify values (such as the readers we will never be able to account, how much influence any individual message or thread might have, because it was or wasn't posted by a respected, influential, august, ignorable, mediocre, unknown...etc. kind of poster.  This is a rabbit hole that we don't want to go down (in my opinion), because of the rancorous and likely unquantifiable values of something as subjective as "influential" (on others, simply because of her post, for example).  Other "wildly opposite of expected values given initial hunches" can be found in all sorts of dimensions.  This is difficult, and it is important to point that out.  Especially:  we will likely never be able to accurately "quantify" the occasional "magic spark" that a single post by a single user can, does and sometimes might make on any other given user who reads it, and that ends up inspiring somebody to do something which takes OSM in a wonderful new direction.  Things like this in a project as organic as OSM can and do happen.
> 
> Suffice it to say that "has the broadest base" or "~35 active posters last month" and "OSMCha boasts X-thousand queries and Y-hundred fixes" (over any given time) — see, even tools like our Tasking Mangers both blend and blur what is "doing work in OSM" and "doing good communication amongst ourselves" — are nearly futile arguments to make as data inputs to "how effective are our communications tools."  Whatever "results" these inputs might yield will almost always be suspect, and will rarely if ever be widely agreed upon.
> 
> Rather than exhale all this air (of whatever temperature), I'd like to see more productive discussions on what sort of harmonization of communication AMONG our tools we'd like to see.  Our Discourse server has some of this discussion going on, and it is encouraging, but these efforts are going to take a lot of community input, lots of hard work by smart people in OSM who will need to ponder for a while and code / implement for likely a longer while, and this is going to take medium-to-longer amounts of time (years to a decade is how I think of it, after 13 years in OSM).
> 
> We have the time:  OSM's long-term, open-ended future is very bright.  Let's apply our patience to this.  When we do (and we have many times), we tend to bear fruit over the longer term.  When we appear to "take special interests" or "point at the specifics of a single person, a single 'channel' of communication" or other "well, our communication data are in SO MANY SILOS!" (usually out of frustration), kinds of less-effective tacks, well, less so.
> 
> I don't think the tagging list is exactly appropriate (and therein is an example of the problem), but here is where this particular edge of this fractal discussion started, so I'm here with a watering can to grow it somehow.
> 
> Thank you for reading.
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