[Tagging] An after-burner meta-discussion

[stevea]

Good.

I have also been pointed to:
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc7282

as an excellent helpful read (15 to 60 minutes depending on your language / English reading skills).  These are observations the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) has learned as it has implemented consensus for decades.  Interestingly, the IETF also uses the technique of "humming," which seems to work well for many reasons that (ahem) "resonate well" with the consensus structure / process.  The religious order known as Quakers, or Society of Friends, has been doing its version of consensus for centuries, many other groups / organizations use some form of it.

Consensus can be challenging, especially for those who are not familiar with it because you've never done it before, and it isn't (usually) a very fast way to do things.  But Internet-related things (like a global mapping database) do like to "go fast," and therein lies at least one apparent challenge.  It is elusive to define precisely, but it does have that "I know it when I see it" quality, so what I expect might happen is a very distinct "OSM-flavored" consensus emerges that suits us.  I think some of the pieces are here, but the specifics of "how" and the tools we might use would need a fairly complete overhaul / changeout.  It does not appear that a mail-list is the correct medium to achieve it.  I could be wrong about that (though, I'm not hopeful).

Will OSM ever "get there" as fully as it might aspire to?  It isn't about what happens (just) in this thread, which will die before we know it.  It is about what YOU want to see happen in OSM.  This thread is merely a nudge ahead for anybody who wants to.  Marcos, Topographe Fou and David (and others) add fuel and fan the flames, but if this is to turn into a truly burning fire, it must grow organically from this tiny spark here.  Well, maybe we have more than a spark, we might have ignition.

Actually, I'd like to largely step aside at this point (and mostly watch).