[Tagging] Time to split the list?

[Peter Elderson]

Dian Ågesson <me at diacritic.xyz>:

> I have found it very difficult to keep track of the conversations on this
> list. I have seen suggestions or questions crowded out by ongoing, broad
> discussions. I’ve seen a lot of words about theories and philosophies that
> don’t really relate to a specific tag
>
...
>
Splitting the audience by purpose would allow more nuanced conversations to
> take place in parallel to “routine” tagging enquiries. With less
> overwhelming lists, more editors would be inclined to sign up (or at least
> not unsubscribe).
>
> I’m happy to be told this is a bad idea, but I think it may help people
> communicate better. Rather than competing for airtime in a noisy room,
> people can have time to breathe.
>
I recognize the problem, but a split is not the solution. On the one hand
we want to exclude things we are not particularly interested in at that
time; on the other hand it's all related and one thing leads to another so
we want to know what's going on. And it's fluid: interests shift, broaden
and narrow; experience grows; avalable time shrinks and grows. And
everything is dumped into your mailbox.
Mail is simply not adequate to handle this kind of ongoing, chaotic,
multi-layered debate, especially when many people subscribe.

With forum software, the contributor is at the wheel. Division by purpose;
threaded topics, built-in archive, search, sticky's with help, information,
and useful links: it's all there. Still it's one platform, and you are free
to ignore, start, contribute. People enlist and unenlist themselves.
Notifications by mail: only if you want, and only for your own topics, and
you can mass delete them at will. Or use the digest feature.

PS Chat is worse than mail, especially if you want to look back what has
been said by who about what.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/tagging/attachments/20220217/5dc62468/attachment.htm>