[talk-au] Discussion A: Is this forum fit for purpose?

[Herbert.Remi]

# Discussion A: Is this forum fit for purpose?

 “PLEASE KEEP IT BRIEF. SPACE OF OF A PREMIUM. THANKS, JANE”

## The Issue

The forum needs to be robust. It needs to tolerate a lot of traffic. It needs to work on the busy days, not just the quiet. It needs a functionality that allows you to manage congestion. It needs to tolerate diverse interest and writing styles. It needs to have room for growth.

**I believe OSM is too important for anything else!**

If you love OSM, and I am sure you do, then we need a more modern platform then this. This mailing list is so 90s.

The good news is there is plenty of options and I am sure that here there is the technical expertise and ability to put it on a better footing.

## Features that would be of value:

- You need to be able to tailor your view of the content without intervention of a group moderator or group consensus.

- You need to filter the content for topics your interest in and topics you’re not

- You need to filter the content with posts from people you like and block those that you don’t (whitelist and blacklist).

- You need to be able to search by including and excluding keywords, preferably both in the same query

- You need to be able to search by post tags, again both including and excluding

- Preferable, it would be best to combine both tag and keyword searches (but many platforms have problems with this)

- Every post should be tagged with country and state of jurisdiction. The country could be default and I only suggest it as at some time other this idea may spread.

- Provide the option to tag (plain text) the posts with the topic under discussion e.g. highway, lifecycle, announcement, events, registration, mapping party, instructions, and message type (“The Facts”, “The Issue”, etc)

- You should be able to move between chat groups and follow multiple chat groups. Slack does this well.

- A post should be able to include “attachments” that are not visible until open: office files, photos, PDF, HTML links. This saves screen space.

- Posts should have a header. It provides a (searchable) overview and the actual post could be blended in and out.

- A smartphone app would be great. Why? Seek data shows most job applications are done on the app and take less than 15 minutes. It is remarkable how much you get done on the way to work on the bus.

- The help provided by this forum should be made available as soon as it is posted: 365 days a year, 24 hours per day.

- Ideally, it should support a "forms" function for registration to group events (or link to an external platform that supports such)

- It would be great to have a calendar function for events.

- We need more than a plain text. Rich text functionality is advisable. A HTML capable editor is an option (transparent). As I have previously mentioned, "markdown" is a popular modern option support by FOSS/GitHub

Everybody is welcome in an OSM forum, no matter the interest. We need everybody we can find to help with this project. We should try to create an environment where is happy to do what they do best, and come and go as they please.

I welcome your comments. 😊
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