[Talk-GB] Forum (was OSM Analysis New Data and bot)

[Graham Stewart]

> Jerry Clough said:
> Do you mean like this one:
[1]http://forum.openstreetmap.org/viewforum.php?id=5.

I was thinking more like the layout in nabble:
   http://gis.638310.n2.nabble.com/OpenStreetMap-f660402.html
which I discovered shortly after making that comment and goes
quite a way towards a usable solution for me.
(Though I notice it doesn't seem to have all the mailing lists on
it).

> It's just not very popular.

I'm not surprised. It's pretty horrible.
Not sure why we need a forum, dozens of mailing lists (+ multiple
archives), wiki discussions, hundreds of blogs and a
stackexchange site.

Multiple channels of communication is good, but too much choice
can be a bad thing. Noobs don't know where to go. Decisions made
in one place are never communicated to the others.
I'm of the opinion that if you want to build a strong community
then it helps to gather everyone in the same place.

Tom Hughes said (on the other thread):
> How is a mailing list with multiple public archives any more or
less
> cliquey than a web forum?

Well for a start you have to publicly expose your email address
to post here, which may put some folk off (I know I was
hesitant).
And secondly there are no links to OSM profiles so you don't
really know who you are talking to and what their agenda might
be.
Thirdly it isn't scalable. This list only really works because
hardly anyone posts on it. I'm a member of forums where there are
often over a thousand posts in a day - that would be a bit of a
pain by email.
Fourthly it just feels unnatural to me. My email is generally for
private discussions. Public discussions belong on a public
discussion forum.
> They also have threaded discussions, at least unless your mail
client
> was written in about 1985 or something.

Actually my webmail doesn't do threads ( http://fastmail.fm ) -
my phone does, but it's a pain to try and quote lots of text on
the phone.
A proper forum would support quoting multiple users in one reply
(i.e. nicely formatted in quote boxes with links back to their
original messages) which doesn't really fit with email threading.
Likewise other useful features such as polls, sticky threads,
consistent formatting, image posting, moderators, spellcheckers,
swear filters.

> Far and away the biggest advantage of mailing lists is that
they deliver
> messages right to my desktop where I can skip through dozens of
messages
> in a matter of seconds.

Most forums provide email notifications if that's what you really
prefer.
Or it could provide an RSS feed - either for the entire forum or
just for threads you are watching.

> By comparison the UI of web forums is just horrendous and time
sapping
> to an extraordinary degree.

Sorry Tom, but you've clearly used some awful forums.
A good organised forum should be faster and easier than trawling
through email.

Anyway, let's not get carried away. My original comment was just
a throw away aside.
I'm not about to start a campaign to ditch the lists and bring in
forums.

GrahamS

References

1. http://forum.openstreetmap.org/viewforum.php?id=5
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