[Talk-us] Forums/email lists for OSM Discussions

[brad haack]

I'm in the anti Slack camp.  I don't use Slack for anything else.  I 
don't want to use it for this either when we have better options.   We 
have mailing lists, the wiki, and the forum.    I never got the memo 
that Slack was the main discussion app.
Based on this thread there is obviously no consensus right now to use 
Slack as the prime discussion media.

Email is easy, I'm not sure why the resistance to that.  With a decent 
email app it's easy to view as threaded.  No, you don't have to get 
notification for every email.  No, you shouldn't reply individually 
(reply to list).   You don't have to read everything, it's easy to 
ignore/delete what's isn't relevant to you.  The forum 
(forum.openstreetmap.org) would be easy, but the US thread doesn't get 
used much.   The wiki is clumsy and probably should be relegated to 
voting and the final document.

I think all of the different discussion media are counterproductive and 
only serve to make chaos.   I think there needs to be a poll or a vote 
for the prime discussion forum and the active members should abide by 
that and encourage the use of that forum.  I'll join Slack if that's 
what the consensus is.  I hope the Slackers move on if that's what the 
consensus is. Obviously we can't stop the discussion on other sites, but 
focus the serious stuff in one place.

I'm open to options, but the current chaos is absurd.

Brad

On 10/10/21 1:04 PM, stevea wrote:

> On Sat, Oct 9, 2021 at 9:55 AM Frederik Ramm <frederik at remote.org> wrote:
> whichever medium you choose you'll exclude some people who refuse to 
> use it. As long as it remains informal and you're not later told "this 
> was agreed on Slack" I guess it's ok.
> On Sat, October 9, 2021 at 12:06:17 PM PDT Zeke Farwell 
> <ezekielf at gmail.com> wrote:
> Absolutely.  Currently the number of US mappers active on Slack is far 
> greater than those active on this mailing list.  So Slack is currently 
> the inclusive place for discussions to happen among the US mapper 
> community.  Despite the smaller number of active subscribers on this 
> list, I did think it was important to post a message here as well in 
> case there were interested folks who aren't also on Slack.  To really 
> cover all the bases I would need to post on the OpenStreetMap Reddit, 
> Discord, Telegram, forum, and probably other places as well.
While the effect I might create here and now by posting feels to be 
likely quite minimal, I feel compelled to say so anyway:  please allow 
me to express my disappointment in what I see as the more-and-more 
widespread use of non-open (proprietary, commercial) methods of 
communication in OSM.

I have referred to Slack as a "secret sauce walkie-talkie" before and do 
not use it at all, neither for OSM communication / collaboration nor any 
other purpose.  Why?  Because it seems (to me, obviously not others) 
that something proprietary and requiring a legal agreement with an 
onerous license (UNlike ODbL which is sensible and not onerous) is 
inconsistent with the spirit of OSM. That said, it does appear that many 
use Slack for OSM collaboration, and because I appear to be a 
"refusenik" regarding Slack, I miss out on what is communicated via its 
closed platform.  Frederick is correct ("whichever medium you choose 
you'll exclude some people..."), but he doesn't have to be correct 
forever in this regard.

I get a lot done with talk lists and our wiki, two comm-techs which are 
open and "free" (in both senses).  Others find these to be insufficient 
and like or even prefer the interactivity that Slack provides.

Zeke is correct in his exasperation (that we share) of "OSM Reddit, 
Discord, Telegram, forum and probably other places as well" being so 
scattered:  it seems everybody wants "in on" the (transparent) method of 
"capturing" (and OWNING) communication via a proprietary platform.  Yes, 
this is a longer term issue for OSM to "solve," but I continue to 
believe that there is an open source / open data method for these kinds 
of communications that OSM might "standardize" upon.  For example, Zoom, 
while proprietary, has an open source complement in Jitsi (fully 
web-based, meaning it doesn't suffer from "Windows but not Mac, Android 
but not iOS..." sorts of issues), with perhaps 80% to 85% of feature set 
overlap (not bad). I have not examined the universe of potential open 
source candidates that might realistically similarly complement Slack, 
but I'm certain that (over the longer term) OSM can move towards such a 
platform.  I have used (sometimes open, but alas, obsolete by now, 
usually closed, while employed by companies that use them) such 
collaboration software for decades:  no matter how "seemingly crude" the 
technology (and we are not "crude" today, except perhaps by future 
standards), there is ALWAYS a method to do this.  It usually takes some 
dedicated software development and ongoing maintenance, but the open 
source / open data community often, maybe even usually, is able to fill 
these niches where they appear (like here).

Much as there is a US Trails Working group, (this is crossposted to 
talk; its origin is talk-us), there might be a "Real-time collaboration 
open software" group.  Well, I can hope, anyway.  Is anybody up for 
spearheading this clearly longer-term endeavor for our project?  I 
seriously dislike the continuing trend I see in OSM of us handing over 
our rights and data (via Slack's onerous licensing agreement, for 
example) to private companies rather than keeping them open, like they 
deserve to be.

SteveA
OSM Contributor (since 2009)
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