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

[stevea]

On Tue, Oct 12, 2021 at 7:03 PM brad haack <bradhaack at fastmail.com> wrote:
> 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 think people are perfectly capable of deciding for themselves which communications channels they wish to use -- that includes both the 3,500 people that are members of the OSMUS Slack workspace and the 500 people that are subscribers to the talk-us mailing list.  I certainly would ignore any demands about what tools I choose to communicate with, as if anyone had that power.

Brad, with great respect to you I say these things:  you seem to contradict yourself here.  First you say "let's poll or vote for the prime discussion forum," second you say "I would ignore" (essentially that).

Rather than seem like I'm a dissenting rock-thrower (I'm not), please allow me to broaden scope and say something we can all agree upon, inspired by Frederik's (and Ian's and others'...) post(s) along these same lines:  "no matter what medium one chooses to communicate over, some folks are going to be missed," and "there is a lot going on in OSM."  I believe all of us can agree on both of these basic tenets.

That said, anything autocratic (even less so, like our Voting / Elections for tag proposals) don't necessarily HAVE to be respected in OSM.  We do a lot of work to go there, and it is amazingly polite of us who do so and even abide by results, but the (ugly?) truth is that "any of us can tag as any of us like."  I honestly believe we do much, much better with consensus-based results, and "voting" and especially consensus (harder to achieve, but "stickier") are excellent forays into achieving such good results.  But, and I say this here and now not to be contrary but to be honest about how this must be discussed:  any "vote" that says "here's how we MUST have our 'prime discussions' and make binding decisions" will be ignored.  Please, let us not fool ourselves otherwise.

It is and will very, VERY likely remain true that we have and will continue to have a wide spectrum of communication methods / tools / technology to use amongst ourselves.  Can we LISTEN to one another about what are the good / better / best aspects of what makes effective ones attractive and useful to ourselves, improving what we might develop ourselves as a "homegrown" tool?  Sure we can.  It makes sense we do so.

I offer my deep gratitude for Adam's distillation of what he finds as advantages of using Slack for OSM_related communication:  thank you, Adam, that was great.

Momentum builds, I am glad to say.