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

[Eric Patrick]

I don't see Slack as a "formal" place for making decisions, as those still
have to be voted on, right (I'm new to OSM, but not Slack or Discord, or
map editing)? Slack and Discord offer the real time conversations that take
place about whatever topic comes up. A conversation may end in 5 minutes
because everyone who wanted to say something happened to be there at the
same time, and can communicate their thoughts in real time as well. Evin &
Adam bring up a good points about Slack and Discord, you can be in as many
or few rooms as you want. I'm not in the New York room as I don't edit in
New York, so I don't need to know what's going on in that state.

When it comes to email, it takes longer to read, longer to respond, etc. I
also have to read through the BS about New York. Something that may never
apply to me. As someone who lives at the very tip of the country,
conversations about snow mean nothing to me. On the flip side, when
Hurricane XXXX comes along, those in the New York area don't need to know
what's going on in Florida about the road closures or when the state turns
on contraflow for the interstates (which is something those in Louisiana,
Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, and Texas all know about first hand.

Eric

On Tue, Oct 12, 2021 at 9:57 PM Adam Franco <adamfranco at gmail.com> wrote:

> I'm a major free-software advocate and have been for more than two decades
> -- all of the software I write personally and professionally is open-source
> (and GPL where possible). That said, I can hold my nose and use proprietary
> tools when the advantage those tools provide is above and beyond what is
> possible with open-source tools AND where that proprietary software is
> serving an ancillary helper function rather than underpinning the core
> product/goal.
>
> While I've really enjoyed the community engagement I've had through the
> OSMUS Slack, I'd be happy to switch to Discourse or another open-source
> system that has similar functionality. For those not familiar with it,
> these are the major advantages I've found in using Slack for OSM-related
> communication and which I hope any replacement forum or Discourse system
> can replicate:
>
> Screen-shot of the OSM-US Slack
> <https://drive.google.com/file/d/10rzmspt15R2oVAjm5N5iIwlHR5PgvWLg/view?usp=sharing>
>
>    - *User-created "channels" / "sub-forums"*
>    Unlike the mailing lists which require admin-assistance to create and
>    are relatively undiscoverable, Slack allows any user to create new
>    "channels" and for all other users to browse the list of channels and
>    subscribe in just one click so they can follow along. This self-organizing
>    principle lets the community self-organize on areas of interest from
>    highway shields, to trails, or golf. It's easy to browse the list for
>    topics of interest and also easy to scan the list of channels you've
>    subscribed to for updates.
>
>    -
> *Discussion threads within "channels" *Slack only allows one level of
>    threading which can be a bit limiting (we've had threads with over 100
>    posts!), but being able to break out into threads within a topic area and
>    follow that thread (or not) is important. Without threads, some channels
>    can be too "chatty" and get overwhelming to follow. For example, I lurk in
>    the #general channel and only follow threads that are of particular
>    interest, whereas in #highway-classification I follow every thread. One
>    annoying limitation of Slack is that it doesn't let you auto-follow every
>    thread in a channel, making it possible to miss a threaded reply that came
>    in later after you've read a post.
>
>    While I can mute mailing-list threads, lots of times people munge the
>    subject lines and I keep seeing the same topic popping up again and again.
>
>    -
> *"Likes" / Emoji responses *While seemingly trivial, emoji responses
>    allow people to give a basic response to a post without cluttering the chat
>    with lots of "Yes!", "Thank you", "Wow!" posts that ping all subscribers
>    and annoy them with extra "chatter". They are also a simple way to do
>    light-weight polling.
>
>    -
> *Image attachments *To share the screen-shot above with this mailing list
>    I had to figure out a way to put my image in a publicly accessible place,
>    then get the URL for it, then confirm that the URL was visible to others in
>    a private browser, then link to that in this email. I'd have attached the
>    screen shot to this email, but I was afraid that the mailing list would
>    strip it or some subscribers wouldn't get the message at all because it was
>    too big.
>
>    Easy, built-in image sharing is key to illustrating concepts and makes
>    the conversation much more streamlined. Slack does this well, as to many
>    other forum systems.
>
>    -
> *Basic formatting Bold*, *italics*, code, links <https://www.example.com/>.
>    These just aid expression.
>
>    -
> *Near real-time messaging *While composing posts, Slack shows new
>    messages that come in before yours. This makes it easy to not repeat what
>    someone else just said more eloquently. It also helps keep people from
>    talking past each other by keeping the group conversation in a single
>    stream. Does Discourse do this? This is a big problem with email where the
>    response delays are long.
>
>    -
> *Customization of notifications, read/unread, subscriptions *Most email
>    clients aren't terrible at this. I like being able to have my Slack chat
>    window open and see a list of new posts in channels I'm subscribed to and
>    new replies to threads I'm following. I haven't used Discourse enough to
>    know how it handles subscriptions and notifications, but some forum
>    software is much worse than email or Slack in this regard. If it doesn't
>    keep track of things I want to follow then it will become overwhelming to
>    use.
>
>    - *Direct messages*
>    I don't use these much, but they are great for reaching out with a
>    personal note of thanks or consolation after witnessing a challenging
>    interaction. This is easy in email.
>
>
> On Tue, Oct 12, 2021 at 8:26 PM Evin Fairchild <evindfair at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> On Tue, Oct 12, 2021, 4:30 PM Ian Dees <ian.dees at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Email is not a great communication platform for many people to have
>>> useful conversations. It's easy to write lengthy posts that slide off
>>> topic. It's easy to expand or shift the topic in an email you're writing
>>> while someone else is writing a response, making it easy for people to talk
>>> past one another and not make any progress on a consensus. These things
>>> combine to make email mailing lists a pretty negative/unfriendly
>>> communications channel for lots of people.
>>>
>>> Also, mailing lists are technically difficult for some people to
>>> understand. Some email clients format emails weirdly, making it hard to
>>> follow what's going on. Some people top-post, some people quote-post, some
>>> people bottom-post.
>>>
>>> As list moderator, it's very difficult to maintain community norms on a
>>> mailing list. I can't move posts over to another topic to encourage people
>>> to stay on topic. If I want a cooling off period I have to moderate the
>>> whole list. To block spam, I have to moderate all new posters.
>>>
>>
>> Totally agree with what you're saying, and I've experienced many of the
>> things you're saying myself. I've been on this mailing list for probably
>> like 9(?) years and when I first joined OSM in 2010, even back then I
>> thought it was odd that mailing lists were used as a communication platform
>> for the OSM community. It seemed utterly archaic to me. After all, forums
>> are much better for this type of discussion and those were a thing in 2004
>> when OSM started out!
>>
>> A forum was added a few years after I joined, which was a welcome
>> addition but even I haven't really used it at all. I bet it would have
>> gotten more use if it had replaced the mailing lists at the time it was
>> introduced.
>>
>>
>> One thing to note is that OSMF is considering replacing the existing
>>> forum, Q&A website, and maybe eventually the mailing lists with an instance
>>> of Discourse at https://community.openstreetmap.org/. I encourage folks
>>> interested in this topic to check it out and leave feedback.
>>>
>>
>> This seems really interesting. Would love to see Discourse replace the
>> mailing lists!
>>
>> Personally, I like Slack, but I do understand some people's reluctance to
>> use it due to it not being an open source platform. However it's great to
>> be able to have a really good chat platform. The thing I like most about it
>> is that there's a way to have discussion threads so that of someone asks a
>> question, the replies are all in one place.
>>
>> And besides, chat platforms like Slack, Discord, IRC, etc have their
>> advantages over email and forums in that it feels more like a natural back
>> and forth conversation rather than just a bunch of monologues. People don't
>> generally talk in super long monologues in most face to face conversations.
>> There's usually lots of back and forth in most casual conversations,
>> especially when a group of people are trying to come to an agreement on
>> something, which is what most of the discussions on this mailing list are
>> about.
>>
>> So in short, I would personally support replacing this mailing list with
>> Discourse. And I really like Slack and intend to continue using it as many
>> others have done.
>>
>> -Evin
>>
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