[OSM-talk] forum.openstreetmap.org

[Tom Hughes]

In message <60903933-96E1-419E-89A6-40C0B31FF9E5 at systemeD.net>
        Richard Fairhurst <richard at systemed.net> wrote:

> Alex Mauer wrote:
>
>> Gmane (.org) does this already, for those not aware.  They provide an
>> nntp:// interface as well as several different web views.
>>
>> I think that fragmenting discussion and forcing people to check 3
>> different locations (mailing list, wiki, and forums) would be less  
>> than
>> good.
>
> An official forum is rapidly becoming essential for OSM.

I'm not necessarily disagreeing with that - I may wish it weren't
so but I can see that it might be.

> It's not about fragmenting discussion. All project development  
> discussion would still take place on the mailing lists, as it does now.

You say that, but I had a look at that forum this afternoon and
there are clearly important discussions there that I was not aware
of until now.

> Most non-Unixy type newbies are not familiar with IRC or mailman  
> lists, but are familiar with forums (forums that look like forums,  
> that is, not the messy compromise that is Gmane). The minimal traffic  
> on the newbies list demonstrates that. Yet as anyone who's had to  
> clean up the mess left by an enthusiastic but less-than-informed user  
> can testify, the newbies _need_ help.

I'm not a fan of Gmane either. What do you think of the Google
Groups interface? Frankly it's tempting to link up to that just
to get better searching of the archives anyway...

> I don't have any particular objection to osm.na1400.info, but it  
> would be a lot better if the forum could reside on the main OSM  
> servers, so that it could have single sign-on with the main site.  
> Someone on IRC had gone some way towards achieving this, I forget who...

Actually putting it on one of our server will probably need to wait
a few weeks/months until we've reorganised a bit - at the moment the
obvious location would be the VM and that is quite overloaded already.

Tom

-- 
Tom Hughes (tom at compton.nu)
http://www.compton.nu/