[OSM-talk] forum.openstreetmap.org

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

   if I may add my 2 cents -

1. I strongly dislike forums because most people in there behave like
kids; in addition, about 80% of screen real-estate is used by avatars,
signature images, and lavish quoting, and only 20% by content.

2. Having said that, I do see the point that this arrogance doesn't
get us far, and even the guy with the stupid avatar and "funny"
signature can become a valuable mapper for OSM. He might even grow up.

3. There's only one thing that is worse than splitting discussion
between a forum and a mailing list, and that is trying to somehow copy
postings between them. It never works, and always breaks both; not
least because the behavioural norms in both mediums are different.

4. Lambertus has this working forum, with a considerable user base (at
least compared to our newbie list!) and it seems that he also does a
good job as the forum administrator, showing presence, feeling
responsible, and attending to user's problems. I think it would be
risky to set up something entirely different and assume it just works
as before (at least, without consulting him). 

5. Single sign-on would be great but I think we need a proper concept
for that; what you (Spaetz) have set up is nice but, as you say, still
doesn't integrate account creation (and won't work for the Wiki), so
I'd suggest to postpone that until we get it working properly. So the
advantage of your single sign-on does not outweigh the disadvantage of
having to ask the forum participants (and Lambertus) to move to a new
server, re-create their accounts, and use a different software.

My suggestion would be to ask Lambertus to make it clear in his forum
that it is inteded for Newbies and Mapping Q&A, with advanced
discussion (anything that leaves the "how is ... usually done" secor
and ventures into "I would like to/we should change this") relegated
to the mailing lists. I would then have forum.osm.org point to his
site, effectively making his the "official" forum, and get and
understanding with him that as soon as we have suitable server
capacity, the forum should perhaps move onto OSM hardware (with him
still being the maintainer), and participate in a single-sign-on
should we ever have something good.

(A proper single-sign-on would even make it unnecessary to have all
services locally.)

Bye
Frederik

-- 
Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frederik at remote.org  ##  N49°00.09' E008°23.33'