Proposal:Limit proposal discussion to Wiki

Limit proposal discussion to Wiki
Proposal status:	Canceled (inactive)
Proposed by:	Lectrician1
Draft started:	2021-02-07

This proposal has been abandoned because I realized that limiting discussion about something in a public forum is unreasonable to ask of someone.

Proposal

Currently, Wiki tagging proposals are discussed on their Wiki talk pages and the Tagging mailing list.

This creates inefficiencies, disorganization, and possible lack of participation in the Proposal process.

This proposal asks to:

1. Limit a proposal's discussion to its corresponding Wiki Talk Page.
2. Use and enforce the tagging mailing for only broadcasting a proposal's status.
3. Recommend proposers on the Proposal process page to possibly broadcast notices to other OSM Contact channels, in addition to the tagging mailing list, such as the OSM World Discord server, the [1]OSM Slack, and possibly others.
4. Move forward with implementing Structured Discussions Wiki extension that greatly improves the ability to engage in Talk page discussions across the wiki with an extremely friendly user interface that allows for easy text formatting, replies, subscription to threads, and resolution of threads.

Rationale

Limit a proposal's discussion to its corresponding Wiki Talk Page

• The tagging mailing list currently has an absurd amount of messages. Limiting proposal discussion on it can help lower the amount of messages.
• Many people who would like to have notices about proposals are not subscribed to the tagging mailing list because of the absurd amount of messages. This means that they miss out on these proposal notifications. Limiting some discussion might make allow them to join.
• From a proposer's perspective, managing replying to community members between both the talk page and Wiki page can be stressful.
• Repeated discussions/topics can happen between the talk page and mailing list. This can be frustrating and inefficient to handle for the proposer.
• Documenting changes in the proposal that have arised from 2 different places of discussion can be frustrating and time-intensive for the proposer.
• Everyone in the community knows that all discussion should and has happened only on the corresponding Wiki page. This means people won't have to going looking through External Discussions and know that all of the relevant discussion has happened there.
• For those concerned that the Wiki is hard to edit/discuss versus email, that is why this proposal asks to push installing the Structured Discussions extension.

Use and enforce the tagging mailing for only broadcasting a proposal's status

• Moderation was recently asked for the tagging mailing list, so making sure that only proposal announcements happen on the tagging mailing list would be enforced by future moderators/community members.

Recommend proposers post notices to other OSM community channels

This honestly isn't an important part of the proposal or something that even needs to be proposed, but I'd just like to give some description to the state of various communities involved in the proposal process.

Currently, the talk mailing list is the only recommended place to post notice about proposals according to Proposal process. As mentioned with the reasons above, not many community members subscribe to it.

Recommending posting to other highly active community contact channels can mean that the maximum amount of feedback and notice for a proposal can be achieved during the proposing stage. This means that by the voting stage, the proposal will have a much higher chance at passage due to the previous greatened community engagement.

I personally am an active member of possibly the most-active OSM contact channel, the OSM World Discord server.

Here, I and other community members like User:ZeLonewolf and I post updates to the community of 1771+ members about currently proposals in the #proposal channel. The extreme majority of the members are not and do not want to be on the tagging mailing list, so this helps them immensely.

We usually have to do this manually and keep track of the status of each of them so that the community can stay up-to-date. It would help if the proposers themselves came and posted them. It would also give them a chance to answer quick questions about the proposal to the community.

I am also a member of the OSM Slack. I have not posted proposal updates there before, but I recently created a #proposal channel where you can!

Of course, this should just apply to the Discord or Slack servers, it should apply to any OSM community contact channel!

Move forward with implementing Structured Discussions Wiki extension

Please see the past Talk:Wiki discussion and the current osm operations Github issue.

Arguments from initial tagging mailing list idea post

Original post

• "Creating a Wiki account and immediately being able to edit a Talk page is a lot easier than figuring out how the mailing lists work, signing up using the user-unfriendly UI that sends your password in raw text, worrying about how many people you'll bother if you send a message to a list, if you're sending a message correctly, etc." --Proposer
  • "This is a con, actually.  Email is the lowest common denominator, and nobody really wants Yet Another Login if they can avoid it.  Sending an email is easy. Really, really easy. If email is beyond a user's grasp, I legitimately wonder of they have the barest minimum necessary to sign up for an OSM account in the first place, which is an email address." --Paul Johnson
    • I'm sorry, but I strongly disagree.
      As I noted, these were hurdles I had to clear when I got into OSM.
      I had never used a mailing list before and found:
      - The outdated GUI of Mailman v2 to be a pain to sign up.    
      - Constant threads of multiple discussions from multiple people replying to multiple people only using plain-text references a nightmare to follow.    
      - No option to unsubscribe from threads I don't care about (but I would still like to be on the list because I want to see what new threads I do care about).    
      - Email provides little formatting. On the other hand, I (and probably everyone) discovered the Wiki before the mailing lists.
      In comparison to mailing lists:    
      - Creating an account on a website is really easy.    
      - Following past and current conversation is easy with indentations and dedicated topics (any SNS's conversations are easier to understand than email TBH). With the Structured Discussion Extension, this will be even easier.
      - I can add what conversations (proposals) I'm interested in to my Watchlist.    
      - Wiki provides all the formatting and templates!
      Yes, everyone might have an email and is able to perform using it, but does that mean that it's the easiest to understand and most useful? No. The costs outweigh the benefits of using the Wiki over mailing lists IMO. You also said it yourself, an email is required no matter what system you use. --Proposer
      • I agree wholeheartedly that it is a hurdle. I had been editing OSM for approx. 4 years before I ever saw any mailing lists. And I too don't enjoy seeing hundreds of emails, especially when some threads can get quite toxic.--Lukas Richert

Other possible additional changes

These are not what the proposal is asking for, but future things that could be implemented to help the proposal process.

• Add CategoryWatch Extension that allows users to watch wiki Categories and get updates if the pages in the current proposal categories change.
• Have a master page for all current proposals (short descriptions would be shown) that people can add to their watchlist and get notifications, like how Wikidata does it. I could set this up.
• Create a dedicated proposal announcement mailing list.

Pages effected

• Proposal process

Comments

Please comment on the discussion page.