Proposal talk:Announce proposals on the community forum

From OpenStreetMap Wiki
Jump to navigation Jump to search

Initial Volume Issues

Resolved: won't change. The new forum is intended as central place for the OSM community. Activity is already increasing so it makes sense to make the move already.

The tagging mailing list was originally created because discussion of tagging issues created an overwhelming volume of items which were not of interest to many participants of the main mailing list. Moving proposals & their discussions to the Community site risks creating exactly the same problem. I think it would be premature whilst people are adjusting to using the Community site: they may feel the utility is low if it is predominantly tagging discussions. I would therefore suggest waiting a few months to see how things evolve organically (and, in particular, wait until the old Forum migration is complete), as I suspect there is still a fair bit of fine tuning required to reflect how people are using the Community site, and many local community sub-fora are in very early stages of use. Ultimately, people will learn enough to be able to mute specific categories via preferences (e.g., tagging discussion), but right now for many Discourse is a bit of black box. SK53 (talk) 12:08, 29 October 2022 (UTC)

@SK53: Thank you for sharing this bit of history. If the volume is becoming to much, a sub community specifically for wiki proposals can be made. If every new rfc and vote announcements are consistently created using the tag wiki-proposal, all old announcements posts can easily be moved to this new sub sub community. People can also only follow this tag so that they only get new post notifications for wiki proposals. --Cartographer10 (talk) 12:56, 29 October 2022 (UTC)
The transition period is set to a year for the reason so that people can adjust to the new forum. Also, this allows for some fine tuning of the new forum. Note that this is fine tuning because a lot is already working. The mailing list keeps functioning its current role during the transition period. I therefore see no reason to wait. People can then choose the platform they prefer. --Cartographer10 (talk) 12:56, 29 October 2022 (UTC)
I think you partially misunderstood the point: sub-categories are all very fine, but users new to discourse need a bit of time to work out which categories and sub-categories they wish to explicitly follow and those they will wish to mute. At the moment, total volume is OK, and it is interesting to be able to use translate to follow discussions in various community fora, which may have a broader applicability. As volume grows no doubt I will be more selective, but the big issue is that the options to mute categories are quite hidden away & won't initially be found by the new casual user (as I found out trying to explain it to someone last week). I don't know if site moderators can automatically mute a category/sub-category so that if one wishes to follow it an opt-in is necessary. If such an approach works it might be suitable for higher volume categories with a more restricted pool of contributors (as tagging is at present). My main concern is that if tagging discussions dominate the message volume, people may lose interest in following the Communities site, which would defeat some of it's basic purpose: it has been created to replace a) the Forum and b) the OSM Help site, but not explicitly mailing lists. At present the original goals are not yet fulfilled (Forum migration not completed, no voting plugin for StackOverflow type queries to more completely align with the old Help functionality). It's important that we achieve these goals before trying to use the Communities site to migrate other kinds of communication which are not dependent on unsupported software. SK53 (talk) 13:58, 29 October 2022 (UTC)
@SK53: Ah, that is what you meant. I see that for my account, the tagging sub community is set to the normal following setting which I suppose is the default. The normal setting means you get notifications if people tag you or reply to you. Note that this is also people just need to get used to. That is also why I explained tag following in the proposal (sub community following works the same). If something is not clear then tell me and I will clarify it in the proposal. The transition period of a year should be enough for these changes to happend and people to get adjusted. --Cartographer10 (talk) 14:43, 29 October 2022 (UTC)
Yes, that's true & all hunky-dory (fine), but most people are likely to find messages of interest by clicking on the "New" and "Latest" buttons (pretty much as they did on the Forum), and if messages of interest to them are sparse they may feel that the Community site is not for them. I presume at some stage I will mute very active sub-categories in languages I don't know, but right now I want to get a feel for things. My main interest in the Community site is ensuring that we have an adequate replacement for Help (I've been a Help moderator for 8 years). At present we do seem to be getting a reasonable degree of traffic, although queries are still appearing on Help, and I dont want something to accidentally derail progress on that front. SK53 (talk) 15:27, 30 October 2022 (UTC)
@SK53:} Your first sentence sounds a bit like the chicken and the egg story. You can't get volume if you don't encourage people to use the new community. The transition period should give them enough time for this. They can already follow tags, sub communities etc. I understand that you are a bit cautious but sometimes people need a push. Take the Dutch community as example. Because you can't create new topics anymore on the old forum, you are forced to the new forum for new topics. People indicate that they are starting to adjust and that it is not that bad after all. The proposed transition period is even milder then the forum migration because this proposal still allows for the use of the ML for another year. It is not that I deprecate the ML. --Cartographer10 (talk) 15:59, 30 October 2022 (UTC)
This seems like a non-issue to me. People aren't going to ever get use to filtering discussions if they aren't using the forums in the first place because no discussions are taking place there. Either way though, a year transition period is more then enough time for that and the other things you brought up to be ironed out. If it isn't, then really should just say your not for moving proposal announcements to the new forum in general instead of making it seem like your objections are time based or whatever. As a side to that, I agree that it's not super easy or intuitive to filter discussions, but the same goes for the mailing list. At with the forums you can always open an issue on GitHub to improve the interface though. Whereas, nothing can be done about the mailing list essentially spamming people's mailboxes with ill-relevant discussions. --Adamant1 (talk) 23:53, 7 November 2022 (UTC)

Fragmenting the community

Resolved: Won't change. The new forum is meant to be a central place for the osm community. It therefore makes sense to make this move. It should even increase the engagement in proposal as it becomes more accessible to people

I find big problem with this proposal, as it seems to further divide the community into "mailing list people" and "discourse people". Discussions on proposed features currently happen both at proposal wiki page (not very ergonomic: missed notifications, editing conflicts, hard to follow etc) and at the tagging mailing list, which is already one channel too many. This proposal would seem to further increase the load to every participant by adding the third discussion channel (Discourse), so anybody wanting to take full part in the discussions would now have to follow three different mediums. Failing to follow ALL of the discussions (which would likely happen massively due to increased inconvenience) would lead to huge fragmentation and thus to less useful input to proposal. This is not good. We should strive to make participation easier and more useful, not harder and less useful.

I could only see this (posting to both discourse+tagging mailing list) working if either:

  • all posts on Discourse tagging category would automatically be posted in tagging mailing list in correct thread, and all replies in tagging mailing list would automatically appear in Discourse tagging category at correct place (ideal solution, but not there yet, see https://github.com/openstreetmap/operations/issues/377). If that were implemented, people could choose to use either Discourse or mailing list, and would see all the same content either way.
  • people could post announcement at Discourse (in addition to tagging mailing list) with pointers to wiki discussion page, but immediately lock the Discourse thread so nobody can post in it (this will notify people using just discourse for whom the mailing list is too complicated, but would still require them to participate at wiki proposal page instead of Discourse). It is NOT ideal, but at least it would not lead to extra fragmentation and loss of useful input. --mnalis (talk) 19:10, 7 November 2022 (UTC)
Not to say fragmentation isn't a thing that happens by having discussion happen in multiple venues, but "Discourse people" and "mailing list people" are mostly the exact same people. I'm not really sure how it would it further increase the load to every participant either since people can and already do choose which discussion platforms to participate in or not. It's not like anyone is being forced to participate in discussions. It's not like proposals aren't being discussed on other platforms already anyway though like Slack and Discord. So I don't really see what the difference is at this point. Some of the reason people use Slack and Discord is because they don't like or want to use the mailing list. At least the forums are maintained by OSM volunteer and hosted on the main website. If anything I think using it for proposals would lead to less fragmentation because it would bring over the Slack/Discord people who don't want to be forced into using the mailing list. --Adamant1 (talk) 00:02, 8 November 2022 (UTC)
I agree with Adamant here. I always discuss my proposals on multiple channels like Discord or the (old) forum. Discussing it on multiple platforms always gives me much more feedback the for example only on the talk page and the ML. That way, I also give as many people the chance to participate in the discussion. To address your 2 given points:
Mailing list mode of Discourse is problematic - it basically (to invoke ML equivalent) only gives you a choice of subscribing to all the mailing lists at once, or to none of them. What is needed is per-category mailing list mode, so users could decide which ML to subscribe to. That is currently not implemented (and no, muting does not work for ML-mode only, only globally, and other functionalities are problematic as noted in that thread too, especially as Discourse behaviour is not properly translated to ML behaviour). As for the locking the discussions, yes, discussions show be ideally streamlined. But you can't technically lock discussions on ML (as you can on Discourse), so it is not an option. Discussing the proposals on Slack/Discord/whatever and then not copy/pasting ALL that was found pro and contra (even if one completely disagrees on it) on the proposal wiki page, leads to worse proposals, because other (non-Slack/Discord/...) people which could improve half-baked idea (that was for example completely ignored on Slack) to fully-fledged ideal solution for the tagging won't even be aware of that suggestion existing, so can't improve on it, so proposal does not end to be as good as it could've been. I also don't see Slack/Discord/Telegram people magically flocking to Discourse either as Adamant1 predicts. Some of them might, but I predict majority would not leave their platform of preference in my experience (if they would, they'd be discussing tagging on ML/Discourse already, and not using Slack/Discord for those discussion, right?)
Note that the usefulness of proposals is not Voting, it is the discussion by different people with different ideas, different worldviews, different problems, and different pet projects -- and that discussion being able to encompass all of them would lead to tag which are fitting many more purposes (and with much less problems!) than the original propos(er/al) ever envisioned. And for best results there, you want to avoid fragmentation as much as possible. And it is not as suggested that "being forced to participate in discussions", it is that the result will be worse if discussions are fragmented. (the same quote of "not being forced" could be used for tagging ML -- nobody is being forced to participate there either, right? One could follow solely the wiki, without any announcement being sent to either ML or Discourse). Now, if Discourse offered even 50% of the features that my mail client (which haven't had any real new features in last decade or so!) does, I'd be all for throwing away both mailing list and wiki talk page discussions and going just to Discourse for tag proposals. Unfortunately, Discourse is currently lagging lightyears in functionality and usability behind e-mail (and using wiki talk pages like this one for discussions is even worse than Discourse, by almost the same margin as Discourse is worse then ML). --mnalis (talk) 22:20, 8 November 2022 (UTC)
I know you can't lock discussions on the ML. It was more meant that it would not be fair for discourse users to be forced to the wiki and ML not. While I understand your concern for fragmentation, it is not that different from the current situation. People often discuss the proposals on various channels and even the current, old forum. I would even argue that it leads to a broader discussion providing more valuable feedback to the author. With V1 of this proposal I managed to start quite discussion. The discussion happened on 4 platforms. Many people were able to join the discussion and share their opinion. And ofcourse, it can lead to some double discussion but that is no problem because no discussion is the same --Cartographer10 (talk) 18:27, 9 November 2022 (UTC)
"I also don't see Slack/Discord/Telegram people magically flocking to Discourse either as Adamant1 predicts." First of all, I never said people where going to magically flock to Discourse if proposals were moved there from the mailing list. Just that people will be more inclined to it use the forums for discussing proposals over other channels like Slack/Discord/Telegram if they aren't just stuck with the mailing list as the only alternative to those channels. Which just seems inherently obvious. That does mean people "magically flock" to Discourse? No. But the obviously the bar here isn't that every single OpenStreetMap user on the plant instantly stops using Slack/Discord/Telegram and never uses another be platform besides Discourse again if proposals announcements are moved there, obviously. At the end of the day people are going to use whatever communication they channel they want to. I just think that moving proposals announcements to Discourse would increase participation. You don't seem to care. That's fine, but at least spare me the exaggerated claims about it. For whatever reason there seems to be a real inability on the part of mailing list users to admit that their preferred communication channel might have issues and be a barrier to entry for some people. It's rather annoying.
"That is currently not implemented...and other functionalities are problematic as noted in that thread too...Etc...Etc..." Like I've said already whatever "problems" Discourse has can be ironed out over the next year. I don't think some minor nitpicks about features that can easily be implement if someone puts the time into it should stop us from moving proposal announcements to the new forum. Nothing is perfect, including the mailing list. At least the problems with Discourse can be improved. Just sitting here complaining about ephemeral problems without doing anything on your end to fix them or at least offering a viable alternative to isn't really helpful though. No one said Discourse is perfect. No one expects it to be either. Just like no one expects everyone to magically flock to it from other platforms the instant proposal announcements being made there. That said, if you have an issue with how it's subscriptions options work, cool. At least be pro-active and open an issue about it on Discourse's GitHub page so it can fixed though. --Adamant1 (talk) 08:26, 10 November 2022 (UTC)
@Adamant1: you seem to imply things I never said, which I find insulting. E.g. your implication "You don't seem to care. That's fine," is totally wrong. I care a great deal, or I would not be wasting a lot of my time trying to explain why I think some course of action would be counterproductive. It is just that my opinion of how to handle that is opposite to yours. No need to go "No, *you* don't care about users" route, eh? Regarding "inability to admit" - every communication channel ever invented has its barrier to entry: Discourse as well as ML as well as wiki as well as telegram etc. I just find that fact so self-evident that it never occurred to me that is should be explicitly stated, and more doubly puzzling that you seem to think some category of people ("ML users") is unable to comprehend something so obvious. "minor nitpicks about features that can easily be implement if someone puts the time into it should stop us from moving proposal announcements to the new forum" is also sounding intentionally dismissive of you. It is not "minor nitpick" by any stretch of imagination: if ML and Discourse are integrated together correctly (as proposed in that integration issue I linked to earlier), the whole point of this proposal "Should stuff go to ML or Discourse or both" simply disappears, because then there would not be a difference between Tagging list and Discourse, but they would be one and the same (just with two separate ways to read the same articles, as one prefers). As for the suggestion to go open GitHub issues if I dislike something about Discourse - how about this counter-proposal: if you think people have issues and barrier to entry to Tagging mailing list, why don't you go open issues to make ML easier to use and lower barrier to entry for ML? Funny how it works, eh? Anyway, I've tried to give helpful alternatives and explain the issue so it might lead to better solution. If people gain something from that, great! If not, fine, but I'm not really into pointless bickering on the wiki which doesn't lead to its improvement, so I'll pass on that if you don't mind. --mnalis (talk) 07:21, 18 November 2022 (UTC)
I meant that you didn't care about the specific things I brought up, which you admitted yourself when you said that we have opposite opinions about how to handle things. Obliviously we have different priorities and things that we care about. There's nothing wrong with that. It's just the nature of the thing. That doesn't mean we don't care about this in general though and I never claimed otherwise. Maybe assume good faith next time and don't be so sensitive about this. Although, I say it's rather ironic that you would take issue with that but then say the discussion is pointless bickering. To me that's way more insulting then me saying that we have different priorities when to what we care about. Especially since again, that's exactly what you said. You just ran out of ways to argue your position on it's own merits so your self defensive bickering is what we're left with.
As far as your "counter proposal" that I should go open issues to make ML easier to use, as far as I know the mailing list doesn't have a GitHub page to open issues on. Otherwise I probably would. Although my issues are more general, inherent to how the mailing list works, and therefore are not going to be solved simply by opening an issue on an issue tracker. I'm also not saying people shouldn't use the mailing list in cases where it works well. Whereas, none of that can be said for the problems you have Discourse. Your problem is specific, Discourse has a GitHub issue tracker where you can get the problem fixed, your using the problems you have with it a specific discussion to try and stop other people from using it Etc. Etc. Like I can't have an opinion about Discourse if I don't solve every single problem I have with the mailing list first though. Sure dude. If this discussion is pointless bickering it's 100% coming from your side. Maybe assume good faith and don't take things personal next time. Otherwise that will inevitably be the outcome. --Adamant1 (talk) 08:02, 18 November 2022 (UTC)
I'm sorry if you find yourself offended, that was not the intention. "Pointless" was intended to mean "not having a point; i.e. current fork of our discussion is not adding any new suggestions on how to change this Proposal" (which is the point of this Talk page) and "bickering" was wordnet definition "(noun) a quarrel about petty points" as again, we've moved to quarreling (in a meaning of "To disagree; be incongruous or incompatible; fail to be in accordance, in form or essence") about us and our preferences, and not about suggesting changes to this Proposal, which this Talk page is about. Thus, "pointless bickering" was intended as a statement of fact, not as an insult. Or do you disagree (and, if you do, what exact change to proposal did you suggest in that or this paragraph, as I cannot find it)? As for the second paragraph, I disagree completely with all your insinuations and claims. Tagging ML has a clear link to its ML software homepage, and mailman software that is used to run it has its GitLab page. So feel free to suggest improvements there. Also, OSM changes are being implemented by OSM Ops team, and I've already linked to its GitHub issue #377 pertaining to this in previous Talk posts. And there is no "my problem"; if anyone, proposal author may have a problem which they are trying to solve with this proposal. Anyway, if there are still differences in opinion or other things you'd like to discuss with me, can we please continue this conversation in e-mail, until such time as we can actually suggest some actionable change to the proposal author? I think that in doing so, we'd be doing both them and the rest of the community a favor (because both your and mine wall of text again failed to suggest a change to this Proposal). Thank you for your consideration. --mnalis (talk) 23:40, 19 November 2022 (UTC)

Longer-term time horizons

Resolved: acknowledged. It appears to be acknowledged (by this proposal's author and likely more widely as others read this) that a one year time horizon can be realistically extended to allow for greater worldwide support of this. The author removed the "one year" transition period.

I hope this doesn't ignite fireworks here, that's certainly not my intention. I simply wish to say that many of us who are long-timers in OSM (12, 15 years or even longer) know that more fundamental, structural, cultural changes to OSM that have to do with how people communicate, like changing "rules" or even conventions on how we propose, discuss proposals or announce proposals (like this one) have longer-term time horizons. This proposal's author (with the considerable experience of eight years of Help moderation) believes one year to be enough for "people to (become) adjusted" (to our new forum). Another contributor here believes such issues can be "ironed out over the next year." I consider myself an OSM long-timer and have watched our new forum emerge (since February 2022), and as we are barely nine months in, I do see it gain nice traction, wider recognition, people stepping up, internal improvement, positive interactivity...lots of good things. But I don't believe that "as of Feb. '23" we can assume it will be running at top speed / efficiency. I'd say two or even three years is a more realistic timeframe for many issues to become "ironed out." That's simply my 13+ years in OSM talking. We're all working for the same goals here (great map data becoming greater), so imposing fairly arbitrary timelines or even deadlines doesn't seem highly productive. Our collective minds work best like a parachute: when they remain open! Let's stay interactive with each other on this/these topic(s). Yes, we'll know more in 2023, but that will continue to launch us into '24 when we'll know even more...and further ahead where we'll know more, do more, be more and things WILL be better...by our firm intentions to do so. And so on. Sure, posit your thoughts, as they are important, but listen to others as well, as this is crucial. Don't be in a big hurry to do so. The most important skill that I have gained in my many years in OSM — no kidding — is better listening skills. Listening is absolutely required in OSM. Stevea (talk) 03:52, 20 November 2022 (UTC)

@Stevea: Thanks for sharing your thoughts in this. I indeed can to the conclusion that one year will not get enough support and might be to fast for some people. I already removed the one year transition period for an undefined one. When the community over time thinks another change is needed, they can propose to make a change. --Cartographer10 (talk) 09:13, 20 November 2022 (UTC)
How long has the forum been around for? I haven't been paying that much attention to it, but I was under the impression that it was implemented around the beginning of this year. It's the case then a year from now would be about 2 years. In my experience that's about around the time where most major issues get worked of software. Of course that can depend on how new versions are released and stuff, but I don't think it has to be perfect either. Just good enough for this specific thing, or at least on parity with the mailing list, and I don't see why it wouldn't be there in a year. Especially if there's clear goals for how to get it there in the meantime that we all do our part to make happen. For instance, mnalis' suggestion that sorting discussions should be improved.
The problem is it can become a cycle, where we know about things we can do to make it ready for announcing proposals, but then don't do anything about it because it's not on the table in the first place. It's not like timelines can't be adjusted either. I don't think anyone, at least in this discussion, would try and force proposal Announcements to made on the new forum in year if it's not there yet. I defiantly wouldn't. But it's always better to have a target then not have one. That's just my thoughts on though. I acknowledge OSM can work at a snails pace sometimes. Maybe this is just one of those times. Although I'm optimistic that the forums will be up to the task of announcing proposals there in a year regardless of what ultimately happens with this. --Adamant1 (talk) 10:15, 20 November 2022 (UTC)
The new forum started in mid-February 2022. I am cheered by what I see so far, but it certainly (still) feels like "early days." OSM's pace of things might be characterized as "slow," but it certainly isn't "glacial," as in nine months, the new forum is encouraging, if early and still a bit tender as it seems it is finding its firm footing (and quite well, I emphasize). A one-year target (and is that from the forum's start date? from now?) is a reasonable dart at the dartboard, but I'd say two years (from start date) is more like it, given my perspective of how "culture moves" in OSM (slowly, but surely). While some might say "snail's pace" about a heavily-loaded diesel truck going up a steep hill, one must concede that — eventually! — the entirety of the load makes it to the top. OSM via its new forum has a lot of people (worldwide), a lot of different cultures and preferences to communicate, a lot of topics, a lot of different methods by which we might handle accommodating everybody, a lot of "can we fix this so it does that...?" tweaks-to-yet-be, but at the end of a year (lightly) or two (rather fully, I'd say), we can get the whole thing, consensus, technical massages and all, to make it "just right," and all the way to the summit. But we're sort of quibbling about a sliding window here; I think we're fine and will be. Stevea (talk) 23:58, 20 November 2022 (UTC)

Cross posting requirement demanded of whom?

Resolved: Added a clause that it is always the responsibility of the proposal author to make sure it gets cross posted.
   "If the proposal author is not subscribed to the tagging mailing list or the forum, they should request that a subscriber cross post the announcement there for them."

They should request this cross-posting of whom exactly? (And where, exactly?)

Because:

  • if that request is being posted on Discourse, there is a (big) chance that nobody there is subscribed to ML, so nobody can cross-post on ML.
  • even if there are people on Discourse that are also on ML, they might not be inclined to do work in lieu of proponent
  • even if there are people on Discourse that are also on ML and they are inclined to do work instead of proponent, unless person who must do it is explicitly named, there is huge bystander effect risk that will make it likely that nobody will do it anyway (each person assuming that the other one will do it).

Also, what measures are to be taken to make sure that announce gets there, if that is not proponent's job anymore, but of some random unnamed person?

I would find it better that if proposal authors are not subscribed to tagging mailing list (and can't be bothered to), they must get a co-proponent who is subscribed to mailing list, and who will handle that part of the job.

(same thing of course in different direction i.e. ML=>Discourse).

Overall, I think higher standards should be expected of proposal authors than of regular users - otherwise one risks low quality of proposals and thus needlessly wasted time of regular users. --mnalis (talk) 03:30, 20 November 2022 (UTC)

@Mnalis: There are quite some people on discourse who are also active on the ML. I understand your other 2 points. It is a difficult one. For some it might then feel as if they need a co-author only for the purpose of mailing to the ML. A lot of proposals can be done by one person. --Cartographer10 (talk) 09:26, 20 November 2022 (UTC)
@Mnalis: I have updated the proposal a bit based on a suggestion of somebody else. I stated explicitly that the author should also check the ML (via the archive) or the forum that the post has been cross posted. Otherwise they should ask again or ask somebody specifically. Would you says this resolved your concerns enough? --Cartographer10 (talk) 17:32, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

Two parts of the rationale are now resolved

Resolved: As explained below this still exists.
   Because of how the mailing list works, you get a lot of emails that are not relevant (I personally got 514 in 2 weeks on the peek during the previous proposal. 99% were irrelevant to me but I not not subscribe). This discourages subscribing to the mailing list if you only want notifications of new proposals and votes. 

   Using simple RSS or email notifications, people can subscribe to new proposals and votes on the new community forum. This is accomplished by following tags (see explanation below).

As it is now possible to use RSS to follow new proposals directly from wiki (see this mailing list entry for details), those two rationale points are no longer relevant, so can be removed from the proposal, as that functionality is now available for everyone even without Discourse. (unsigned comment by mnalis 04:07, 20 November 2022 (UTC))

@Mnalis: point 1 is not resolved. It is written from a proposal authors view, not from somebody who want to get notificated about RFC and Votes. As proposal author, I currently HAVE to subscribe to the ML. For point 2, I will add it to the proposal as suggestion but this does not mean this rationale point is resolved. There are also people who can't/don't want to use a feedreader. For them it might be easier to just follow a tag on discourse --Cartographer10 (talk) 09:23, 20 November 2022 (UTC)

Back-References to allow following all discussion branches

Resolved: Solved in discussion.

The proposal in the current state asks for 1) Posting to one at least one of the two locations, mailing list (ml) and forum, and 2) if one of the locations was not posted to, ask someone to do it for you. This allows discussion in three places: Proposal Discussion page, mailing list, and forum. While having a broader notification (and possibly discussion) base with three locations to discuss at is maybe a benefit, keeping an overview what happens in other channels gets difficult. I'd love to see an extension of the template to allow for back references, that is links to "the other" place, that is, a) in the proposal links to forum and ml archive, b) in the ml post the link to the forum thread, and c) in the forum the link to the the ml archive. Forum and ml already include a link to the proposal with the Discussion page. Yes, this is getting more complicated, but that's how it is with multiple discussions in different media.

Example (changes in italics):

To announce a proposal, at least one of the following without preference has to be done (if easily possible for you, both):

  • A new topic in the forum has to be created with the following format
  • An email has to be send to the tagging mailing list.

[...]

  • Body:
    <DESCRIPTION OF PROPOSAL>
    <LINK TO PROPOSAL ON WIKI>
    The annoucement of this RFC on the <MAILINGLIST/FORUM> can be found at <LINK>
    Please discuss this proposal on its Wiki Talk page.

[...]

If you are not subscribed to the mailing list, add the following text to the topic body:

  • Please, cross post this announcement on the tagging mailing list on my behalf by sending an email to tagging@openstreetmap.org and add a link to this thread

If you are not active on the forum, add the following text to the email body:

As soon as you get knowledge of the other post, add the link information accordingly by editing the original post (forum) or replying to the original post (mailing list).

If you you are active on both mailing list and forum, just add a note with references to the according other channel right away. Posting on the mailing list first makes the process easier.

Note that it is always the responsibility of the proposal author to make sure it gets cross-posted via https://community.openstreetmap.org/c/general/tagging/70 and https://community.openstreetmap.org/c/general/tagging/70. If it didn't happen within a few days, they should ask again.

@Trapicki: Thanks for sharing your idea. Isn't the "external references" part of the wiki proposal supposed for this? I understand why you request this but I would rather choose to keep the wiki proposal the central place for this information. Both the ML and the discourse topic already refer to this wiki page. I can add a sentence that the author should add the links to the wiki page (more as a reminder). --Cartographer10 (talk) 18:42, 6 December 2022 (UTC)
@Cartographer10: Right, makes more sense. The RFC has to be posted anyway and shall be crossposted, let's add the entries to the template, and a reminder to the Propose section.

<== External discussions == <!-- The RFC has to be posted to at least one of mailing list and community forum. Fill in as soon as you now the link --> * RFC: ** Mailinglist: <!-- link to the thread in https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/tagging/ --> ** Community Forum: <!-- link to thread in https://community.openstreetmap.org/c/general/tagging/70 --> <!-- Links to other mailing lists, other forums where this proposal has been discussed... -->

@Trapicki: Great, I will add it to the proposal soon --Cartographer10 (talk) 18:25, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

Naming of 'new forum'

Resolved: Naming updated

The proposal calls the (now) new established forum running on Discours always as the 'new forum'. In a few months or years, this will be old and not very specific. Technically inclined people will by now have found out that it is running on the Discourse platform/software, but that is not ease to recognize on the first glance. The URL is https://community.openstreetmap.org, so whenever I enter it I will think of community, which is also how it is called in the banner image. The subdivisons are called communities, seems to be a common theme here. What about calling the new forum the community forum or Discourse community forum and stay unambiguous when we switch over to a different method in some (dozen) years?

Thanks for the suggestion. I will rework some of the wording --Cartographer10 (talk) 18:24, 7 December 2022 (UTC)
Retrieved from "https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/w/index.php?title=Proposal_talk:Announce_proposals_on_the_community_forum&oldid=2511938"