Proposal:Change proposal process because of the new forum
| Change proposal process because of the new forum | |
|---|---|
| Proposal status: | Abandoned (inactive) |
| Proposed by: | Cartographer10 |
| Applies to: | |
| Definition: | Proposal to update the proposal process because of the new forum and its improved functionality |
| Draft started: | 2022-09-23 |
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Proposal
The new forum offers more possibilities which can improve the proposal process. These new possibilities can improve the community engagement in starting these proposals and participating in them. It is therefore proposed that:
- Users should no longer be required to announce their proposal on the tagging mailing list but on the new forum instead. The talk page will remain the first place to discuss proposals. The mapper is free to also discuss the proposal optionally on other places.
- That voting no longer takes place on the proposal's wiki page but on the forum using the new poll functionality.
Rationale
The new OpenStreetMap community forum is currently prepared for production. Currently, the tagging mailing list and OpenStreetMap wiki fill an important formal role in the process of discussing and voting of proposals. For several reasons, parts of this formal process should be moved to the new forum. The main result will be in increased engagement by the community because current barriers are reduced. For several reasons, this changed is proposed:
- Switching to the forums allows every mapper to participate without the need to create a new account. They can use their current OSM account. For wiki, they need to create a separate account. For the mailing list, they have to subscribe to the mailing list to actually receive the emails.
- The new forum allows for mid-thread joining. On the tagging mailing list, it is hard to join mid discussion because you don't have access to previous received emails before subscribing. Via the archive they can see previous emails but replying to them is hard. The user interface of this archive also does not allow for easy navigating.
- The most popular vote on OSM wiki had about 130 votes. This is really low considering the amount of mappers present in the OpenStreetMap community. Because the forum uses OSM accounts as login, this lowers the barrier to participate in the discussion and vote. The vote will therefore better reflect the communities opinion.
- It is known that there are quite some mappers who really dislike the mailing list. Because of the requirement to announce a vote there, these people are discouraged to continue with the proposal. This excludes people from coming with good proposals from which the community can benefit.
- Voting on wiki does not provide a very user friendly user interface. You have to edit the source text where you have to insert a line, hoping that you don't have an edit conflict with another voter.
- The new forum also works really well on mobile devices. Especially wiki does not offer a user friendly website for editing.
Voting on discourse
As simple test of how the voting works can be observed on this [1] community topic. This systems offers various useful options:
- The votes can be made public. You can see who votes for what.
- The votes can have an automatic closing time to automate the voting.
- You can easily update or remove your vote while the vote is open.
- As stated, you can use your current OSM account.
Discussing on discourse
Moving for discussion and announcement to discourse has several advantages
- Using simple rss or email notifications, people can subscribe to new proposals on the community.
- Using reactions like thumps up, users can indicate they (dis)agree with a post without having to type a reaction. This keeps discussion clean but still allow people to share their opinion, providing value to the discussion.
- Moderators can branch off topics when they become off-topic.
- As stated, people can easily join mid-discussion.
Features/Pages affected
External discussions
Comments
Please comment on the discussion page.