Imports are also difficult to do right. I think that someone who
cannot be bothered (in the best case) or lacks the technical
capability (in the worst case) to tackle a mailing list is never the
right person to execute an import. We can't have an importer tune out
mid-process because they have encountered an issue and are unwilling
to fire up an archaic JOSM plugin to fix it.
Good point. I wanted to elaborate on this with some thoughts that I've
had: I believe a category on the discourse could have a post with a
detailed template that users can follow when posting about their import.
Time and time again I witness prospective importers making mailing list
messages without even linking their wiki page, and often also not
completing all steps that are expected before writing the list. I see
other users constantly asking for more context to be provided, and
requesting basic tasks be completed that should have already been long
done. Having a template to follow can make it easier to understand what
is expected from a post, rather than having to go into the mailing list
blind.
Neither is Discourse of course - it can still happen that you get
buy-in on Discourse and then you find out that local mappers are
overwhelmingly against what you are doing, just they weren't on
Discourse.
Sure, it's damn near impossible to get good levels of representation in
OSM discussions, due to the disconnected and spread out nature of the
community. But I will say that I've never seen any other channel of
communication have the same level of international participation except
maybe discord, but for obvious reasons I don't suggest moving formal
discussion there! While you are right that a user unable to use a
mailing list probably shouldn't be importing, is it fair to say that
those users should be excluded from the discussion?
Plus, I have heard people say that if you are on a low-bandwidth
Internet connection, Discourse is a huge step back compared to a
mailing list. It is possible that Discourse is excluding people too -
just different people from those excluded by mailing lists.
I can also see this possibly being a problem. however, you should
definitely take a look at this discussion
<https://meta.discourse.org/t/tutorial-for-using-discourse-over-email/111308>
about using the discourse forum as a mailing list. I'm not sure if
that's what you're referring to in the other part of this message, but I
think that'd be great for bridging the gap.
Having said that, I am typing this in my thunderbird email client
Me as well!
Thanks for the input,
--James Crawford (SherbetS)
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