AJ, I'm not disposing of IRC, frankly I use it myself. I'm just saying that there are downsides/upsides to both phone calls/email/IRC/IM/etc. My real point is that new people probably don't want to argue about tags in the first place. Many people come to mapping parties and say "what do you want me to map?" Or I've also heard 'I don't care to map anything in-particular, but I want to help out." If people really want to discuss tagging badly enough they will figure out whatever the form of communication is and deal with it. Key is coming out of that communication is a guide that others can use.
-Kate On Fri, Oct 15, 2010 at 4:33 PM, Al Haraka <alhar...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Fri, Oct 15, 2010 at 11:20 PM, Kate Chapman <k...@maploser.com> wrote: >> There are some people where IRC is a higher barrier to entry than a >> phone call. All that aside though I think key is just to have some >> level of consensus and then have the information available in a clear >> place. >> >> New people don't care about arguing about tags, they just want to know >> how to map. By making that easier and having standards documented in >> a clear way they will. >> >> -Kate > > Kate, I understand where you are going with this, but I think the wiki > is pretty clear on how low the barrier to entry can be if there is a > web-based IRC-client. > > http://irc.openstreetmap.org/ > > I personally dislike the idea of disposing of one avenue of > communication because of "barrier to entry." I would say in this case > it means the people in the channel or on the call care enough to put > in an effort. Either way, it costs time or money, regardless of the > choice. I personally prefer IRC only for the reason that it is easy > to document everything that is said and done with minimal effort. > Someone has to take notes on a phone call, and sometimes those notes > can be inadequate or inaccurate. That is my only reservation. Of > course, IRC has its own downsides. > > Whatever is decided, I welcome the idea of organizing. I too am very > concerned about knowing how to map, and I see this as a positive > development. Thanks to everyone for getting motivated about this. > >> On Fri, Oct 15, 2010 at 4:04 PM, Nathan Edgars II <nerou...@gmail.com> wrote: >>> On Fri, Oct 15, 2010 at 3:55 PM, Ian Dees <ian.d...@gmail.com> wrote: >>>> Surely we're missing plenty of people by only having a discussion on the >>>> mailing list? SoTM.US proved to me that there are orders of magnitude more >>>> people interested in OSM in the US than are signed up for talk-us. >>>> The difference is that the people who care enough to talk about it and form >>>> a consensus between those on talk-us and maybe even a phone call or two are >>>> the ones that will actually make the changes to the wiki and renderers. >>>> It's >>>> not that there's "one consensus" it's whoever gets a consensus faster and >>>> (most importantly) implements it. >>> >>> You're getting a consensus of those who can get past the higher >>> barrier to entry. It's relatively easy to join a mailing list. It's >>> also relatively easy to use IRC, though you have to be free at the >>> proper time. It's a bit harder to participate in a phone conversation >>> - again you can't have anything else scheduled then, and you need >>> either a microphone or a willingness to pay for a long-distance call, >>> plus the ability to understand various accents (or half the meeting >>> will be "can you please repeat that? can you speak more clearly?"). >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> Talk-us mailing list >>> Talk-us@openstreetmap.org >>> http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us >>> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Talk-us mailing list >> Talk-us@openstreetmap.org >> http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us >> > _______________________________________________ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
