I agree with Ian's points, but we shouldn't give up on email. I fear that for many potential mappers & newcomers, even IRC might be daunting. (*ducks* while people say, "If you can't do IRC, you shouldn't be allowed to edit a map...")
Phone and hangouts require greater than your average amount of coordination than might be required for casual questions. Forums are probably better for async communications, but email is the most proximate client for most people. Community is often cited as one of the primary goals of OSM. If we want to make it a community that's appealing for others to join, every community media - IRC, forums, email, phones, hangouts, meetups, etc. - should all be friendly. My suggestion? Follow the immortal words of Dalton from "Road House," "Be nice." There's no reason email can't be a friendlier environment. And, when people aren't being nice, they should be called out as exhibiting unacceptable behavior. A corollary of Ian's comments about the strengths of IRC, etc. is that people are unfriendlier on email because they can be. Unless we don't allow it. On Mon, Dec 17, 2012 at 8:32 PM, Ian Dees <ian.d...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Mon, Dec 17, 2012 at 10:19 PM, Alex Barth <a...@mapbox.com> wrote: > >> >> On Dec 17, 2012, at 9:15 PM, Jason Remillard <remillard.ja...@gmail.com> >> wrote: >> >> > For my import, 80% of the >> > useful feedback was off list in private emails because people don't >> > want to deal with the rude behavior in the list. I made a bunch of >> > decisions that might seem weird to people that just follow the list. >> > But I assure you that I cared a whole lot what the 4 people who signed >> > up actually help thought about all of the issues. >> >> This I find very interesting. To some extent it reflects my first >> impressions with OSM mailing lists. I know many people who are too daunted >> to subscribe, I find that is a shame. If it wasn't for friends in the >> offline world who got me started on OSM, I would have been way too >> intimidated by the lists to just jump in. Why is this? What can we improve? > > > OSM is complex and the people willing to stick around long enough to know > it are usually intimidating to the people who are new and uncertain about > it. This imbalance is particularly strong on the mailing lists because it's > so easy for a response to come off in the wrong way or for a huge number of > people to respond in a flurry of "OMG don't import that!" Also, the > asynchronous nature of the mailing list means pointless arguments are very > easy to start and very hard to finish. > > I would much rather see people conversing in real time on > IRC/phone/hangout where you're more immediately accountable for what you > say or asking questions via the forums where it's a bit easier for threads > to stay on topic. > > _______________________________________________ > Talk-us mailing list > Talk-us@openstreetmap.org > http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us > > -- Jeff Meyer Global World History Atlas www.gwhat.org j...@gwhat.org 206-676-2347
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