There is no single solution that will please or attract everybody; speaking for myself, if the only way to participate is to join yet another forum, I'm pretty sure I would not bother, and in practice these side forums often fail to develop a critical mass sufficient to make it thrive.
I do understand that many don't care for Facebook, and the tone of some is similar to the frothing anti-Microsoft rants of the GNU folks, and that's fine for them, but not everybody feels that way, and avoiding a large pool of willing participants - especially the younger ones - just because not everybody will choose to play seems like a missed opportunity. Sometimes one has to choose between being right or being effective, and this sounds like one of those times. Steve -- Addicted mapper SJFriedl, plus longtime participant in open-source software development -----Original Message----- From: stevea [mailto:stevea...@softworkers.com] Sent: Thursday, October 15, 2015 11:12 AM To: talk-us@openstreetmap.org Subject: Re: [Talk-us] Increasing the number of US Mappers >Agree with everything you said about *why* groups are important, except >that: now that it's 2015, Facebook groups is really a better place for >this. No, Facebook is not a better place. Vast billions of people do not (will not, refuse to) use Facebook. Onerous Terms of Service, the feeling that a telescope is being shoved up our...there are many reasons, let us respect those choices. I agree with Richard (Fairhurst) here: "(Facebook) is not an answer." If OSM is going to do "groups" let's do them. Not outsource, delegate, or "use my favorite platform." Heck, if you wanted to be kind of quick (and admittedly crude) about it, you could almost turn our existing wiki system into such a thing. OK, don't (really, DON'T!), but please, let's invent the right wheel here from within the folds of our very own project. We have good (software, forum, "groups,"...) toolsmiths, let's grow this within OSM. We could even use an off-the-shelf solution from the open-source world, if the right fit is found and it well meets our needs. To further Greg Troxel's point: for us, the only platform which is not an $OBJECTIONABLE_PLATFORM is OSM. Luis Villa writes: "The question is not whether you should start conversations there; the question is whether or not you're engaging with and benefiting from the conversations that are already happening." OK, if I accept that, then it is incumbent upon those users to "post back" (or otherwise "make informed") users on the OSM platform. Heck (again), even software could do this. Facebook translation bot, anybody? I find it almost unbelievable that after an entire decade of spectacular growth to millions of people in this project, we are still quibbling about basic communication platforms that allow us to identify and grow our community. We truly can do better. SteveA California _______________________________________________ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us _______________________________________________ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
