I find this a really worthwhile conversation to have. IRC is still great for some but it’s hardly inclusive. I like Slack and started using it early on. We set up an OSM US Slack, initially just for the board to coordinate, but we extended it to be open for all soon. They even give us free stuff because we’re a not-for-profit organization. I am a lurker on the Maptime slack and member of ~10 Slack organizations total. I introduced Slack at my workplace and it has gained great popularity there since. I like how Slack could help support a more inclusive OSM community.
But also consider this: * There are open source copycats that are in some aspects better than the ‘original’. Mattermost and Rocket.chat come to mind. * Slack really sucks at some things: open invites, fine tuning notifications, broadcasting your status. It is known to become slow and even break down when teams get huge[1]. * Slack will do what it can to keep you within their walled garden. You can export data but is there a way to move an entire team or organization to an alternative solution? Don’t think so (but ready to be wrong.) I think that part of why we are having this discussion in the first place is that osm.org <http://osm.org/> offers no great options for community members to be in touch. The web site has always been about the map primarily, not the people. I am curious if there are any ideas out there to change that. So we may perhaps think a little bit less about creating more channels for people to be in touch in the future. [1] http://blog.freecodecamp.com/2015/06/so-yeah-we-tried-slack-and-we-deeply-regretted-it.html <http://blog.freecodecamp.com/2015/06/so-yeah-we-tried-slack-and-we-deeply-regretted-it.html> > On Mar 29, 2016, at 1:24 PM, Frederik Ramm <frede...@remote.org> wrote: > > Hi, > > On 03/29/2016 07:33 PM, Luis Villa wrote: >> +1 to this. OSM should be seeking to broaden the base of potential >> mappers, and that means making sure that gateways to the community are >> user-friendly - which these days includes good UX/onboarding experience >> and mobile apps. Slack is a clear winner there. > > As a side note, this is also something commonly debated by the OSMF > board and the OSMF members - wheter or not, and in how far, non-free > tools are valid to use for a project like OSM and a foundation like the > OSMF. > > Example of a recent discussion: > https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/osmf-talk/2015-December/003639.html > > The spectrum of available services for a specific task usually ranges > from "Non-free software offered as a service" (with and without silo, > with and without payment) over "free software offered as a serivce" to > "free software you run yourselves". > > The paid-for solutions will usually mean less work for the few admins at > OSMF (who have enough work with keeping the essentials running), plus > they're usually shinier. The self-hosted stuff is often less shiny but > more in keeping with the free-and-open spirit. > > Personally I'm often on the fence as well. I'd love there to be an > "internal IT services working group" whom we could task with setting up > email, bug trackers, wikis, mumble servers, and voting platforms as > needed but there's no such group and not enough capacity in OWG to > shoulder that too. I think that OSM owes its success partly to all those > who were happy to use it when it was still much less usable than it is > today; had everyone gone to Google because the had the slickest > interface, then OSM wouldn't be where it is today. On the other hand, > working groups or the board tend to have a mission and while some > detours for using free-and-open are acceptable, there's a limit to just > how much productivity loss you can accept for going with the less shiny. > > Bye > Frederik > > -- > Frederik Ramm ## eMail frede...@remote.org ## N49°00'09" E008°23'33" > > _______________________________________________ > Talk-us mailing list > Talk-us@openstreetmap.org > https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
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