Frederik Ramm schrieb: > Hi, > > I'd like to ask for a quick show of hands on the idea of making the > whole built-in OSM messaging system public (not retroactively of course, > but change it so that anyone can ready any message written in the future). > > I am not sure whether this is a good idea myself, that's why I ask. The > rationale behind this is the following: We suspect that there is quite a > bit of "new user intimidation" going on here in Germany, where people > sometimes almost obsessively "protect" their area against changes and > might, sometimes rather impolitely, challenge newcomers. > > Since this is not happening in public, the newcomer has nobody to help > him, and anyone can basically say anything ("Haven't you read that > pelican crossings are deprecated?") without someone else noticing. Being > what he is, the newcomer will of course take everything at face value > and go down a path of trouble. > > If all intra-OSM messaging were public (somewhat like a Wiki "talk" > page), then even if only few people took the time to actually read other > people's conversations, it would be easier for the community as a whole > to get involved and protect its interests against individuals causing > trouble, and knowing that what oen writes is public, people might also > exercise some restraint when choosing their words. > > Another thing one could to if public messaging does not find favour is > posting a caveat immediately over the "write message" text area, > something along the lines of "if you're about to criticize someone whom > you don't know, think twice and always assume good faith", whatever. > > Bye > Frederik >
I don't think that making the messaging system public is a good idea. It all has the feel of private messaging, that should still be possible. I would, however, suggest a different approach. Reduce the need for private messages, by carrying most regional-based discussions to a public level. At the moment you have to look up the user, open his page and send a private message. If more than one user is involved in an area you want to talk about, you have to repeat that for all users. With a system much like openstreetbugs, you could go to you area on the slippy map, click the 'discuss'-tab (e.g.) and set a marker on the map. That marker creates a discussion topic that can be viewed an edited on a different page (could be the wiki or a dedicated system). Mappers interested in a discussion in a certain region could just look for the markers in that area. Discussion could also be shown as a list for the current bounding box, to make it easier to find or follow them. There could also be a rss-feed or email notification. Either way, the point is that many discussions are region-based (why did you tag that way this way, how will we map this or that). Some discussions could be hold on the appropriate wiki page for the city/region, but not everyone always watches all relevant wiki-pages all the time and it's not always easy to find the correct one. Greetings, Sebastian _______________________________________________ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk