CWG meeting 2012-10-08

Communication Working Group meeting on Monday 18th October 2012

Topics

Banners on the front page
Social media badges on the front page

Attendees

Harry Wood
Henk Hoff
Richard Weait
Jonathan B

IRC log:

21:00 harry-wood: evenin. CWG?
21:00 toffehoff: HI
21:00 harry-wood: is finishing eating dinner
21:02 rweait: hello.
21:02 toffehoff: Hello Richard
21:02 JonathanB: Evening
21:03 harry-wood: got RichardF here too?
21:05 harry-wood: guess not
21:06 rweait: What's in front of CWG today?

legally sensitive discussion redacted

21:12 JonathanB: Well, let's not ride that particular merry-go-round again this week.
21:12 toffehoff: :-)
21:12 rweait: Right.
21:12 rweait: Anything in front of CWG today?
21:12 JonathanB: I have something if no-one else does
21:13 harry-wood: ooh
21:13 toffehoff: Anything on SotM US?
21:13 toffehoff: This weekend?
21:13 toffehoff: Or SotM Scotland; the weekend aftre
21:13 rweait: not a foundation event.
21:13 JonathanB: Is SotM US?
21:13 rweait: if they want help posting to OGD they haven't asked. ..
21:14 rweait: neither local events are Foundataion sposnored afaik.
21:14 rweait: If they are I'd like sponsorship for my Mappy hours. :-)
21:15 toffehoff: Raises the question whether we should comms about big OSM related events or happenings ....
21:15 harry-wood: well they've got a (too obtrusive in my opinion) big green banner on the front page
21:15 toffehoff: yup
21:16 harry-wood: happening next weekend anyway, so the banner'll be gone soon
21:17 toffehoff: Other question: should, and if, what kind of banners are we willing to have on osm.org?
21:18 toffehoff: afaik there is not a policy for that....
21:18 harry-wood: all such discussions fall into the "Front Page Design" black hole I think :-)
21:18 rweait: There was.
21:18 rweait: Previous to this year it was "SotM only."
21:18 rweait: Vienna was declined.
21:18 harry-wood: raises eyebrows
21:18 rweait: No idea how / if that changed for Portland
21:19 toffehoff: Might be that Portland is after Tokyo.
21:19 rweait: and vienna before Denver... perhaps.
21:19 JonathanB: From http://git.openstreetmap.org/rails.git/commit/5f0c590c32565ffb807699df02c7ce8392513210 it looks like Martijn asked ans was given
21:19 toffehoff: Perhaps.
21:19 rweait: that doesn't sound like a policy though. :-)
21:19 toffehoff: Right ... hence my question :-)
21:20 rweait: at any rate. not an emergency for today.
21:20 harry-wood: no. I think for once there are in fact no comms emergencies
21:20 toffehoff: No, but is it on our table, or something for board, or another WG?
21:20 rweait: Any feedback on the new tile server in Brisbane?
21:20 rweait: the talk-au list seems to like it.
21:21 harry-wood: oh yeah? good. I wonder how much difference it makes in speed
21:21 harry-wood: difficult to know
21:21 rweait: two or three au mappers have said, "Nice!" or similar. So, a noticeable improvement.
21:21 toffehoff: Talked with some great guys from Australia during SotM tokyo.
21:22 toffehoff: Good to see some positive responses coming from that part of the world.
21:22 rweait: Sure. Once we stoped the bullying on that list, the real mappers cam back into sight.
21:23 toffehoff: yes
21:23 rweait: Nothing there then.
21:23 toffehoff: I guess that Richard still needs to work on the comms policy ....
21:23 toffehoff: RichardF that is. ...
21:24 rweait: Shall we talk meta-CWG then?
21:24 toffehoff: realizing we have two Richards in the CWG
21:24 harry-wood: meta-CWG!
21:25 JonathanB: Can we talk social network badges?
21:25 toffehoff: Just getting back on the banner policy. Anything we need to do about that?
21:25 rweait: Could we get in the habit of having an agenda in advance? Might keep us on point.
21:25 JonathanB: +1
21:25 harry-wood: ok banners policy
21:26 toffehoff: rweait: you said there was one. Also on paper?
21:26 rweait: I doubt it was on paper. I recall Vienna asking and somebody saying "no. SOTM Only"
21:26 rweait: Might have been SteveC. Don't recall.
21:26 harry-wood: personally I find the green banner at the moment a bit too much (or it was too much to have it there the past few months) . I like the design. Maybe it should've been smaller.
21:27 rweait: We've never had a policy before. Not sure if Limerick had a banner...
21:27 toffehoff: I think it had, but that as a transparant layer in the top left corner of the map.
21:28 rweait: If it has to be codified, I'd be happy with SotM only, just for the clarity.
21:28 rweait: And I don't know that the policy would be ours to make. MT, perhaps?
21:28 harry-wood: for the clarity and also because otherwise we might end up with banners there all year round
21:29 JonathanB: We can certainly ask the board for guidance whether it's our decision to make or theirs
21:30 harry-wood: TomH is the one who *really* makes the decisions about anything going on the front page. I imagine he'd be happy with CWG laying down a policy on it
21:30 rweait: Task for somebody to boot that to MT for a decision?
21:30 harry-wood: ok I can do that if you like
21:31 rweait: put it to a vote?
21:31 harry-wood: MT didn't meet in a while, but the email still works
21:31 toffehoff: I've put it with the board on how the new board sees the MT.
21:32 toffehoff: But sending a message to MT still work :-)
21:32 harry-wood: OK well I might wait until *after* SOTM PDX and then email MT about that
21:32 rweait: does that mean harry-wood don't do it, toffehoff will do it
21:32 harry-wood: I'll do it
21:32 toffehoff: If needed, I've forward it to board
21:33 harry-wood: ok
21:33 toffehoff: (the request from harry)
21:33 harry-wood: next topic
21:33 harry-wood: meta-CWG?
21:33 JonathanB: raises hand
21:33 rweait: defers to JB
21:33 harry-wood: jonathanB you had a social badges topic?
21:33 JonathanB: Yes.
21:34 JonathanB: I wanted to get opinions from other CWGers based on the research I've done so far
21:34 JonathanB: with a view to maybe doing further research or pushing things forward
21:34 JonathanB: Our social media pages/accounts/whatevers
21:35 toffehoff: you mean: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Badges ?
21:35 JonathanB: are reasonably well-used, but nowhere near the numbers you might expect given mapper numbers
21:35 JonathanB: toffehoff: No -- let me finish and all will be clear
21:35 toffehoff: ok
21:36 JonathanB: One way of getting more Likes/Follows/+1s would be to put badges for the networks on the home page
21:36 JonathanB: There is a big list of pros and cons to consider
21:36 JonathanB: Pros:
21:36 JonathanB: We get more raw numbers on those channels
21:37 JonathanB: We have better ways of communicating with people who don't like mailing lists & individual blogs
21:37 JonathanB: We look hip and trendy (FSVO trendy)
21:37 JonathanB: Cons:
21:37 JonathanB: We look like we're endorsing those networks
21:38 JonathanB: We leak privacy information about our mappers
21:38 JonathanB: We run the risk of de-emphasising our own communication channels
21:39 rweait: replies now?
21:39 JonathanB: Sure
21:39 rweait: I'd think a short test period to evaluate might be okay. If we can reduce the harm from
21:40 rweait: or relating to privacly leaks, that would be better.
21:40 JonathanB: The standard badges all use JS
21:40 rweait: Perhaps with only having the badges when not logged in or something...
21:40 JonathanB: which has an inherent leakiness
21:40 rweait: Not my field.
21:40 JonathanB: We could roll our own passive links, but that's bending the networks' ToSs
21:40 rweait: I'd rely on smart folks to figure that out.
21:41 rweait: anybody else?
21:42 rweait: nobody cares either way?
21:42 toffehoff: Not sure with what it was, but ....
21:42 toffehoff: at some point I got very frustrated comments about people needing to use FB ....
21:43 toffehoff: Just having a FB like button triggered some negative responses from people.
21:43 toffehoff: But then ....
21:44 rweait: harry-wood, thoughts?
21:44 JonathanB: Sometimes people just like to complain, but we would have to answer genuine concerns
21:44 JonathanB: We'd have to make it clear that we're not proposing to shut other channels
21:44 toffehoff: Something like we support companies who do not care much about privacy and such.
21:44 rweait: right.
21:45 rweait: toffehoff: so are you against adding badges?
21:45 toffehoff: I'm neutral now...
21:45 rweait: harry-wood?
21:45 JonathanB: My thinking is that we're targeting people who already use those networks, rather than trying to force anti people to use them
21:46 toffehoff: Where would you put these badges?
21:46 JonathanB: ...but making that clear is something we need to be mindful of
21:46 rweait: toffehoff: we don't need to bikeshed the placement.
21:46 toffehoff: sorry, meaning?
21:46 rweait: JonathanB: you've put a lot into researching this. What do you think?
21:46 harry-wood: sorry back now
21:47 rweait: toffehoff: placement isn't the issue (yet), we have to think about Yes or no. then how.
21:47 JonathanB: rweait: I like the idea of not using the official JS-based badges, but having plain links instead
21:47 rweait: plancement can be a design decision...
21:47 JonathanB: Shall we give harry-wood a moment to catch up?
21:49 rweait: once we've heard from harry-wood, what about pulling in dev@ to ask for the best, least-privacy-leakey way to do a 30-day test? Then check with talk@ then, barring blockers. test and evaluate?
21:50 JonathanB: Sounds like a reasonable plan
21:50 rweait: unless we're against it.
21:50 JonathanB: If it turns out that they don't get used much, then we can abandon the idea without having caused too much harm
21:50 toffehoff: Or ... we could voice the idea on talk@, if there are no major concerns, move to a test ?
21:51 rweait: harry-wood, did we lose you? ;-)
21:51 JonathanB: Any post to talk@ would need to be explicit about what we were and weren't proposing -- just to answer any complaints in advance
21:51 harry-wood: sorry. listening to girlfriend
21:52 toffehoff: JonathanB: right.
21:52 rweait: JonathanB: you want to continue to lead this? Go to talk@ and or dev@
21:53 JonathanB: OK -- will draft some stuff and share on email
21:53 rweait: cool.
21:53 rweait: Can we do a quick meta before the top of the hour?
21:53 toffehoff: shoot
21:53 toffehoff: btw: JonathanB: good work :-)
21:53 rweait: I think we are stil set up as harry wood as chair and MT rep?
21:53 rweait: is that right?
21:54 rweait: and toffehoff as Board rep?
21:54 rweait: any changes to that with the new board/
21:54 toffehoff: Board rep is RichardF
21:54 rweait: okay.
21:54 toffehoff: primary...
21:54 rweait: as long as the two of you share us. no problem. :-)
21:54 toffehoff: :-)
21:55 toffehoff: Still ok with Harry as chair.
21:55 rweait: Could we get agendas in advance, and a reminder email day-of or day before?
21:55 rweait: perhaps email issues to harry through the weel for consideriation and addition to agenda?
21:56 rweait: "week"
21:56 toffehoff: sounds good to me.
21:56 rweait: I think we spent 20-something minutes deciding what to talk about today. We can do better. :-)
21:56 rweait: As "Communication" people.
21:56 toffehoff: Next time we'll take 30 minutes. OK?
21:57 toffehoff: :-)
21:57 rweait: Just what I was hoping.
21:57 rweait: toffehoff: you blanket here gets positive comments all the time. :-) Lovely.
21:57 rweait: "your"
21:57 toffehoff: Good to hear that !
21:57 harry-wood: sorry. Girlfriend was talking to me. I was trying to read IRC while pretending to listen
21:58 toffehoff: I think this should be redacted from the minutes :-)
21:58 rweait: We just signed you up for a time share. Don't worry.
21:58 harry-wood: hehe
21:58 rweait: we done for the week?
21:59 harry-wood: Yeah the badges on the homepage thing. Potentially quite controvertial
22:00 toffehoff: Just to end of with an amazing vid: http://vimeo.com/32397612
22:01 toffehoff: no, nothing osm....
22:01 harry-wood: So we can say we're done for the week
22:02 JonathanB: I'm done
22:02 toffehoff: yep.
22:02 toffehoff: Next week I'm in a plane during this time.
22:02 toffehoff: Apologies....
22:02 rweait: ttfn
22:02 harry-wood: email with agenda items
22:03 harry-wood: or just email with email discussions and these will become agenda items in IRC I'm sure
22:03 harry-wood: so next week
22:04 harry-wood: I will post IRC logs.
22:05 toffehoff: Thanks.
22:05 toffehoff: Bye!