CWG meeting 2012-11-26

From OpenStreetMap Foundation

A meeting of the Communication Working Group on Monday 26th November 2012

Topics

IRC log:

21:02 JonathanB: is here
21:03 rweait: hello
21:04 harry-wood: hello!
21:04 harry-wood: JonathanB rweait how are you doing?
21:04 rweait: So are we ready to go?
21:05 JonathanB: Tiiiiiiiiiiired, but otherwise fine
21:05 harry-wood: guess so. Do we have RichardF also?
21:05 harry-wood: guess not
21:06 harry-wood: agenda items?
21:07 rweait: hmm. we seem to be missing a few of the recent minutes...
21:07 JonathanB: Ah, one of those is my fault.
21:07 harry-wood: was there any sucessfull meeting recently?
21:07 JonathanB: the two Richards and I had one
21:08 rweait: except we didn't minute it.
21:08 JonathanB: RichardF pastebinned the log, but I suspect I've lost the link
21:08 JonathanB: he may still have it.
21:08 harry-wood: was that last week?
21:08 rweait: yes.
21:08 JonathanB: Oh, hang on...
21:08 JonathanB: got it
21:09 harry-wood: sorry. I went out last week and missed the email saying we'd go ahead with a meeting
21:10 JonathanB: We talked about promoting membership of OSMF and what our options are.
21:10 harry-wood: ah right. yes there was an email about the idea of having a more prominent 'join' link
21:11 rweait: I have one new agenda item.
21:11 JonathanB: On a separate but related note, tmcw is interested in adding badges to the rails port user pages.
21:11 harry-wood: http://www.osmfoundation.org Is this website crawling along slowly at the moment
21:11 harry-wood: or is it my wifi connection?
21:11 tmcw: JonathanB: who said that!?
21:11 tmcw: ha, you saw that ticket
21:12 JonathanB: tmcw: didn't notice you in here!
21:12 tmcw: that's very preliminary, just a whatif
21:12 JonathanB: Since you're here, we may as well bring you up to speed
21:12 harry-wood: I like the idea
21:13 JonathanB: CWG discussed the idea of having an OSMF membership badge on user pages last week, but realised it would need more work than just the graphics
21:13 harry-wood: would have deciding on various scoring metrics
21:13 rweait: It's controversial and has been shot down before. But I can get behind a limited test / evaluation.
21:13 harry-wood: downside would be people "gaming" the game... and people whinging about people gaming the game
21:13 JonathanB: So it's technically similar to your idea of editor badges, but the whole thing will need a policy behind it to stop it getting out of hand
21:14 tmcw: Hmm, yeah.
21:14 rweait: Currently the only badges we have are for sysadmins and moderators, I think?
21:14 JonathanB: Yes
21:14 JonathanB: the point being they're relevant to the operation of the API. Our badges aren't.
21:14 tmcw: I originally thought that a first-pass at it would just edit user details and add a snippet, similar to how badges work on wikipedia pages
21:15 harry-wood: ah right. "user boxes"
21:16 tmcw: And those are more or less honor system I think...
21:16 harry-wood: yeah. they're editable and pretty free-form. Users can make up silly badges, or they can receive barn star awards from people
21:17 harry-wood: Of course we do have users boxes on *our* wiki already
21:17 harry-wood: we also have these star things: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Awards
21:17 harry-wood: ...which never really took off, but are quite nicely designed
21:19 rweait: hmm. Do we have users clamouring for OSMF to "solve the badge problem" ?
21:19 rweait: Or are we just looking for things to do?
21:19 JonathanB: No. This is something we're doing to promote membership
21:19 tmcw: I think there's plenty of room to play before we need a 'badge api'
21:19 tmcw: but it makes lots of sense for OSMF to do better design of badges that people can use, at various scales and so on.
21:20 harry-wood: Well it's true to this is arguable out of scope for CWG, but it's something we could guide as a communication priority.
21:20 harry-wood: It'll need developing too of course :-)
21:20 tmcw: graphics stuff is out of cwg's agenda?
21:20 tmcw: or osmf-in-specific stuff
21:21 harry-wood: well we need to have think about the scope of CWG. Our main/first priority was to get OSMF comms channels active and worthwhile
21:21 rweait: So is testing badges on the wiki sufficient as a first step for this idea?
21:23 harry-wood: depends what that means really because we're already using "userboxes"
21:24 harry-wood: Maybe we should be able to transclude our description from our wiki user page (including user boxes)
21:25 JonathanB: That's probably getting too much into the implementation for CWG
21:25 harry-wood: it quickly leads the more thorny issue of why we don't have single-sign-on between wiki and rails port
21:25 rweait: :-)
21:26 JonathanB: ...or why we're still using MediaWiki in the first place
21:26 rweait: Okay, what part of this shold CWG discuss today?
21:26 rweait: if at all?
21:26 rweait: Is there a proposal to consider?
21:26 JonathanB: I think at this stage if we just say to tmcw "please consider other badge types as well", that's all the action we need for now.
21:27 tmcw: you guys are not in charge of the OSMF mission statement, right?
21:27 rweait: The one the board drafted?
21:27 harry-wood: Well no that was work done recently by the board
21:28 JonathanB: We're in charge of making it understandable, but not the initial content :)
21:28 tmcw: sigh.
21:29 harry-wood: We could probably take it upon ourselves to improve it a little
21:29 harry-wood: but would make sense for RichardF to discuss that with us
21:29 tmcw: please, someone deal with the 'hijacking' line
21:29 rweait: You want hijacking to be permitted, then?  :-)
21:29 rweait: or actively encouraged :-)
21:30 tmcw: I'd settle for 'defined'
21:30 rweait: Is the board not reviewing the feedback from recent discussion?
21:30 harry-wood: http://www.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Mission_Statement
21:30 harry-wood: I'm sure they read it
21:30 JonathanB: I believe the sentiment is that OSMF should prevent OSM's data becoming a proprietary product (shades of MySQL, maybe)
21:31 tmcw: It's been two weeks since the last post on the osmf flamethread
21:32 rweait: can we get back to CWG agenda, if we have one?
21:32 harry-wood: well to close out this question...
21:32 harry-wood: ...I think CWG should've solve the mission statement issue right now
21:32 harry-wood: but we could remind the board (via RichardF) that it need doing
21:33 harry-wood: You had another thing for the agenda rweait?
21:33 rweait: are we done with mission statement?
21:34 JonathanB: I'd say so
21:34 harry-wood: yup
21:34 rweait: Cool.
21:34 harry-wood: (oh... I meant to say "I don't think" ^^^^)
21:34 rweait: This week I was asked to extend an invitation to "OSMF" to join the Eclipse LocationTech (Working Group)
21:35 rweait: Eclipse is an IDE. Eclpise Foundation is overseeing Eclipse and other software projects.
21:35 rweait: some projectes are geo related.
21:35 JonathanB: Doesn't that cost money and involve sending people to meetings?
21:36 rweait: and Location Tech is aiming to help maintain geo projects and provide things like governance, hosting, funding around geo proecjts, plus
21:36 harry-wood: this one: http://wiki.eclipse.org/LocationTech
21:36 rweait: enable cool infrastructure / environmental things around them.
21:36 rweait: that's the one.
21:37 rweait: So, JonathanB: yes, and yes.
21:37 rweait: And they want OSMF involved so, as invited guest, which means no charge.
21:37 rweait: But attending meetings, for sure.
21:38 rweait: This looks to me like a good overlap with CWG, as it is largely a communcation / liason position.
21:38 rweait: Do we wish to take this responsibility, unless board objects?
21:39 JonathanB: OK, could be interesting
21:39 JonathanB: I see Vladimir is presenting Leaflet to them.
21:40 harry-wood: looks like a lot of overlap with osgeo
21:40 harry-wood: but a new organisation has the opportunity to be centred more about OSM stuff
21:40 JonathanB: Well, more choice is good.
21:40 rweait: OSGeo is a member of locationtech iirc
21:41 rweait: SteveC attended some of the early meetings as well, iirc.
21:41 harry-wood: Is it just a matter of giving them a provisional "yes" to the invite at this stage?
21:41 rweait: I'd think.
21:42 rweait: And then a matter of turning up at the meetings.
21:43 rweait: I suppose I could attend those in the interim.
21:43 harry-wood: We could do with more man power for CWG tasks, and this looks like becoming another fairly intensive CWG task for someone
21:43 rweait: indeed.
21:43 harry-wood: We need a recruitment working group
21:44 rweait: we've had some absenteeism recently too. (myself incuded)
21:44 harry-wood: Did you manage to kick off that other working group?
21:44 rweait: Nope. Complete-fail.
21:44 harry-wood: (I've forgotten what it was about now)
21:44 rweait: I couldn't get anybody interested.
21:44 rweait: "Welcome Wagon"
21:45 harry-wood: Oh yeah
21:45 harry-wood: I was interested
21:45 rweait: :-)
21:45 harry-wood: but not intrested enough to take on another set of meetings :-)
21:45 rweait: So, I should offer thanks to Eclipse and turn up to the meetings?
21:46 harry-wood: If you fancy it
21:46 harry-wood: I thought JonathanB also fancied though :-)
21:46 rweait: cool with me!
21:47 rweait: Did we lose jonathanB?
21:48 harry-wood: At some point I wanted to take a step back and discuss all the areas of communication we *could* get involved in and improve, assuming greater manpower
21:48 JonathanB: Momentarily
21:48 harry-wood: ...and then think about how to rope people in
21:48 rweait: "tell them about the catered lunches and standing desks during CWG meetings."
21:49 harry-wood: I did actually have catering during this meeting
21:49 rweait: JonathanB: did you want to sit on the LocationTech, or should I?
21:49 rweait: harry-wood, nice.
21:49 JonathanB: Timing could be an issue, but I could
21:51 rweait: Shall I introduce you, and then I can back you up if timis is an issue.
21:51 rweait: timing.
21:51 JonathanB: Sure
21:51 rweait: Okay.
21:51 rweait: harry-wood, ideas on communication and topics?
21:51 harry-wood: you mean the big areas we could get involved in?
21:52 rweait: Yeah.
21:52 rweait: or did you want to hash thout out by email?
21:52 rweait: that out.
21:52 rweait: sheesh
21:52 harry-wood: I added them to the TODO list google doc
21:52 harry-wood: and I then sent them in an email too
21:53 rweait: that was from 22 October?
21:53 harry-wood: just trying to find it
21:54 harry-wood: Here's the TODO doc: [gdoc edit link redacted]
21:55 harry-wood: So there's..
21:55 harry-wood: "foundation website"
21:55 harry-wood: "Foundation news channels and press liaison"
21:55 harry-wood: "Documentation"
21:56 harry-wood: "Leaflet books, printed maps, and merchandise"
21:56 harry-wood: Those were the big areas I thought of
21:56 harry-wood: there may be some others
21:59 harry-wood: Those are some big issues. I suggest we ponder them and re-convene another time hey rweait? JonathanB?
21:59 rweait: Sounds good.
21:59 JonathanB: Yes, sorry -- drifting a bit
22:00 rweait: Can we get a full team out for next week?
22:00 JonathanB: Fingers crossed
22:00 harry-wood: I think it's good to firmly establish that we don't have enough manpower to solve all communication issues
22:00 rweait: :-)
22:01 harry-wood: ....by thinking of what all the big issues area
22:01 harry-wood: are
22:02 rweait: okay. See you guys next week?
22:02 harry-wood: Ok
22:02 rweait: Cheers!
22:02 harry-wood: see you next week then