What and who is affected by this issue/request?
This affects everyone participating in national or large-scale tagging discussions on the OpenStreetMap community forum, especially in countries where decisions on how to map certain features generate many comments and strong opinions. For example, the Polish community recently discussed the use of the highway=trunk tag in Poland, which resulted in a long and important thread:
https://community.openstreetmap.org/t/stosowanie-tagu-highway-trunk-w-polsce/122106/1
Such threads can be difficult to follow and manage due to the current flat, linear comment structure.
Where on the platform does it happen?
In topic threads with long discussions — particularly in the comment section of a topic.
How do we replicate the issue?
- Go to a topic with a long discussion (e.g., the one linked above).
- Try to follow different side conversations or subtopics.
- Observe how difficult it is to track the flow of conversation, especially when someone replies to an earlier comment even when quoting it.
- Notice how previously resolved or off-topic issues sometimes resurface, since there’s no way to collapse or separate them structurally.
Expected behavior (i.e. solution)
I would like to kindly ask the platform maintainers to consider introducing a more structured comment section — perhaps threaded (tree-like) comments instead of a single continuous list. This would allow participants to:
- Respond directly to specific subtopics.
- Collapse subthreads that are no longer relevant.
- Stay focused on the main topic without constantly revisiting side issues.
Additionally, it could help to introduce voting (e.g., upvotes like on Reddit) to promote useful contributions and increase the overall quality of discourse.
Of course, I’m open to other systemic ideas that could help all of us have more structured and productive discussions on tagging standards and mapping practices.
Other Comments
Discussions like the one on highway=trunk shape how thousands of mappers tag roads across the entire country. It’s crucial that we have tools that support clarity, focus, and collaborative decision-making. Thank you for considering this!