Implementation / Consolidation of Forum Q&A and OSM Help site

Map_HeRo · 2022-04-05T20:07:22.387Z

What I am still wondering about is how to implement and consolidate the OSM help/QA sites. There is the category

Open Street Map - Questions and ansers with some 6700 questions and some 28000 posts

being part of the old forum and also part of CQuests migration test. Again there is the separate site

Open Street Map help with some 16000 topics and some 22000 posts.

Both are run in english and both are in use at the time being. I believe it would not make much sense to keep both of these sites running parallel so what is the plan to bring these together?

I am aware there is already a topic about the migration of the help site and how to integrate the tags but this is a different issue from my point of view.

Tordanik · 2022-04-06T08:05:49.195Z

My personal view is that, despite its name, the “Questions and answers” category lacks the strict Q&A format that help.osm.org is going for and that we’re trying to reproduce in the “Help and support” category here on Discourse.

So the “Questions and answers” category can most likely be merged into a “General discussion” category along with most of the other English-language content from forum.osm.org (with appropriate tags for topics from the Editors/Android/3D/… categories) after the migration.

TZorn · 2022-04-06T09:02:10.795Z

I agree with Tordanik. Although, there is probably a lot of valuable information in the forum’s Q&A section, it will be tedious to bring it in any format close to the Help site’s structure.

Map_HeRo · 2022-04-06T11:18:50.360Z

I get your point and for sure you are right. Nevertheless the content of both places is very much the same despite the difference in the format.

I believe the Q&A Section as a part of the old forum has frequently been used by community members who were accustomed to the forum and did not want to engage themselves in another separate place like OSM Help.

Integrating both of these places in the new forum will surely help to avoid running two Q&A places parallel in future if every user (including newbies) can easily see and understand the difference in between those two, like:

If you simply need an answer to your question (acceppting a strictly regulated format): enter here
= OSM help (international)
If you want to discuss any issue with other mappers: enter here
= General discussion (international)

and again (off topic)

If you want to discuss any issue with other mappers of your country/regional community: enter here
= Country based communities