But, if you haven’t made any comments at all throughout the proposal, it’s then a bit rude, & also unhelpful, to vote no, with a comment “You say it’s ABC, but I think it should be 123, so I’m voting no”.
Rules (Guidelines? 
) say that Proposals can’t be changed once they reach voting, so there’s no point in proposing changes when you vote, be it yes, no or abstain.
My guess would be (and I’m not accusing here) that he wanted to see if I am some kind of a radical who is against everything a LGBTQIA+ person might say just to spite them (and thus should be disregarded as a troll), or if I am actually unconcerned with their genders and am genuinely having issues with proposal arguments (and, as such, might perhaps be reasoned with).[1]
While I agree it is somewhat offtopic and absolutely should not be required to know for the purposes of discussing the proposal, I personally didn’t have an privacy issue with publicly stating my opinion on the subject; especially if that helps clear the doubts, calm the tensions, and allows the discussion to continue in orderly fashion[2].
But I do get that many people might form some opinion of other people (or even whole groups, i.e. generalize), and then frame everything from those people thereafter subjective to that impression, which is not ideal.
In fact, I’ve written this userscript (for those using ViolentMonkey / TamperMonkey etc) which anonymizes who posted what on Discourse, as a help to avoid bias based on a person who posted, so one can more open-mindedly read certain discussions that warrant it, and base opinions on arguments presented, and not on personas who did it. I would suggest people try it and see if it changes their perception.
(anyway, now that this question is cleared, hopefully we can all go back to the proposal itself; once the Proponent decides how to proceed)
Well, the proposal process wiki does also say that:
- Rejected features may be resubmitted, modified, and new vote started. You can also move back to the RFC process, or at least send some message to give chance of feedback without voting against.
…so that might be a reason for leaving a comment on your Vote (i.e. in a sense “should this vote fail, to get my vote of approval in subsequent attempt, xyz needs to be fixed first”).
Also, there is even more important use of it:
even if proposal is approved, comments on votes indicates to potential data consumer what might be the issues with the approved key and thus should be taken into consideration[1].
The same usefulness is present if proposal is rejected (or abandoned mid-vote) but people still decide to use some tag from that proposal - it helps them use part of it which are good, while avoiding parts which are problematic.
(and skimming list of votes usually happens to be nicely readable summary, and much easier then parsing all of the discussions on wiki talk page and linked external discussions)
IOW, just because tag is marked as approved does not make it perfect and absolved of all sins. ↩︎
Not everyone is notified of new proposals, or may miss them,and voting may be the first chance they get to see what is being proposed. Potentially it could be rejected because of that, and then just proposed again with a 2nd very very late revision.
Cross-cultural collaboration is hard, moreso because we’re basically all amateurs at it, not seasoned diplomats. It says a lot about OSM that we’re trying. The more local or topical communities should find it easier to cohere, with so much more in common. That’s a necessary first step before we can even think about anything globally and across such diverse interests.
I just came back to this thread after a week or so of travel and other offline complications to find that I missed a lot of heat but not a lot of clarity. As a general suggestion, sometimes we find ourselves beating the drum and running out of new words to say, even being the loudest one in the room. (I’m certainly guilty of it myself!) When that happens, let’s take a step back and make room for others from our own communities to carry the conversation forward. We can still nudge gently from behind the scenes. 
this has not been my experience in academia: I found that international venues were easier for debates. I suspect that the asymmetry here comes from the difficulty of topics: we treat easier questions in a more hands-on way at the national level and defer to community and/or wiki for harder stuff, often in an abstract way.
More than diplomats, I’d say that we are not designers, with methods for problems that require strong collective intelligence and with the self-discipline that goes with them.
EDIT: I wanted to mention the ‘popcorn’ icon which, in a more positive form, could signal ‘warning, we enter a difficult area where other methods and self-discipline (taking care ot the debate as a precious object) are needed’
For that matter, we collectively are no occupation in particular, just an unruly mob. 
The subcommunities I’m in also deal with abstract topics. Culturally sensitive matters are even more frequently discussed among the national community, where we have a shared experience in how a national society typically encounters such questions. I’m reminded of the discussion on tagging minority-owned businesses. The debate that unfolded was so cringeworthy relative to both the norms in my society and probably the norms in academia, but the culture shock was not entirely surprising given the participants’ diverse backgrounds. My takeaway was that the smaller communities are a good place to build grassroots support before taking it to a global stage.
I agree that self-discipline is called for, and I think we can tap into our own subcommunities so none of us winds up feeling besieged when championing a worthy cause.
I don’t think this is the real problem here. Having followed the debate my personal feeling is more that these comments
nail it. Sure there are factual comments, pointing towards problems arising from the proposal, but there are also others not adding much value to the issue itself, but lecturing about the nature of the proposal process per se or making the propsal look ridiculous by stating “funny” examples or knocking any opponent down with walls of words. This is just my personal receiption and others apparently felt similar. And no, I will not start quoting examples to go into the details.
Such kind of argumentation badly reminds me of what is called “mansplaining” in another context - in the given case we should probably call ist “mapsplaining”. I have experienced the same in earlier debates and I can honestly say that I do not like it.
I have expressed my support for this proposal at a very early stage and I did not change my mind although I accept that there are valid arguments against realizing it in its original form. But that does not mean there would be no other option to point out in a polite way that stating a reason for a “no” vote is necessary. This
could be a reasonable approach imo.
Your observations match mine when it comes to this thread and plenty of past flareups. I was responding to the broader critique of the forum as a space for shaping OSM’s direction, not to excuse the discussion here but to encourage us to keep trying. People come here expecting a set of norms that not everyone here shares. The good news is that norms can change through experience.
I wouldn’t give up on the forum. Its value is measured not only in decisions or actions (oof), but also in how well we manage to get people on the same page and hold the project together (also oof, but progress is measured in increments over years). We do need people to be more self-aware, like knowing when they’re “using their outdoor voice indoors” or straying off topic. I think some of us are hoping that moderators step in and split off any side discussions, so we keep going in the meantime (if you’ll excuse this meta-discussion).
Interestingly, when making these observations we might have totally different views about the topic itself, or even about how each author has contributed constructively or not. But this does not matter. What matters is that the group fails to take care of the health of the debate: one makes a first mistake, another adds to it, and the fire becomes uncontrollable.
The forum is still good for various topics, and it may become good for more difficult topics if we keep looking for the right ways to use it. I believe that we need to invent methods/recommendations beyond the current “good practices” that someone mentioned. For instance someone becomes the debate host and enforces a phase for stating practical concerns followed by another phase for inventing solutions for these concerns.
Not a bad idea, but, as always, who is “someone”?
OP of the thread? Hardly appropriate, especially considering the topic of this thread! (& no, that is in no way a comment on the OP here, just in regard to the original topic itself)
Section / General / Country mods? Maybe, but there’s a lot of threads & not many mods to cover them all. 
I was more thinking of skilled volunteers, or volunteers who become skilled over time 
Something like a Forum Working Group, which might include the current moderator, but new roles as well. “Facilitators”, maybe.
In all honesty, I am aware that finding volunteers may be difficult. But I suspect that some of us have been involved in that kind of tasks in other contexts and might accept to donate some time and energy.
Just brainstorming. Not sure it is the one good idea.