Description of its purpose and which open mapping groups it will serve
This is to adopt the old United Kingdom forum that was migrated, and to offer a subcategory for UK specific questions and discussion from contributors, consumers and companies who may prefer a forum format.
Why is this new category needed instead of being hosted as part of the existing ones?
There is no specific UK or GB category on the community forum since migration.
Is this a new space or does it already exist on other platforms? Where?
This is somewhat a new space. Historically, the forum was never hugely busy compared to talk-GB mailing list.
OSMUK, the UK local chapter, host a Loomio forum, but it is lightly used and hosted away from openstreetmap.org.
Current volume of messages on the former platforms, if any (per week/per month)
Talk-GB gets about 92 messages a month (based on the previous 14 full months). OSMUK Loomio gets 1-3 messages a month.
Is there a transition plan for the old platform to this new one? (please link or describe)
There is no intention that this is a replacement for the mailing list, which has benefits that it can be participated in without requiring a signup.
The OSMUK Loomio will highlight the existence of this subcategory, and community.openstreetmap.org as a potentially better place to post new topics unless specific to the local chapter due to its greater ‘footfall’.
(Optional) A link or list of the category specific guidelines.
I’d like to see it reactivated. I unsubscribed from the Loomio platform because it suffered from far too much spam, with no obvious or effective way to report it.
Thanks for opening this request! We’ll wait at least 5 days to make sure everyone has had time to share their opinions. After that discussion, we’ll set up a simple poll that will also run for 5 days. This will formally demonstrate community support for this new category and moderator team. Once the poll succeeds, we are going to create the category (with the imported content from the old forum).
To make sure everyone is on the same page, I’d like to see a confirmation from the remaining moderator candidate, @CjMalone.
Also, @gnesss, as the one who opened this request it’s up to you to decide if you want to add additional volunteers (such as @RedAuburn) to the proposed list of moderators. Do so either by editing your original message to add their user names or by letting us know with a post.
As a newb OSM editor (though old and experienced in other things) I’d really welcome a place to ask questions and discuss UK (or should that be GB) specific matters. Right now after a week or so I’m somewhat bewildered by many things I’ve seen, and could do with a dialogue to help me understand…
Thanks to everyone who has provided input on this category request so far!
I’m now starting a poll to validate the creation of a “United Kingdom” category with @gnesss, @Robert_Whittaker, @CjMalone and @RedAuburn as the initial moderation team. The list will be validated if it gets at least 80% of yes votes. Note that votes (who voted what) are public to help identify any abuses.
The United Kingdom category has now been set up (with the content imported from the old forum already in place). I’ve also added the approved moderators to the @mods-uk group.
