Update on How to Request Social Media Posts or other CWG Support

Foundation
, ,
1

Hi, all, I’m writing from my role as a Communications Working Group member.

We are working on improving our Comms practices to support the many stories from the community. We have new software that helps us post on our official OSM channels: X (Twitter), Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Mastodon.

If you want to request coverage of a story you can email us at communication@osmfoundation.org. For best results, use a version of this draft template to format your request:

What type of support would you like to request?

What is the topic of the blog and/or social media post (in 1 sentence)?
[insert a very short 1 - 2 sentence summary]

Which content category does this topic fall under?

  • OSM project (e.g. OpenStreetMap.org)
  • OSM community stories (e.g. diary post, report out from mapping party, upcoming SotM or other event)
  • OSMF Board
  • OSMF fundraising
  • OSMF partnerships with companies, NGOs or other organizations

Do you have a draft of the new blog and/or social media post?

  • yes–please paste at the bottom of the message
  • no

Please include the most important links that should be used in the post

  • examples: a link to the event or project main page; the best link for your community or working group.

Please share 1-3 images that are reflective of your event or story.

  • examples: images that depict the project or event, such as a graphic that advertises the details, a screenshot of a data visualization, a photograph that is representative of your local community. Please include attribution.

Who is the main contact person for this topic if not you?
[insert name here]

What your social media profiles so that we can tag you?

  • If you wish us to repost your own posts about this topic, please also use openstreetmap and @openstreetmap in your posts.

We are working on making a form so that it’s much easier for you to submit requests for stories, but for now, if you use this format, it will help us act quickly to spread the word about your project, event, etc.

Looking forward to hearing from you!

–Courtney W

PS. If you aren’t already, please follow/join/share/RT/comment, etc. on the official OSM channels: X (Twitter), Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Mastodon. It’s the best way to spread the word and grow the community.

7 Likes
2

That sounds interesting, does that means that this new software posts things automatically to all appropriate channels?

Or do volunteers still need to manually copy/paste new stories as their time permits (e.g. Ops #622), making those of us who opt for open and federated platform like Mastodon second-class citizens as opposed to those succumbing to closed data silos like X/Twitter, Facebook, Instagram & LinkedIn?

If such change indeed happened, knowing about it would be an interesting story in itself! (especially as that GitHub issue above has not been updated with any news).

Also, that Mastodon link you use in this post (https://en.osm.town/home) simply links to Mastodon instance, not to official OpenstreetMap page there (i.e. it is as if you linked just to https://www.facebook.com/ instead of https://www.facebook.com/OpenStreetMap/).

That link is thus not very helpful for end user (especially as they are greeted by "You need to login to access this resource" by default if they lack the account on that specific Mastodon instance but use some other Mastodon instance).

I guess you wanted to link to https://en.osm.town/@openstreetmap/ instead as an official OpenStreetMap account on Mastodon? Or if you indeed wanted to promote all accounts on that instance (and not just official OSM one), then perhaps better use https://en.osm.town/public/local instead, which will show all posts on that instance to user visiting it?

3

Hey @courtney, is there someone in CWG responsible for managing the GitHub - osmfoundation/welcome-mat: This is the code for the OpenStreetMap Welcome Mat website repository?

It would be good to see some response to the issue — localize and internationalize · Issue #8 · osmfoundation/welcome-mat · GitHub?

4

Hi, there,

We are using Buffer, and nothing is being posted automatically.

Buffer posts directly to Mastodon, just as it does to other channels. @amapanda_ᚐᚋᚐᚅᚇᚐ uses it for that purpose, I believe. And, to my knowledge, no second class citizenry is being created.

I am not familiar with the ticket you reference, nor have I ever seen it on a CWG meeting agenda.

As to the added detail re: the Mastodon links, yes to all! Thanks for expanding the details.

2 Likes
5

Hi!

I have never seen that ticket, nor have I ever seen it on a CWG agenda, and I haven’t seen it listed on the CWG Gitlab, so I am guessing it is safe to say that the CWG isn’t working on it. @mikelmaron do you know?

Courtney

6

No we haven’t discussed in the CWG, and I wasn’t aware of Andy’s PR. Let’s consider it.

7

Hiya! I’m on the CWG, founded & co-mod the OSM.town Mapstodon community :wave:. We did mention Mastodon/Fediverse many times :wink:

That ops ticket is no longer relevant, it’s referring to automatically posting Twitter.com content to Mastodon. But Twitter.com has blocked those free reposting website for a long time now. Sic transit gloria twitteri.

The OSMF has approved a budget so we can use Buffer.com to share access to posts. That’s what we’re using now. It’s possible to share access amoung CWG, previously it was rather ad-hoc. It is possible to post the same message to all networks. But that’s not always the best. Both technical differences between the services (Mastodon allows twice as much as text as Twitter), technical reasons in Buffer (which doesn’t allow adding alt text, which the Mastodon/Fediverse community expects more), and audience differences. I heard Mastodon/Fediverse described as if “a furry conference, trans support group, and free software hackathon were happening in the same place”. That’s a very difference vibe from … LinkedIn.

If you look at the various social media accounts, it’s clear that OSM Mastodon is very active, and popular. OpenStreetMap is about liberating our map data, so of course liberating our social media communication is a part of that. Mastodon & open content is very definitly not second class.

Here’s some links for others to get started:

2 Likes
8

This should go without saying, but remember what we say to new wikipedia users: “We’re much stricter about copyright” :wink:. Please ensure that images are openly licenced (e.g. public domain or acceptable creative commons licence), so we can repost them. If the original creator uploads them to the OpenStreetMap Wiki, then that’s great, because (i) others can use it years later and (ii) we can be much more confident in the licence. :slightly_smiling_face:

9

Thank you. This is just the information I needed. Any chance the main page of the wiki could be updated with this information so it won’t scroll away into oblivion?