Do we want a telegram group?

Looks like telegram chats are gain popularity.
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/List_of_OSM_centric_Telegram_accounts

They are more accessible, but harder to monitor.
Since we are not super big community, we can try too. For sure it will be easier to invite new users to telegram and not to forum to discuss new problems :slight_smile:

Yalla? Something like @OSM_Israel?

UPD: https://telegram.me/OSM_Israel

I have seen some usage on Slack which might also prove to be a good alternative but either will work for me, this forum is so outdated…

Greets from austria.

Question, why is the forum outdated?

And, i can suggest https://riot.im/ it is open source and it is possible to host the own matrix (protocol) server, named synapse.
But its good useable without an own server as well.

There are already some osm groups there.
Available via desktop, browser, android app, and so on. Just a suggestion.

I’ve participated in the global OSM Telegram channel and it was chaotic. The nature of chat is that there are no topics and coherant conversations cannot be done in parallel.

Don’t mind having a group as a means of quick communication but it’s probably best to leave updates of wider interest and general discussions for the forum.

Yeah, I felt this too, but we are pretty small group, so it should be pretty silent :slight_smile:
and yes, chat are for quick questions, forum - for long discussions :slight_smile:

Please join https://telegram.me/OSM_Israel

@Harel, may I use logo from your https://github.com/IsraelHikingMap?

If anybody wants to be an admin - just ping me!

@Negreheb gust from the top of my head:

  1. This forum is not mobile friendly and doesn’t have a mobile app - it doesn’t work well and is a pain to use with a mobile device.
  2. You don’t get a mail when someone mentions you.
  3. You need to manually subscribe to a topic you would like to get mail for - even when you posted a comment, this is just bad UX…
  4. You need to get into this forum in order to read other people comments instead of getting them by mail.
  5. You need to login every once in a while - is this my bank account or a simple forum?

Bottom line - it serves its purpose but does it very poorly.
Github issues is a delight and works extremely well - this is how I expect a forum to behave these days.

Ah, it was you already here. Never answered, sorry.
1, There is a new theme. Settings - Display - Styles=Air3 → This one is mobile-friendly.
2, No, would need some programming. Guess Discourse does?
3, Not neccesary. Settings - Privacy - Set your subscription options - “Automatically subscribe to every topic you post in.”
4, Never undestood this as a problem myself, but i understand its a problem for you. Maybe at least a bit solved via 1. ? And, the complete response is shown in the mail btw. just checked. So, thats not true? One problem, you just get the next notification until you open it in the forum once. Thats was historically programmed this way to prevent(!) spam in the E-Mail.
5, Don’t know what you mean. I’m online here every day and never had to login again. On another PC of mine i delete cookies everytime and there i have to login every time i open the site. Check your cookies maybe?

Maybe this helps at least a bit.

Now that the Telegram group is active for a while, I would add that Hebrew support in Telegram is a big plus, as it removes a barrier for fluent discussion

It is possible to choose Hebrew in the language menu, i’m a bit afraid if i try that i can’t switch back because, well, i can’t read. Doesn’t that work?

I found another Theme for FluxBB with RTL support, i may be able to look into that and include it into the Air3 theme. It would be a workaround until Discourse is ready (i hope its on the way but it seems there is a lot of work on that right now).

EDIT: Ah, i found out, that the text-content itself is not properly RTL. But it still might be possible to change it. Don’t wanna promise anything, because i’m not fast in things like this, but i might take a look.

The issue is support for mixed עברית and English. It’s OK to embed Hebrew in an English text. Using Hebrew as the main correspondence language is a mess. For example:

טקסט מעורב - English ועברית

“טקסט מעורב” should be on the right side of the line.

This is an issue for all RTL languages, including Arabic and Farsi, which was raised in the past, and ignored.

See https://forum.openstreetmap.org/viewtopic.php?id=66195 for some details on the last attempt in this forum

Does Discorse include RTL and Hebrew support?

I understand. Yeah, i wrote on the issue at the FluxBB Github Issue as well.

And yes, it seems Discourse is supporting RTL properly. Was just reading this https://meta.discourse.org/t/recommended-way-to-handle-rtl-mixed-with-ltr-languages/78894/30 thread there.

I’ve changed the settings as you mentioned, and it’s better, I would say that these should be the default setting for both new and old users.
Air3 is still painful to the eyes on mobile, but it works as oppressed to previous theme.
I hope this forum will be replaced sooner than later, it outlived its purpose…

Air3 is default for new users, already existing users have to change it manually. Just imagine forcing a new theme on everybody :wink:

What can you suggest to make it more pleasant for the eyes? I think it works fine and its possible to read the forum now on mobile without beeing a pain in the ass, thats why i made that theme (or altered an existing one, to be fair) but i might be able to change some things if you have some suggestions.

Github did it, Linked-in did it, Facebook did it (should I continue?). Forcing a new theme when it’s better (supports mobile as opposed to not supporting) is probably the right approach, IMHO…
The following image is how it looks on mobile now when you want to post a new comment:
If I’m writing a long post, most of the screen is covered by buttons I would rarely use, I would suggest making them smaller, and preferably use icons instead of text.
The buttons look like the 90’s. the design that is currently used by most companies is flat design or material design. I would recommend following this standard.
The emojy icons are probably not needed when using a mobile device as you’ll probably have them in your keyborad, if not, I would recommend adding a button to open a menu to select one instead of keeping them on screen at all times.
The help links (at the bottom) can be a single help link instead of per tag, as I suppose most users won’t need them, and if they do they will be redirected to the help page and just look there.
The “go to” at the begging of the forum is misleading, I had to look for it and try it out before understanding what it does - a hamburger (three horizontal lines) icon is far more intuitive today.
This might be a lot to take in, but this comes from a long experience with UX in my day-to-day work as I’m very passionate about it, sorry if it come off as being picky…

As a side note, Images are hard to add as you need to upload them to an arbitrary site, this is not related to the theme, but another reason this forum is being abandoned, I guess… We use images all the time now with whats-app and telegram, it shouldn’t be hard to add an image these days…

The buttons are actually already changed, it is just not updated already. Will take a look at the icon-thingy, i know what you mean. Thats also a reason why a change to discourse is already discussed. There are some of the things you mentioned already solved. Still, will take a look the icons and update it at least. Thanks for the input.