For Arizona, Google+ and hangouts are our main way of contact/communication for editing. The forums are for those who wish not to use Google. Its worked great. Any and all our coordinated efforts are their on our AZ Google+ page. If its something important, we just post it on the forums. With hangouts, we have access to it via an mobile device so we are always informed. If something needs fixing in realtime, we get on hangouts and leave a message saying the issue and location. Sometimes the issue is near our homes that we actually get on hangouts and drive the route to troubleshoot. Sadly, unlike NY/NJ, Arizona's roadways are spaced so travelling is very fast.

We like using hangouts vs Waze chat and the forums for how specific and somewhat private it is.

https://plus.google.com/u/0/communities ... 4603861051

QuattroCS wrote:Hi

My name is Pedro Faria, been using waze for a bit, started editing recently, a week or 2. thought it would probably be good to do some kind of regional group on Google Hangouts, for questions or edits.

My tag is quattrocs <at> gmail <dot> com

Thank You
Pedro Faria

There is...

We've been in touch with each other in NJ and other regions.

I imagine maintaining multiple communication vehicles is hard. Unfortunately, many communities use different communication vehicles for few different reasons. In my opinion, these vehicles are mainly there to promote Waze. In addition, those who stumble upon these will be able to see things visually rather than just raw data from Waze forum or wiki.

We have WME chat but hard to edit without it getting in the way or the noise it creates. It will get better. We should be able to chat in dedicated rooms or even in private.

Google hangout is my personal choice. I like it for many reasons: ease of use, fast, Group chat, history feature, searchable, ability to share image or just draw what you are trying to show. It being a Google product is a caveat.

I would have to agree that G+ and the Hangouts are a convenient place to bat ideas around and measure consensus, but no changes to procedures or practices discussed there should ever be considered official until they are published in the Wikis, or at the very least, posted in an appropriate forum with a sticky (though I prefer the former, lest we bombard our state forums with all kinds of stickies).

Otherwise, these so-called undocumented procedures and practices become unenforceable (what am I going to cite for the reason for wanting someone to do something different from what they were taught or what they read in the Wikis?), and at best, the map would end up becoming inconsistent, potentially further confusing (especially newer) editors.

As a lower rank editor, I always use the following resources in priority order for editing information:

1: forums
2: wiki
3: federal, state and local government data
4: PMs

I think the other communication media are good reinforcements, but agree with qwaletee. At one point, it'll just become to fragmented or time consuming to update all media.




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I'm a little worried that the interactions are getting fractured by having multiple communication vehicles. We have the forum, which is the sanctioned medium. We have the Northeast Hangout for synchronous communication, since the forum doesn't support that. Do we really want to have yet another method? This will lead to guidance that is only partly shared among community members.

Don't get me wrong, there's a definite need for synchronous (real-time) communication, and the map chat is too crude and feature limited to server that purpose. So there, use the chat tool of your liking, as long as everyone can agree on a single platform.

But for everything else, please stay in the forum. We really don't need a Google+ page. It may organize things differently, and have nicer touches, but at its heart, it serves the same mode of communication. If so, it fractures the community and its communications with no overriding benefit.

PhantomSoul wrote:I would have to agree that G+ and the Hangouts are a convenient place to bat ideas around and measure consensus, but no changes to procedures or practices discussed there should ever be considered official until they are published in the Wikis, or at the very least, posted in an appropriate forum with a sticky (though I prefer the former, lest we bombard our state forums with all kinds of stickies).

Otherwise, these so-called undocumented procedures and practices become unenforceable (what am I going to cite for the reason for wanting someone to do something different from what they were taught or what they read in the Wikis?), and at best, the map would end up becoming inconsistent, potentially further confusing (especially newer) editors.

I understand the use of Hangouts for this. But again, I don't see the benefit of G+. As long as anyone is left out of that conversation due to it being a closed, non-obvious place to go to find records of discussions past or provoke future discussions, you are still chipping away at the community approach. You may end up having a conversation about, say NJ, in the Hangout, documenting progress toward some policy decision on G+, and a few weeks later, it magically appears in the Wiki. Some editor with a stake in this got left out by searching the NJ forum for anything on this, finding nothing, and not knowing there was an active discussion.

Or, say you only let it go part way in Hangouts/G+, and leave the final draft and a summary of arguments in the forum, before implementing in the Wiki. You've still cut short the "comment period," and possibly left someone out of the initial discussions. Probably also have a reluctance to change direction if a "latecomer" has a contrary view.

So here are my two alternative approaches:

1) Use Hangouts only to informally kick off discussions, or resolve points that need interaction. Any result of that goes straight into a forum post, and participants should make the effort to close Hangout discussions where they either have a policy implication or lead to intellectual capital usable by other editors. No G+

2) Make G+ the only place to go for a particular subject. Put a note in the forum with a link to the G+, and close all use of the forum for that subject. If a G+/Hangout results in a Wiki change, summarize the discussion in the forum, so an outside editor who comes a-looking can still use the forum for basic starting point/search. Anything that does not result in Wiki changes, periodically look to summarize in the forum for the same reason.

FYI, I do not touch G+. I have technical, philosophical, and other reasons for that. But I would say the same if an entirely different platform was being used as the "forum alternative."