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<p>Who is insulting who ? I don't recall having said anything
insulting or saying anything in the line that "all the
contributions HOT is making are useless or garbage", in the
contrary.<br>
</p>
<p>I understand it's hard to swallow criticism, especially when you
are involved for a long time, but you don't address it by replying
or targeting personally. It underlines that there is an issue,
both in handling, dealing, discussing and addressing the issues
raised or proving that they are based on incomplete or
misrepresented actual situation.</p>
<p>Of course, in some cases, those which can be categorized as
non-crisis responses or other organisations working through the
HOT Tasking manager are local individuals, happy to be so. This
doesn't change the fact though that HOT, let it be clear with all
it's good intentions, fails as much as OSM as a community to reach
and activate local communities in less fortunate and IT savvy
regions.<br>
And as stated before, more and more, advocates and actively
implements policies that contradict with OSM's "Good practices",
philosophy and primary objectives. This includes ruling local
chapters, using the same policies and tools for nearly all their
activities. Is that saying HOT should stop this, all what HOT is
doing is useless or bad, no it isn't. It is an observation of what
has happened, how HOT's activities have evolved and how it's
moving towards a model that is very different from the core of OSM
and it's vibrant community. OSM doesn't want to become HOT, not in
Africa not in other places. As much as OSM doesn't want to become
wikipedia, Facebook, Google or Microsoft. OSM and it's community
efforts and data needs protection against these, and we have a
policy against to preserve it. <br>
We need OSM to be independent from HOT and similar organisations,
the companies and their tools. And we have made procedures and
guidelines to do so, by the community and with consensus of the
community.</p>
<p>The basic principles favoured by HOT, is that it advocates
primarily the use of satellite imagery as a tool to respond to
humanitarian crisis. OSM primarily wants to map ground truth,
capture local knowledge and local interests in geodata. Satellite
imagery, AI data, authoritative or reliable external data sources
or organised mass edits are secondary, supporting tools for these
primary goals. If they have no added value, in the opinion of the
local or global OSM community, overrule or are a motivation to
delete what was already there, the use is discouraged or should be
abandoned.<br>
This is expressed in the procedures, training materials etc... by
HOT. As an example: how to deal with offsets, where Bing is
referred as "the golden standard" in case local information like
GPS tracks is missing. If that information is missing, the policy
should be to gather the ground truth, not rely on satelite
imagery, which still after all these years of development, suffers
from significant inaccuracies in post-processing and stitching
together the images, especially in mountainousness areas or those
areas that lack high quality and stable control and validation
points.</p>
<p>I am not surprised by the many answers received here. They
illustrate the tendency of HOT to move away from the primary tools
we as an OSM community try to sustain and improve. True, of course
with all their flaws, and at a slow stride, inherent
characteristic to the type of community we are and want to be and
our mode of operation based on volunteers.<br>
As such, there is nothing wrong with that, as long as the primary
tools and community are respected. A means of respect to the OSM
name you are permitted to carry, doesn't come with attribution
only, but also respect for it's community and how and where it
wishes to operate. The OSM wiki is not updated with project or
organised editing guidelines, the use of mailing lists is very
poor. <br>
With all respect for Pierre and other HOT supporters, but once you
reach the state of handing over from a HOT initiative to the
community, to OSM, trust and follow the guidelines, as the
community tries to do. Trust that no one will fundamentally change
your initial wiki page without consultation, we have a history to
follow up on that. Policies in the use and contribution of OSM are
hardly ever discussed within the OSM forums. A motivation like we
mostly use "telegram, facebook, whatsapp etc... because that is
what the locals mostly know and use are easy solutions and
justifications to deviate. It is not different from the situation
in other regions where OSM is more successful. Actually, it should
be a motivation to promote those very OSM channels, as they have
proven respect for privacy, inclusion and they work to have more
deep discussions. Don't take the easy path, take the hard one, as
it's proven even the easy path isn't giving substantial results
and declining. It is not just limited to social media, also other
tools like zoom, google drive, eventbrite etc... are intensively
used and promoted. Gaps where OSM is filling in with BigBlueButton
and Nextcloud, using it's financial resources and, in the cases
where OSMF has not yet provided an alternative, the preferred ones
are identified, in many cases open source and free alternatives
are readily available.<br>
</p>
<p>And that is where it comes to the "ruling" statement. Local
chapters are established, by HOT, with HOT funds, by HOT
supporters or employees. Using these very policies and HOT primary
goals. The members are HOT volunteers or HOT affiliated or related
organisations. Using HOT tools as the tasking manager, the HOT
promoted or supported channels. Essentially, creating a conflict
of interest, proposing a HOT centred approach of mapping in OSM.
Allow me to quote Pete Masters response:</p>
<p>
<blockquote type="cite">Once a community or organisation requests
project management permissions (and is onboarded on how) to use
the tasking manager, they take responsibility for their own
projects. HOT does not direct or gatekeep at this point
(although it does offer guidance and advice). It is correct to
call all of these projects tasking manager projects and it is
correct to call some of them HOT projects.</blockquote>
Taking this literally, with some attempts but without active
experience, if you want to use the Tasking manager you need
permission from HOT. What me seem not essentially contradicting
the OSM philosophy, as HOT not being the gatekeeper but it does
restrict you to follow their project management methods,
communication channels and offers guidance as how to do so, in the
HOT approach. Thus, even if HOT doesn't act as the gatekeeper, it
makes them essentially HOT projects, since there is few or deeply
hidden guidance of following the OSM guidelines. What seems a
great idea or tool at first glance, appears to be more a
camouflaged trap to do projects the HOT way, supporting the HOT
philosophy deviating from OSM principles.<br>
</p>
<p>Even if HOT is the gatekeeper, following this strategy, numerous
projects never get completed. Due to lack of what ? Lack of
qualified validators, people validating the work of their own
limited group, lost interest, PM's have moved on to the next
project. I recently did a test, mapped some buildings in a HOT
project which was standing there uncompleted for 3 years, mapping
tasks that were acquiring more work. Months later, no one even
looked at it. There is no follow up, no maintenance, no hand over
to the OSM community, no validation taking place anymore. <br>
</p>
<p>An always returning primary strategy seems training, training ,
training. Training is useful, and has proven it's success when you
are able to train interested contributors who have access to
resources to participate in OSM. Good examples are f.i. the
youthmappers, who have access through their institutions. It is
incorrect to say, that the only cause of OSM failing in the less
fortunate regions, is due to a lack of resources. The increase in
the rise of e-commerce, online financial services, has proven that
an increasing number of the population does have access. Yet it is
not reflected in a comparable increase in OSM contributors. So we
somehow fail to tap into this growing community. The training
should be diverse though, not focused on the use of the Tasking
manager or any editor, but with the same importance on the OSM
wiki, it's purpose, the mailing lists and changeset comments, how
to connect and communicate with the broader community. <br>
Still a large part, mostly in the rural areas is not at that
level, being access or financial means. To organise training there
doesn't make sense, you can't teach "a pupil how to write when he
doesn't have a paper and pencil". Government agencies and
administration also lacks the same resources. To find ground and
support in these communities an approach on empowering them first,
like through community centres, hub or schools and providing them
with resources who can be searched could be a way forward. These
hubs could be maintained and managed by the local chapters, local
private partners. Essentially handing them over to the community,
to OSM affiliated local communities.</p>
<p>Finally a word about the scope of humanitarian. With the ever
growing challenges we face, climate change, pandemics, the whole
word is in a humanitarian crisis. Good for HOT, as a humanitarian
organisation the world mapping ecosystem has become a potential
candidate. Making it an alternative to OSM. Please don't, stick to
the core, acute crisis's where immediate intervention, remote with
local support is required. Don't become a competitor, become a
supporter. Focus on establishing sustainable local OSM communties,
hand over and leave it to them. Support establishing local
chapters, but then step away from it and let the local community
florish. Local chapter board or leaders should not be affiliated
with any financiers or specific interest groups. No Facebook, no
MapBox, no Apple, no Google, no TomTom etc... NO HOT. Give us a
chance, respect and trust that all communities are able to do so,
the passionate ones and leaders will come forward, whatever
background they have humanitarian, engineering, software
developer, farmer, nurse or pupil... in the right environment, not
dominated by the more privileged, skilled or educated they will
find a platform, OSM, to be able and do so.</p>
<p>Greetings,</p>
<p>Bert Araali<br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 01/08/2021 20:48, Geoffrey Kateregga
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:CAGF60mRcZcU7QmWbAEvK77e93do-e79=wkmfwXKjCM01PR1scA@mail.gmail.com">
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
<div dir="ltr">Hi everyone, <br>
<br>
Interesting discussion here, seeing that it grew out of RE:
Google Open Buildings usage request and has turned into a
discussion of HOT projects.<br>
<br>
I think the solution to all this is having strong local OSM
communities who take ownership of OpenStreetMap in their
countries. Communities who can raise the resources they need to
train their members and coordinate mapping activities. That is
exactly what we have been doing in Uganda, and for someone to
come out and claim that the local community here is ruled by HOT
is an insult and a lack of acknowledgment of all the good work
we have done over the years by the members of the OSM community
in Uganda. <br>
<br>
The HOT Tasking manager is a tool, which many organizations
including local OSM communities in Africa are using to
coordinate their mapping. Not all the projects on the HOT
Tasking Manager are set up and managed by HOT. It is just a tool
that different communities make use of to coordinate their
mapping.<br>
<br>
Many of the individuals mapping using the HOT Tasking Manager
are actually locals in those countries. In Uganda, the local OSM
community here has been mapping Uganda's new cities, and all the
border towns across the country using the HOT Tasking Manager,
in a coordinated way where projects are mapped and validated to
clean up the data. <br>
<br>
One last point I want to make is that you will not see many
responses here, from African mappers, simply because not many of
them are on the membership mailing list, but also because they
prefer to use different channels to communicate including
Telegram, WhatsApp, and Facebook groups, maybe its worth seeking
their point of view on this topic on those channels as well.<br>
<br>
Kind regards,<br>
Geoffrey<br>
<br>
Member of the OSM Community in Uganda.<br>
</div>
<br>
<div class="gmail_quote"><br>
</div>
</blockquote>
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