[Imports] Import Plan for Buildings & Address in Washington, DC, USA

Frederik Ramm frederik at remote.org
Mon Jul 14 20:21:26 UTC 2014


Hi,

On 07/14/2014 08:56 PM, Paul Norman wrote:
> - Paid staff
>   The question was raised on if paid staff would be used for this. The
> wiki says no money is being exchanged for work - does this mean that all
> work will be done by volunteers?

Let's not beat around the bush here.

Mapbox employees/contractors have clearly been involved in setting this up.

For me, speaking in a personal capacity here, this is totally all right
if they've done this because they live in Washington and are stoked
about enriching their local map for which they as Washingtonians feel
partly responsible. And if Mapbox lets them do it while they're at the
office - more power to them!

If however there are people who wouldn't dream about participating in a
Washington building import, and who perhaps aren't even local, maybe
part of some "Mapbox data team" in another state or even another
country, who haven't mapped in Washington before, who will only do so
because they are instructed by their employer, and who will stopp
immediately once their employer considers the project finished or the
employment ends, then that's something I would cast a slightly more
critical look at, *especially* if I had the impression that I was kept
in the dark about this.

Now I do have a slight issue with "no money is exchanged for work"
because it doesn't *clearly* rule out what I said in the previous
paragraph - with the history of half-truths that have surrounded such
cases in the past, someone could later say "uh well I just said that
OCTO was not paying anything, I didn't say that Mapbox was not paying
anything". Or someone could say "uh well I just said that there was no
money exchanged, I didn't say anything about stock options". Or someone
could say "uh well I meant that no *extra* money was being paid, of
course these people were in the data team anyway and adding data was
their standard work description", or whatnot.

Personally, I would feel much better if we could simply have a statement
that says: "Insofar as Mapbox employees or contractors participate in
this import, they will only do so in their spare time and without
receiving any compensation." or so.

I'm singling out Mapbox here because the first wiki page about this
whole thing was done by a Mapbox employee; if other employers are also
involved, of course this would apply to the just the same.

If the above assurance cannot be given then I would like to learn how
that squares with the "no compensation" sentence on the wiki so that I
can better interpret such words in the future.

In addition, I would like to suggest for this import and also for all
future imports, that we set an upper limit of just how much one single
mapper can import per day. We simply take an experienced mapper and let
them import a couple of buildings with the required diligence, and
measure how long it takes. Then we estimate how much they could do in 12
hours with the same diligence - and that's how much we allow one person
to import per day.

Because otherwise we run the risk of having people throwing all
diligence over board and trying to "get it over with" by importing tens
of thousands of objects per day with zero chance of actually doing it well.

Bye
Frederik

-- 
Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frederik at remote.org  ##  N49°00'09" E008°23'33"



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