[Imports] NYC building + address import (was Re: Buildings & Address in Washington, DC, USA.)

[Frederik Ramm]

Mikel,

On 06/06/2014 06:43 PM, Mikel Maron wrote:
>> The only thing that I've found that they do respond to consistently is being blocked by the DWG.
>  
> That is disturbing to hear.
> 
> User blocks are a tool of last resort, when someone is doing serious
> harm to OSM. Like deleting objects randomly.

I have the opinion that this is a personal issue between you and Serge.
I don't know what but there must be something in both your pasts that
makes you see a red flag whenever Serge posts something.

I think you should stop attacking DWG as a whole just because you have
an axe to grind with one of its members. Serge is one of our more active
members and he does a lot of good work. If your plan is to shoot him
down for one reason or another, at least find us a good replacement
before you do ;) It is very easy to ruin the motivation of an active
individual with a few public outbursts - a similar situation a while
ago, without your involvement, has landed OSMF in a situation where they
didn't have a functioning CWG for years. Sadly those who are quick to
break things often cannot be counted on to help rebuild them.

In fact, DWG regularly uses "zero hour" blocks in situations where users
do not reply to inquiries from the community, and this shouldn't disturb
you at all. OSM is a community effort where we have to work together.
There are many people quietly doing their work in OSM and not talking to
others which is ok, but as soon as others send them questions about
their mapping and they (consistently) don't respond, this is a
legitimate reason for DWG to do a "zero hour" block - if only to make
sure that the communication channel works at all (the mapper could have
misconfigured their email client or not read OSM messages for some other
indadvertent reason).

If this "disturbs" you then you must have a very different idea about
mapping than most other community members.

> That just doesn't compare to situations like not giving a changeset
> comment

DWG has indeed also blocked people for not giving a changeset comment,
but only in situations where they have made controversial edits for a
long time, and other community members have complained. We then usually
ask them to supply changeset comments so that their controversial edits
aren't hidden. If they ignore this, then we will block them. Of course,
if their edits hadn't been controversial in the first place, nobody
would have said anything about missing changeset comments.

The convention that we are enforcing here is (and I'm trying to make up
words for something that is practiced but not written) "exceptional
edits require exceptional diligence" - if you import three houses in
your neighbourhood and then automatically edit them without giving a
changeset comment, nobody will care, but if you import 10,000 houses or
edit a ton of names or so, then people will except that you at least
explain yourself.

> http://www.openstreetmap.org/user_blocks/465
> http://www.openstreetmap.org/user_blocks/471

You have picked two blocks placed by Serge. As explained above, I
believe that you're on a personal crusade here and I will not comment
further on these, but I will say so much that at least one of these two
cases has been discussed at board and MT level and DWG have full backing
for their actions.

> So, I'm calling on the Board to take up the issue of setting clear
> limits on the the activities of the DWG. 

Please stop this public grandstanding. It doesn't help anyone.

The DWG has a relatively clear mission that is outlined in
http://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Data_Working_Group and it hasn't
exceeded that mission to my knowledge. DWG regularly seeks the backing
of MT and/or board in situations that involve policy setting or
important precedents. I think that you're blowing this way out of
proportion and since you are normally a reasonable guy, my only
explanation is that there's a personal issue between you and Serge.
Maybe the two of you can work this out without too much attrition.

Bye
Frederik

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