[Imports] Imports Review

[Christoph Hormann]

On Tuesday 15 March 2016, Frederik Ramm wrote:
>
> Also, proponents of an import often say things like "this is going to
> encourage community participation in the local area" etc., but does
> it? Nobody ever bothers to check.
>
> It would be great if we had a process by which we would review
> imports *after* the fact and perhaps even a few years later, to judge
> what went well and what didn't, to learn from mistakes, or in extreme
> cases perhaps even revert the whole thing when it turns out that it
> didn't work out or that promises made during the initial discussion
> were not kept.

Some time ago i had a look at the current import guidelines to see what 
could be improved for the purpose of ensuring better results.  My 
motivation was that while most mappers think that imports can have 
value most also agree that the current import procedure is not really 
working that well (see for example the statements in that direction in 
the last OSMF board election Q&A).

Ultimately i did not get very far in that direction because it quickly 
occured to me that effective changes in the import procedure would 
mostly mean adding bureaucracy and even if done in a well-meaning way 
this would probably primarily mean making life more difficult for 
responsible mappers and it would not significantly limit the less 
responsible ones who do not care much about the project and just want 
to dump some data in the OSM database for some selfish or misguided 
reason and who tend to follow rules as necessary by the letter but not 
in their spirit.

Among the ideas i contemplated were:

- the requirement of an obligatory post-import review which would then 
be discussed by the community just like the import plan before and 
which could include requiring the import organizer to fix things that 
did not go acconding to the pre-announced plan.
- the requirement for each import to have an experienced mapper as 
mentor who supervises the whole process while not being involved in the 
import itself.

My reasoning with these was that for something like this to work in 
reality it needs to be the responsibility of the import manager to 
organize review and supervision work that is considered necessary 
because otherwise it will likely not happen.

-- 
Christoph Hormann
http://www.imagico.de/