[Imports] Worldwide fuel stations import, 59k objects

[Christoph Hormann]

On Thursday 08 March 2018, Frederik Ramm wrote:
> [...]
>
> So even when we talk about desirable diversity goals, we have to
> remain practical; the goal of "a working OSM" is more important than
> the goal of "a diverse OSM" and diversity must take the back seat
> when it would make working in the project impossible.

I understand your point but i have to strongly disagree here.  IMO the 
English language dominance is one of the biggest structural problems of 
OSM in total and the biggest long term obstacle in becoming what OSM 
aims to be - the best map/geodatabase of the world.  And i completely 
agree this is a very hard problem, maybe even impossible to solve.  But 
that does not mean we should not try.

I don't want to appear fundamentalist on this - moving forward in small 
steps here is OK.  But giving up on meaningful language diversity in 
community communication because it is considered impractical while 
proudly communicating we want to support diversity otherwise would in 
my eyes be very hypocritical.

Also need to keep in mind that language diversity is strongly tied to 
cultural diversity because language always transports cultural values 
and conventions.

> We generally request that imports and automated edits are discussed
> before they are executed. The main reason for this is that we want to
> have a chance to discover flaws in the process, the licensing, or
> clean up misunderstandings. The import guidelines also say that
> "community buy-in" should be sought. Now if someone ran an import in
> Panama, then it would be a good idea to discuss this with the Panama
> community, and out of courtesy do in in Spanish. Ideally, the
> importer would be from Panama.

In the past it has been common practice to discuss imports on the local 
channels and this list.  Importers posting here without posting on the 
local channels first were usually asked to discuss it locally first - 
with the exception of cases were there clearly was no organized local 
community.  I also think there were imports across several countries in 
the past where several local communities have been consulted though 
probably never with a similar scope as here.

I am perfectly fine with discussing different modalities for 
multi-national imports but this should be a somewhat broader 
discussion.  If such a change in policy is established i am pretty sure 
there would be quickly others who want to do the same.  Facebook for 
example had already with their roads import indicated that they would 
prefer to move on to additional countries after they have finished with 
Thailand without the need to newly discuss their plans (and no, i don't 
want to compare Ilya's work here with that of Facebook, that would be 
ludicrous).

> But I can feel Ilya's exasperation at the suggestion of discussing a
> world-wide import on every local mailing list / forum / facebook
> group, in the language appropriate for each. This is not practical,
> and would kill the import in its tracks if we were to demand that.

I am not sure if i agree with that but it would probably be good if we 
had a list of feature counts by country, maybe separated into new 
features and features to be modified to put the discussion on a more 
solid level.

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