[Osmf-talk] February OSMF Board Meeting

[Frederik Ramm]

Mike,

Mike Collinson wrote:
> I've been asked to draw attention to one item. We feel that we should
> set up a Working Group to somehow help reach a community consensus on
> how OpenStreetMap's flagship front-page at
> http://www.openstreetmap.org should be evolved. 

Do what you must, but my opinion is that at this time the OSM front page 
should be none of OSMF's business.

Anyone who is unhappy with the main page can create suggestions or work 
with those who maintain the page; as it has always been done in OSM for 
everything.

I could imagine circumstances where OSMF involvement might be called 
for; if for example the main page had been abandoned by the community, 
or hijacked by a few people, shutting out the community and ignoring 
their input. But neither is the case.

By setting up a "working group" you would start introducing the much 
derided "Wiki Fiddlers" situation to other areas of the project. Anyone 
with sufficient coding or design skills can get involved with the front 
page right away and does not need a working group for that. Your working 
group would only serve to collect voices of people who cannot, or will 
not, do something themselves - the "someone (but not me) should do 
something" faction. This is completely contradicting the current OSM 
culture where either you get something done or you leave it alone.

I also fear that whatever the outcome of such a "working group", people 
would tend to respect that too much, leading to stagnation: "Can we 
change this on the front page?" - "Sorry pal, you've got to raise this 
matter with the working group, they spent 5 days discussing about how 
big the donation box should be and we cannot simply change it now...".

I think the issue of "OSM front page needs better graphic layout" should 
never have gotten on the agenda in the first place. Has the OSMF board 
spent any thought on the issues I highlighted above and decided to 
create a working group nevertheless, or have all these implications been 
overlooked/ignored?

It is always easy to say "we need to evolve something". It sounds like 
progress, doesn't it. But make no mistake - by taking the wrong matters 
into your hands you might actually hurt the community more than you help.

You say "we want to support not control", but then you speak of 
"defining a direction that most of us can be happy with". This is new to 
OSM; those who define a direction have, until now, always been those who 
do the work. It seems to me that you want to take this power away from 
them (because otherwise you would just leave things as they are). This 
is likely to disenfranchise them and you'll find yourselves having to 
manage what until now worked without management. You will create more 
work for you, and might even have to enlist paid work.

Are you really sure you want this? Have you thought this through? I 
think you are setting a dangerous precedent.

Bye
Frederik