[Osmf-talk] Elections: Avoid Mandate Creep

Martin Koppenhoefer dieterdreist at gmail.com
Wed Aug 31 10:41:38 UTC 2011


2011/8/31 Eugene Usvitsky <eugene at usvitsky.com>:
> But this overall question is deeper. Currently OSMF already IS shaping
> OSM life. It was responsible for license change (the problem 99%
> project members didn't really care before), it is responsible for
> project conference (for calling for and choosing sponsors and
> presenters), it is responsible for what and how is shown on the
> project main page, to name a few things.


It certainly is true that OSMF has gained importance with the license
change, but I wouldn't overestimate this. The 99% of mappers that
didn't care for the license details before the change probably also
don't care for them after (given that it is somehow "free and open").
To the annual conference there is some hundred people attending out of
hundreds of thousands. Joe Mapper doesn't care for the license and he
doesn't go to SOTM, he simply wants to map.


> Every successful project has its leader and strategy.


-1. Some do have a strong and charismatic leader, others don't. It is
not necessary to have success and there are also projects around that
get into trouble because of their leader.


> Everyone wants the same - clear directions of
> what and how to do.  And that's not the problem of lack of educational
> resources. That is a problem of decisions. Now everyone is equal.


-1. If you have those you become static. You will slow down
improvements and probably the most active people would leave the
project disappointedly. The fact that you can very easily contribute
in any field of OSM (not only mapping) is very attractive to many.
Having a strong leader with the power to decide stuff we would loose
this attractiveness and I guess as a result also a lot of
contributors.


> And
> that means that if I put a name of some street as "Main St" and
> someone changed it to "Main Street" we both are right.


such basic problems are already solved. There is the general rule:
don't abbreviate in tag-values. The more complex questions are often
not solved because the answer is not obvious. Mostly both approaches
have their pros and cons and there is no "true" and "false". It takes
some time to get those issues solved/decided by evolution, but I am
sure we will in the end. But IMHO it is not "thousands" of those
situations where there are competiting solutions, it's more a handful.
Nothing that really stops people from using OSM data.


> And for members it doesn't
> really important who will "win". It's more important that there should
> be one and ONLY one way of doing something.


IMHO there are many people who actually want "the best" solution and
are willing to contribute to find it, and not "no matter what, tell me
how to do it".


> documentation. The project now doesn't even have tags normalizer!


besides the mappers ;-)


> there should be someone who is responsible for
> cleaning AND making everyone not to bring the garbage (wrong tags or
> tags combinations, at least) back.
> And this is OSMF.


-1. This is not OSMF, this is OSM contributors.

Cheers,
Martin




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