[Osmf-talk] Losing faith
Kai Krueger
kakrueger at gmail.com
Tue Jan 15 20:31:06 UTC 2013
On 01/15/2013 12:13 PM, Steve Coast wrote:
>
> On Jan 15, 2013, at 10:57 AM, Simon Poole <simon at poole.ch> wrote:
>> Maybe
>> that is a mistake, but the correct way to change it is to engage
>> yourself in the CWG and not to expect the board to fiddle with things it
>> has clearly delegated to that group.
>
>
> Simon
>
> It wasn't clear that it had been delegated. One day the password just changed. Poof. That was it.
>
> I did spend three months trying to get an answer from the CWG, as did others. Gradually moving up the stack from them to the board to here as you know.
>
> The answer that came back is absurd. Emailing a group to consider sending a tweet at their weekly meeting is like asking me to send you a telegram for conversion to email. It misses out on the whole point of twitter.
I think that depends entirely on what the twitter account @openstreetmap
is used for.
If it is used for
a) To tweet announcements and statements regarding OSM and OSMF, i.e.
basically a 140 character version of the osmf blog. E.g. to comment on
developments in mapping that effect OSM in some way.
b) to reply to other twitter messages or help twitter users better
understand OSM that someone else has initiated. E.g. if someone tweets
"OSM sucks because it doesn't have routing like XYZ". Then one can reply
with a tweet "Have you checked out ABC or DEF which support routing
based on OSM". I.e. to use it as a real social interaction.
If the account is used for b) then emailing the tweet and get it
confirmed by the CWG is indeed not a good idea, as it introduces a
possibly large latency and looses out on the point of fast tweets.
If the account is used for a), then the suggested methodology seems
entirely reasonably to me.
OSMF has grown enough by now that it has a certain amount of weight in
the industry and in the press. OSMF announcements are taken seriously
and often repeated in various news articles and widely read. So it is
important that those statements really reflect the views of the OSM
community, that they are not inflamatory and that the facts are correct.
Particularly with respect to things like license violations or whether
company XYZ uses OSM data and how and if they are "model OSM citizens",
can easily be rather controversial and problematic. Sometimes even
without realising that the statement might be problematic at first.
Although the few members of CWG obviously also might not always hit the
correct tone to reflect the views of such a diverse group as OSM, the
chance that someone in the CWG will notice if a statement might be
controversial is much higher than for an individual person. So it seems
reasonable for all of those tweets to be acknowledged and accepted by
all members of the CWG to ensure nothing goes out on the official OSMF
announcement that one might regret later on.
As a consequence, I'd hope that also members of the CWG don't just tweet
things with out consulting other members of CWG and getting it approved,
even though they might technically be able to. In that case Steve, you
would go through pretty much the same procedure as any member of the
Board or CWG.
If you agree to adhere to the rules of the board and CWG with respect to
how to use the twitter account and what needs broader approval, then as
Chairman Emeritus, it doesn't seem unreasonable that you would have
password access to the twitter account.
Given that a) and b) are rather different ways to use a twitter account,
do both purposes have to be done by a single account? Could there not be
two accounts like e.g. @openstreetmap and @openstreetmaphelp. The later
one could be used much more leniently and rapidly but doesn't comment on
any big picture things, while the former is used for things that are
supposed to represent the views of the entire project as much as is
possible in such a diverse project.
Kai
>
> Lastly, the board can and does get involved all the time with working groups.
>
> Why do we have this way to work with CWG all of a sudden when the other working groups are held to completely different standards?
>
> Steve
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