[Osmf-talk] Paid Mapping / WikiPR like issues in OSM?

[Dan Stowell]

Hi Frederik,

I agree it is something we do need to think about.

I am not worried about someone who is paid to do OSM for a month and
then vanishes. OSM will still be in their heart ;) Or if not, then the
situation is just as good or bad as someone who tried OSM for a month
and then gave up.

However, even though OSM aims to reflect "what is on the ground", true
objectivity is largely a myth, and OSM doesn't even claim objectivity
but multi-subjectivity. So there are many tweaks that people could
make for paid or selfish reasons, which are difficult to detect, and
which can't completely be disproved from aerials etc - such as
tweaking road lengths/straightnesses to ensure traffic tends to be
routed past their business (or not past their house!). We already have
plenty of tools to detect bad edits or bad data, and my feeling is
that we will need gradual enhancement in these so that many mappers
can have a low-effort "awareness" of edits happening around them, so
that the community can deal with issues without getting swamped.

Best
Dan



2013/11/27 Frederik Ramm <frederik at remote.org>:
> Hi,
>
>    some of you may have read the recent brouhaha about a PR firm
> offering to edit Wikpedia to brush up their client's images or advertise
> their products.
>
> Wikimedia Foundation sent them a cease and desist letter
> (http://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/11/19/wikimedia-foundation-sends-cease-and-desist-letter-to-wikipr/).
>
>
> The main problem, from Wikipedia's point of view, is not so much that
> someone receives money for editing Wikipedia, but that
>
> * content added by the PR firm lacked neutrality and verifiability;
> * there were undisclosed conflicts of interest
> * a ton of sock puppet accounts had been created by the PR firm.
>
> Hundreds, likely thousands, of person-hours have been spent by the
> Wikipedia community to analyse the problem.
>
> At OpenStreetMap, we haven't yet had such problems or at least we aren't
> aware of them. There have been a couple of "SEO" spammers, and a couple
> of people who too prominently added their own business name, but that's
> about all. I know of a couple self-employed people who offer to "add
> your place to OpenStreetMap" but I don't have reason to believe that
> anything improper is going on there.
>
> Basically, our own rules of verifiablity mean that there's not so much
> where a commercial PR firm could put a "spin" on things and thereby
> damage our project or reputation. You might say: as long as what they
> add is correct, why bother?
>
> I think it is perhaps not as easy as that, and it is a matter worth
> discussing and thinking about.
>
> One of the reasons for OSM's success is the strong community of people
> who care for the data. That's why we have strict rules on imports - we
> can't allow an area being plastered with data that would swamp and
> discourage the mapping community, *even* *if* the data itself is of high
> quality.
>
> The same caveat might apply to paid editing. Someone who adds data not
> because they're passionate but because they're paid, will be lost to us
> immediately when their boss decides that attention should be shifted
> elsewhere. In paid mapping, it is totally conceivable that some
> individual maps from 9 to 5 for a month, and then never again. It is
> totally conceivable that that individual isn't at all interested in OSM
> or the data, and that they simply do what they're told. It is totally
> conceivable that, when asked a few months later, that person will reply
> "uh, I don't quite remember, it was just a job I was doing".
>
> Is that a problem, or could it become one?
>
> Also, we're giving mappers a huge amount of freedom in tagging and in
> deciding what they map. We might shrug if we see that someone
> meticuously draws every single tree in their garden, or every patch of
> grass, but we'll not usually do something about it and leave the quirky
> individual their fun. After all, we want to support "unexpected uses".
> If the same were to be done by an organisation with lots of resources,
> and we would have to fear that they would neatly "paint" every single
> garden of the properties they manage or so, would we still say "ah, give
> the individual some leeway in how they contribute to OSM"? Or would we,
> when faced with an organisation making cold business decisions rather
> than quirky hobbyist decisions, request that they adhere to other standards?
>
> In the Wikipedia case, one of the issues was that the PR company was not
> being open about who they were, what they were editing and why, hiding
> behind "sock puppet" accounts. In OSM much as in Wikipedia, we don't
> normally expect people to reveal their identity, or tell us why they're
> mapping something. Is it different when dealing with a corporate entity?
> Would we expect to be told which accounts belong to employees and what
> their current goal is (e.g. "we have been asked to improve cycleway
> mapping in Frankfurt for a client and expect to spend 3-4 person weeks
> on that, and the mapping will be done by our team members A, B, and C")?
>
> I'm not offering any answers - just questions right now.
>
> Bye
> Frederik
>
> --
> Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frederik at remote.org  ##  N49°00'09" E008°23'33"
>
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