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

Wed Nov 27 23:57:45 UTC 2013

Hi Frederik,

People do get paid to map in OSM. At least with HOT it is in places
where it is difficult for people to be able to map without some sort
of incentive. Rather than mapping in OSM they would need to find
another way to support their family and may not have time to learn to
map or map at all. That said this is typically in the countries HOT
works and not all contributions are paid.

This can be done through a variety of methods:
* People are already being paid by a government, non-governmental
organization or university. They attend a training held by HOT and
learn how to do mapping. Perhaps afterwards they do mapping specific
to the needs of their organization. An example would be mapping for
disaster preparedness as part of a contingency planning process. The
contingency planning process was going to happen either way, but it
has been determined that OSM would be a good way to accomplish this.
Personally it think this is a great thing.

* Internships/volunteers HOT provides these opportunities in specific
places as well. Typically the idea is that people in these positions
will help others map as well, but actually mapping is a component of
what they do.

* Payment for specific mapping. Paying people to go collect specific
types of data. This happens sometimes when governments want to use
OSM.

There are people that then go on to map in their free time. Certainly
there are others that don't. This is the same that can potentially
happen normally in OSM.

One thing I'd like to note is that people aren't paid to do response
mapping for example such as the mapping going on in response to
Typhoon Yolanda. I'm sure there are some people who have been mapping
at work and it has been allowed by their employers. How does that fit
in to your concerns?

Thanks,

-Kate

On Wed, Nov 27, 2013 at 9:54 PM, Frederik Ramm <frederik at remote.org> wrote:
> 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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