[Osmf-talk] DWG survey on organized editing

[Paul Norman]

On 10/8/2017 1:28 AM, Manfred A. Reiter wrote:
> One of my biggest reservations is the fact that the survey is being 
> conducted in English only.
>
> From my work for weeklyOSM I know for sure that many contributors from 
> French-speaking cultural circles or speakers from Latin America will 
> certainly be overwhelmed by the survey in English. The same applies to 
> many of the German-speaking contributors I have spoken to.


This is something we discussed and went back and forth on. LimeSurvey 
allows for surveys in multiple languages, and we even started a translation.

As Frederik has mentioned, accurate translations are difficult when 
asking for opinions. We could have probably translated for the top four 
or five languages within the DWG, but we'd still probably of had 
problems with shifts in meaning. As it is, I think we had problems with 
shifts in meaning in English alone. I think we've learned that there are 
some terms to be avoided because they mean different things to different 
people, regardless of if we define them or not.

Another consideration was time. Adding translations would have delayed 
everything 2-4 weeks.

The purpose of the survey was to gague the opinion of the mapping 
community, not to have a vote or to be a policy itself. I haven't looked 
at the data in detail yet, but I think it's been a reasonable success, 
and engaged an order of magnitude more people than get involved in 
mailing list discussions.

This was our first survey. I'm sure we'll do better the next time we 
need one, now that we have more experience.