[Osmf-talk] Mea Culpa, musings on "craft" | Re: What's our USP? | Re: "Legitimacy from an election process to direct attention" – Your response to the question regarding Working Groups

[Christoph Hormann]

On Saturday 14 December 2019, Minh Nguyen wrote:
>
> Sure, but I might as well describe OSM as “maker culture for maps”
> and cut out the craft mapping bit in that case. Besides, not everyone
> is steeped in maker culture. OSM should be relevant even to people
> who’d never visit a makerspace or attend a Maker Faire, for instance.
> Likewise, I sometimes describe OSM as “the Wikipedia of maps”, but
> that means little to someone who merely appreciates Wikipedia as a
> reader.

Sure, you have to explain things to people in a way they can understand.  
But handicraft is an important and valued aspect of many societies and 
cultures world wide and as explained in that sense a fitting image for 
the way many hobby craft mappers approach mapping.  That there are 
situations where it does not work because the term has a different 
connotation in certain cultures/subcultures and context is a given.  
But that does not make it useless in a lot of other cases.

I would actually think professional mappers should like the term because 
as Rory pointed out the handicraft analogy gives everyone a perspective 
to become part of the craft mapping community by adopting its values 
regarding mapping, foregoing the idea of industrial mass production and 
focusing on quality, attention to detail, local knowledge and the 
social dimension of mapping.

> [...] I’m left wondering if we’ve forgotten
> about the middle ground between craft mapping and an “industrial
> mapping” label that no one is exactly fond of.

Well - every classification system has some level of arbitrariness in it 
but that does not mean it is meaningless.  We classify things in OSM 
everyday to produce a meaningful documentation of the geographic 
reality.

We should not make the mistake of resorting to a fatalistic view of 
things and an attitude of universal relativism because a multi-cultural 
community like OSM is a complex place.  The idea of rejecting any 
discussion about differences in attitude, methodology and self image of 
mappers as useless and divisive would ultimately lead to a levelling of 
differences in perception.  But as said OSM is about cooperating 
between and bridging the gaps between cultures, not bulldozing the 
differences to a level field where the powerful can freely dominate 
everyone else.

> [...] But I’d rather not introduce OSM in opposition to
> OSM data consumers. For all their faults, these services lend
> credibility to the audacious idea that we can collaboratively map the
> world.

I don't think OSM needs or even particularly desires the 
additional 'credibility' of its data being used by Facebook, Apple etc.  
In best handicraft tradition i would like OSM to convince through 
quality, not by listing impressive references.  People should use OSM 
because it is "the best map of the world", not because "no one ever got 
fired for choosing the geo-database that is also used by Facebook and 
Apple".  If Facebook, Apple etc. want to use OSM data because the like 
its quality and its benefits for their business they are welcome.  But 
they should not expect us to bow in front to their graciousness in 
doing so and offer them a seat on the board or leniency regarding 
attribution.  To me Facebook using OSM data is not more important than 
some small business in Bangladesh, Brazil or Benin for example doing 
the same.

-- 
Christoph Hormann
http://www.imagico.de/