[Osmf-talk] difficult communication with HOT (and Esri, and YouthMappers)

[Pete Masters]

Hi Mario, my name is Pete (user: pedrito1414). So you know who I am and
where I come from, here is some background... As of six weeks ago, I
started work as as an employee for HOT. I have also been a board member for
HOT and worked with the organisation extensively through the Missing Maps
project, which I launched and ran for MSF in 2014. I am also a volunteer
mapper and validator (mostly for humanitarian-focused projects).

I have been following this recently with interest as issues of data quality
when bringing new groups of contributors to OSM is something we also
grappled with through Missing Maps and something we worked on, and still
work on, extensively within the local Missing Maps London community (within
which I am an active member) as we also bring lots of new people to
OpenStreetMap on a monthly basis.

I read the materials you linked to above and the OSM Diary IRC transcript (
https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/mariotomo/diary/394356) and I sympathise
with your position on the quality of edits and your frustration at the lack
of contact / response to feedback. From what I have read, you have been
proactive in trying to maximise the potential value for the map in Panama
from the efforts of the youthmappers chapter and to mitigate the local
community being left with a lot of clearing up to do. I have no comment on
Mikel's email above as I have not reviewed all the individual changeset
comments.

Whilst HOT and youthmappers are not the same thing (and I think this is a
mistaken assumption in your email above), HOT does try and make it possible
for people to run good quality projects through the development and support
of tools like the tasking manager and we do support various youthmappers
chapters in other ways, such as training, microgrants, etc (as we do other
types of local community group). In light of this, I am interested to know
if / how I can help to improve the process for groups like youthmappers,
who bring energy and enthusiasm to the map, to make a more sustainable
contribution and to work better with local contributors, where they exist
and are willing to engage? I agree with you that this could lead to a
powerful collaboration, but only if both sides are open to listening to and
understanding each other's motivations and ways of working.

I don't want to speak for Blake, but I imagine his involvement in this was
simply technical support to this chapter who requested to use the tasking
manager to organise a mapping project. As he is not part of the
youthmappers chapter, I don't think responsibility lies with him for
evaluating - I do think that responsibility lies with youthmappers as they
have initiated and organised the project.

Happy to continue this conversation and hope it can lead to an improvement
in process and outcome for all...

Cheers,

Pete

On Wed, Dec 9, 2020 at 11:06 PM Mario Frasca via osmf-talk <
osmf-talk at openstreetmap.org> wrote:

> > have you considered that you have been a bit overly aggressive with
> > the volume and tenor of your changeset comments
>
> in fact, I have considered that, yes.
>
> I've commented all that I saw even when nobody was answering, and I kept
> commenting even if nobody kept answering and I got upset that nobody was
> answering and I kept commenting knowing that nobody would answer, which
> did not help me keep the tenor of my comments in tone.
>
> when I'm aggressive I sound different, something like: »how do you dare
> suggest that these my unanswered comments to the professor/mentor are
> aggressive?«
>
> https://resultmaps.neis-one.org/osm-discussion-comments?uid=4366436
>
> allow me: I would call it more helpless.
>
>
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> osmf-talk at openstreetmap.org
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>
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