[Osmf-talk] microgrants - second draft policy document

[Allan Mustard]

Food for thought.  Perhaps the answer is to put all such docs on the
wiki, which automatically records both authorship and history of edits,
with no intervention required from the drafter.  We need to follow the
KISS principle here, or else very few people will be willing to
contribute.  Thoughts?

On 1/14/2020 9:22 AM, Christoph Hormann wrote:
> On Tuesday 14 January 2020, Frederik Ramm wrote:
>>> No, the purpose of version management is not to do everything in a
>>> single application, it is to keep a record of all the different
>>> edits and conversions that happen.
>> Are you saying that not only do you want to know what has changed
>> between today's version and last month's version, but you also want
>> to know about all the changes in between that might not even have
>> made it into the release, and to know exactly which person made which
>> edit when?
> There are two separate questions here:
>
> a) if and why i think the detailed edit history of a policy document
> draft of the OSMF should be recorded and
> b) if that is the case if and why i think this edit history should be
> available to the members.
>
> My answer is yes to both questions.  The reasoning:
>
> a) recording the history of edits is of high value for those involved in
> the actual document development as well as its evaluation and QA.
> Every programmer and wiki user probably knows this.  It allows for
> re-tracing the modifications to find the source of problems to be able
> to fix them, it allows asynchroneous modifications and facilitates
> division of work (someone editing the document while someone else is
> not present and the second person can afterwards easily see what
> exactly has been changed in what order) and it facilitates continuity
> when the people working on a document change (like after a board
> election) and it simplifies assigning tasks (like person A has
> originally written part X which has later been modified by person B so
> A and B are probably the people most qualified for making necessary
> adjustments to that part).  It also simplifies communication (if
> someone has trouble understanding what a certain formulation is meant
> to express they can ask specifically the person who wrote it). And it
> also often immensely helps with QA in general if you can see individual
> edits one by one.
>
> b) it follows the principle of transparency by default (everything
> should be done in the open unless there are good and publicly
> documented reasons why it should not be in this specific case) and it
> facilitates necessary oversight and cooperation.  Like for example in
> case of the LWG attribution guideline draft where it would be important
> to have a record of the "six text options for multiple attribution
> text" which were discussed according to the LWG meeting minutes - both
> for the members to exercise oversight over the OSMF work and for the
> board if and when they are in the position to evaluate the draft.  It
> would also immensely help to get community members more interested in
> OSMF work if they can follow the actual policy design work more
> closely.  And finally it would also be a huge factor for the legitimacy
> of any policy documents since the community is used to an open work
> culture (for mapping obviously but also for writing documentation and
> rules) and being able to follow how exactly a document came into being
> is very helpful and reassuring compared to a document that came out of
> the blue with no publicly visible documentation for how it came to say
> what it ultimately says.  In other words:  By not doing document
> development work in the open like it is mostly custom in the community
> otherwise the OSMF would distance itself from the community whose
> interests it is meant to represent.
>
> --
> Christoph Hormann
> http://www.imagico.de/
>
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