[Osmf-talk] public document writing process (was: microgrants)

[Christoph Hormann]

On Tuesday 14 January 2020, Frederik Ramm wrote:
>
> But I have also participated in the collaborative writing of
> documents in my past role as a board member, and my current DWG work.
> And from that experience I can say two things with certainty:
>
> (1) The actual edit history of a document as captured by whatever
> system is used to type it out paints only half of the picture and can
> be very misleading. [...]

I have already commented on this in my reply to Joost.  In short:

a) That is what commit comments are for.
b) The cause of the potential misinterpretation is not the transparently
disclosed information, it is the rest of the process not being equally
transparent.  If the problem is that it "paints only half of the
picture" then the solution is to provide the full picture.

> [...] I think that board work, or WG
> work, must have a private side to be effective; as a group member
> engaged in a creative process, I would not like to be watched all the
> time. Granted, monitoring all my document changes is not as bad as
> monitoring all my keystrokes is not as bad as filming me while I do
> the work but it all feels like some sort of surveillance.

a) it seems you have a wrong understanding of what i wrote.  Recording
and making available the edit history cannot be compared to monitoring
of all keystrokes.  Submitting a commit to a version managed system is
a conscious choice.  You have complete control over if and when you do
this and your choice in that does not affect your ability to perform
the actual writing.  The only contrain is that you cannot communicate
your edit without there being a record of it or in other words:  You
cannot do so secretly.

b) i disagree that there is any need for or legitimate interest in
privacy in the cooperative development of policy documents in an
organization like the OSMF.  IMO *any* cooperative development of
formulations of policy text should happen in the open.

Frankly in a community like OpenStreetMap where essentially everything
from mapping over tag documentation to tools and map development
happens publicly, i am astonished this - in the form i present it,
limited to policy development only - is even a subject of debate.

> * automatic recordings can also present an unwelcome intrusion into
> the privacy of participants, a privacy and "safe space" that if
> granted can increase productivity.

Would you say the cited statement also applies to mapping?  If not why?

> I think that a pragmatic compromise could be the publication of, with
> every document or draft, a small "meta" information that explains who
> participated to which degree in coming up with the document (perhaps
> telling us who was the "lead", if any, who made "major contributions"
> and simply not mentioning those who just fixed a comma, or
> something), and also a small "change log" that would tersely point
> out the major changes since the last draft, or perhaps on a first
> draft outline which ideas had been tried and rejected, if any.

This kind of engineered, press release style transparency is IMO
counterproductive for efforts for real transparency because:

* it creates a barrier between the internal world of the organization
and public communication, everyone in the organization has to mentally
compartmentalize into internal and external communication and everyone
outside will inevitably get to feel that they see only the facade of
what the insiders want or can let them to see.  This is poison to trust
and confidence between those within the organization and those outside.
* to those with a faible for a culture of secrecy it produces the
strongest justification for it because it presents transparency (in
this engineered form) primarily as a cost factor, additional work and a
risk factor for conconsistencies in the engineered public reality.

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