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

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

On 15.01.20 13:20, Christoph Hormann wrote:

> This elimination of individual responsibility and accountability ... clashes fundamentally with the
> self image of the OSM community in their everyday work and with the
> function of the OSMF members to supervise the work of the board and
> WGs.

Let's take a step back and look at the work I did for a couple of years
as the OSMF's treasurer. I was happy to do the work and to be judged by
the results of it which were public; I would, however, not have been
willing to do the work if "supervision" by the members had been so
pervasive that members would have been able to see every step I take
(when exactly I receive an invoice; when exactly I finally log into the
bank web site to pay it, whatever).

I was given a job to do and I was accountable for the quality of the
results but I wasn't being watched every step of the way.

Do you think that this degree of "secrecy" that I enjoyed was ok,
because it was the privacy enjoyed by an *individual* (and therefore
*individual* responsibility and accountability were not eliminated)?

Or do you think that this was already "clashing fundamentally with the
self image of the OSM community" because they could not supervise me
appropriately?

> This is what makes it so hard to change the organizational culture
> within an organization like the OSMF - because those within the
> organization have usually already been pre-selected to be fine with or
> in support of this culture - often without being aware that it
> represents only a small subset of the community.

I think that on the contrary, the ruthless approach to openness that you
advocate is what is unusual. In most volunteer organisations that I have
been involved in, the members had much less information available to
them, and the board was much more composed of self-important leadership
people than is the case with the OSMF. Not that it cannot be improved!
I'm just saying there is a limit, and being able to come up with
something as a group and only present it once your group is happy with
*can* be a boost to the group's ability to work together.

You mention the example of

> if for example at an OSM pub meeting over the
> course of several months an elaborate policy document is developed and
> then presented as the collective work of the group to the larger
> community i think that is not good style.

... I don' think it necessarily has to be. It would be bad style if they
then tried to railroad the wider community ("we have thought about this
so long and now you have to say yes"), but if they want to withdraw from
the public eye for a while to come up with something, why not!

If "they" are (unlike the local pub meet) in a position of some power
and there are risks of conflicts of interest - e.g. where a WG comes up
with a recommendation paper and corporate contributors are involved - I
would expect more transparency, for example in the form of a document
that says who contributed how much to the document or so. But I would be
probably be willing to accept what they tell me and not demand to see
the document edit log.

>> 2. Every mapper is a single entity in the community. We don't usually
>> group them and say "you three, please come up with a good mapping of
>> this residential development". Hence no need for mappers to first do
>> some work "internally" before presenting their result.
> 
> That describes more or less the same as what i above explained as the
> principle of individual responsibility and accountability in the OSM
> community.  And you seem to say that this applies to mapping but should
> not apply to policy development within the OSM community.  I would
> disagree.
> 
> I also don't see the point of policy writing involving creativity while
> mapping does not. 

I don't think that this comparison with mapping does anything for the
discussion. Mapping is usually done by individuals, and policy writing
is often done by teams. The activities are different, and different
rules may apply to both. There is no reason why rules that apply to
mapping should automatically apply everywhere else in our project.

> But creativity itself is of course a highly culture specific concept
> which makes it hairy to argue based on it here.

I must admit that not only am I not able to abstract from my own
culture, I am also not even aspiring to. It is obvious that for
everything I find right, there will be someone who thinks it is wrong;
for everything I like, someone who dislikes it; for every value I
cherish, someone who detests it, and for every privilege I enjoy,
someone who does not have it. Still it is me who has to live my life,
and it doesn't make me a better person if I try to live someone else's life.

> Should
> we maybe consider the LWG draft for an attribution guideline a policy
> import plan for a policy document produced outside the normal OSM
> community procedures and rules?

As I said, while I think mapping is an important part of what we do, I
find it tiresome to frame everything we do as some form of mapping.

>> While this may be true, your "simply lay everything open and we'll
>> pick out the interesting bits" does first create ton of work for
>> those picking out the interesting bits, and after that, a ton of work
>> for those who now have to answer nit-picky questions about why
>> exactly they committed wording X and 3 hours and 42 minutes later
>> changed that to wording Y etc.
> 
> Like in case of Joost i'd challenge you to demonstrate that. 

I'll get back to you when something like this happens.

> But if the actual work processes are made transparent following them is
> for the outsider not any more work intensive than for any insider.  And
> people can share their work on reading this and summarize different
> activities for others to understand more quickly.  The problem of
> nit-picky questions arises from partial transparency generating
> questions because the published information depends on other not
> published information to be understood.

But this will always be the case, there will always be some out-of-band
communication between document writers not reflected in the edit
history. There will always be space for people to "fill in the blanks"
and "assume bad intent".

> In my experience having full transparency in processes usually tends to
> lead to a better understanding and more empathy of the public with the
> people involved.  Being able to see the hurdles and problems you are
> dealing with makes you more relatable.  And note i am not calling for
> this in all fields of OSMF work here - i am calling for it only in the
> field of *policy development*.

Perhaps we should give the method a try the next time we're developing
something of lesser imporance, as a "test case", and then take stock of
how it worked. But we should do so in an open-minded way, willing to go
back and reduce transparency again if we see negative effects.

Bye
Frederik

-- 
Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frederik at remote.org  ##  N49°00'09" E008°23'33"