[Osmf-talk] Africa as a training ground was RE: google Open Buildings usage request

Bert -Araali- Van Opstal bert.araali.afritastic at gmail.com
Tue Aug 3 19:37:55 UTC 2021


Who is insulting who ? I don't recall having said anything insulting or 
saying anything in the line that "all the contributions HOT is making 
are useless or garbage", in the contrary.

I understand it's hard to swallow criticism, especially when you are 
involved for a long time, but you don't address it by replying or 
targeting personally. It underlines that there is an issue, both in 
handling, dealing, discussing and addressing the issues raised or 
proving that they are based on incomplete or misrepresented actual 
situation.

Of course, in some cases, those which can be categorized as non-crisis 
responses or other organisations working through the HOT Tasking manager 
are local individuals, happy to be so. This doesn't change the fact 
though that HOT, let it be clear with all it's good intentions, fails as 
much as OSM as a community to reach and activate local communities in 
less fortunate and IT savvy regions.
And as stated before, more and more, advocates and actively implements 
policies that contradict with OSM's "Good practices", philosophy and 
primary objectives. This includes ruling local chapters, using the same 
policies and tools for nearly all their activities. Is that saying HOT 
should stop this, all what HOT is doing is useless or bad, no it isn't. 
It is an observation of what has happened, how HOT's activities have 
evolved and how it's moving towards a model that is very different from 
the core of OSM and it's vibrant community. OSM doesn't want to become 
HOT, not in Africa not in other places. As much as OSM doesn't want to 
become wikipedia, Facebook, Google or Microsoft. OSM and it's community 
efforts and data needs protection against these, and we have a policy 
against to preserve it.
We need OSM to be independent from HOT and similar organisations, the 
companies and their tools. And we have made procedures and guidelines to 
do so, by the community and with consensus of the community.

The basic principles favoured by HOT, is that it advocates primarily the 
use of satellite imagery as a tool to respond to humanitarian crisis. 
OSM primarily wants to map ground truth, capture local knowledge and 
local interests in geodata. Satellite imagery, AI data, authoritative or 
reliable external data sources or organised mass edits are secondary, 
supporting tools for these primary goals. If they have no added value, 
in the opinion of the local or global OSM community, overrule or are a 
motivation to delete what was already there, the use is discouraged or 
should be abandoned.
This is expressed in the procedures, training materials etc... by HOT. 
As an example: how to deal with offsets, where Bing is referred as "the 
golden standard" in case local information like GPS tracks is missing. 
If that information is missing, the policy should be to gather the 
ground truth, not rely on satelite imagery, which still after all these 
years of development, suffers from significant inaccuracies in 
post-processing and stitching together the images, especially in 
mountainousness areas or those areas that lack high quality and stable 
control and validation points.

I am not surprised by the many answers received here. They illustrate 
the tendency of HOT to move away from the primary tools we as an OSM 
community try to sustain and improve. True, of course with all their 
flaws, and at a slow stride, inherent characteristic to the type of 
community we are and want to be and our mode of operation based on 
volunteers.
As such, there is nothing wrong with that, as long as the primary tools 
and community are respected. A means of respect to the OSM name you are 
permitted to carry, doesn't come with attribution only, but also respect 
for it's community and how and where it wishes to operate. The OSM wiki 
is not updated with project or organised editing guidelines, the use of 
mailing lists is very poor.
With all respect for Pierre and other HOT supporters, but once you reach 
the state of handing over from a HOT initiative to the community, to 
OSM, trust and follow the guidelines, as the community tries to do. 
Trust that no one will fundamentally change your initial wiki page 
without consultation, we have a history to follow up on that. Policies 
in the use and contribution of OSM are hardly ever discussed within the 
OSM forums. A motivation like we mostly use "telegram, facebook, 
whatsapp etc... because that is what the locals mostly know and use are 
easy solutions and justifications to deviate. It is not different from 
the situation in other regions where OSM is more successful. Actually, 
it should be a motivation to promote those very OSM channels, as they 
have proven respect for privacy, inclusion and they work to have more 
deep discussions. Don't take the easy path, take the hard one, as it's 
proven even the easy path isn't giving substantial results and 
declining. It is not just limited to social media, also other tools like 
zoom, google drive, eventbrite etc... are intensively used and promoted. 
Gaps where OSM is filling in with BigBlueButton and Nextcloud, using 
it's financial resources and, in the cases where OSMF has not yet 
provided an alternative, the preferred ones are identified, in many 
cases open source and free alternatives are readily available.

And that is where it comes to the "ruling" statement. Local chapters are 
established, by HOT, with HOT funds, by HOT supporters or employees. 
Using these very policies and HOT primary goals. The members are HOT 
volunteers or HOT affiliated or related organisations. Using HOT tools 
as the tasking manager, the HOT promoted or supported channels. 
Essentially, creating a conflict of interest, proposing a HOT centred 
approach of mapping in OSM. Allow me to quote Pete Masters response:

> Once a community or organisation requests project management 
> permissions (and is onboarded on how) to use the tasking manager, they 
> take responsibility for their own projects. HOT does not direct or 
> gatekeep at this point (although it does offer guidance and advice). 
> It is correct to call all of these projects tasking manager projects 
> and it is correct to call some of them HOT projects.
Taking this literally, with some attempts but without active experience, 
if you want to use the Tasking manager you need permission from HOT. 
What me seem not essentially contradicting the OSM philosophy, as HOT 
not being the gatekeeper but it does restrict you to follow their 
project management methods, communication channels and offers guidance 
as how to do so, in the HOT approach.  Thus, even if HOT doesn't act as 
the gatekeeper, it makes them essentially HOT projects, since there is 
few or deeply hidden guidance of following the OSM guidelines. What 
seems a great idea or tool at first glance, appears to be more a 
camouflaged trap to do projects the HOT way, supporting the HOT 
philosophy deviating from OSM principles.

Even if HOT is the gatekeeper, following this strategy, numerous 
projects never get completed. Due to lack of what ?  Lack of qualified 
validators, people validating the work of their own limited group, lost 
interest, PM's have moved on to the next project. I recently did a test, 
mapped some buildings in a HOT project which was standing there 
uncompleted for 3 years, mapping tasks that were acquiring more work. 
Months later, no one even looked at it. There is no follow up, no 
maintenance, no hand over to the OSM community, no validation taking 
place anymore.

An always returning primary strategy seems training, training , 
training. Training is useful, and has proven it's success when you are 
able to train interested contributors who have access to resources to 
participate in OSM. Good examples are f.i. the youthmappers, who have 
access through their institutions. It is incorrect to say, that the only 
cause of OSM failing in the less fortunate regions, is due to a lack of 
resources. The increase in the rise of e-commerce, online financial 
services, has proven that an increasing number of the population does 
have access. Yet it is not reflected in a comparable increase in OSM 
contributors. So we somehow fail to tap into this growing community. The 
training should be diverse though, not focused on the use of the Tasking 
manager or any editor, but with the same importance on the OSM wiki, 
it's purpose, the mailing lists and changeset comments, how to connect 
and communicate with the broader community.
Still a large part, mostly in the rural areas is not at that level, 
being access or financial means. To organise training there doesn't make 
sense, you can't teach "a pupil how to write when he doesn't have a 
paper and pencil". Government agencies and administration also lacks the 
same resources. To find ground and support in these communities an 
approach on empowering them first, like through community centres, hub 
or schools and providing them with resources who can be searched could 
be a way forward. These hubs could be maintained and managed by the 
local chapters, local private partners. Essentially handing them over to 
the community, to OSM affiliated local communities.

Finally a word about the scope of humanitarian. With the ever growing 
challenges we face, climate change, pandemics, the whole word is in a 
humanitarian crisis. Good for HOT, as a humanitarian organisation the 
world mapping ecosystem has become a potential candidate. Making it an 
alternative to OSM. Please don't, stick to the core, acute crisis's 
where immediate intervention, remote with local support is required. 
Don't become a competitor, become a supporter. Focus on establishing 
sustainable local OSM communties, hand over and leave it to them. 
Support establishing local chapters, but then step away from it and let 
the local community florish. Local chapter board or leaders should not 
be affiliated with any financiers or specific interest groups. No 
Facebook, no MapBox, no Apple, no Google, no TomTom etc... NO HOT. Give 
us a chance, respect and trust that all communities are able to do so, 
the passionate ones and leaders will come forward, whatever background 
they have humanitarian, engineering, software developer, farmer, nurse 
or pupil... in the right environment, not dominated by the more 
privileged, skilled or educated they will find a platform, OSM, to be 
able and do so.

Greetings,

Bert Araali



On 01/08/2021 20:48, Geoffrey Kateregga wrote:
> Hi everyone,
>
> Interesting discussion here, seeing that it grew out of RE: Google 
> Open Buildings usage request and has turned into a discussion of HOT 
> projects.
>
> I think the solution to all this is having strong local OSM 
> communities who take ownership of OpenStreetMap in their countries. 
> Communities who can raise the resources they need to train their 
> members and coordinate mapping activities. That is exactly what we 
> have been doing in Uganda, and for someone to come out and claim that 
> the local community here is ruled by HOT is an insult and a lack of 
> acknowledgment of all the good work we have done over the years by the 
> members of the OSM community in Uganda.
>
> The HOT Tasking manager is a tool, which many organizations including 
> local OSM communities in Africa are using to coordinate their mapping. 
> Not all the projects on the HOT Tasking Manager are set up and managed 
> by HOT. It is just a tool that different communities make use of to 
> coordinate their mapping.
>
> Many of the individuals mapping using the HOT Tasking Manager are 
> actually locals in those countries. In Uganda, the local OSM community 
> here has been mapping Uganda's new cities, and all the border towns 
> across the country using the HOT Tasking Manager, in a coordinated way 
> where projects are mapped and validated to clean up the data.
>
> One last point I want to make is that you will not see many responses 
> here, from African mappers, simply because not many of them are on the 
> membership mailing list, but also because they prefer to use different 
> channels to communicate including Telegram, WhatsApp, and Facebook 
> groups, maybe its worth seeking their point of view on this topic on 
> those channels as well.
>
> Kind regards,
> Geoffrey
>
> Member of the OSM Community in Uganda.
>
>
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