[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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