[Osmf-talk] Africa as a training ground was RE: google Open Buildings usage request
Mateusz Konieczny
matkoniecz at tutanota.com
Wed Aug 4 11:33:15 UTC 2021
But it is perfectly fine to prefer people without conflict of interest when selecting leaders.
Aug 3, 2021, 22:24 by heatherleson at gmail.com:
> Dear Bert
>
> "> 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"
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> With all due respect, this is an "open" community. I or anyone should not be excluded because I have a job or belong to any community. To restrict this is to not be "open".
>
> Thank you
>
> Heather
>
> On Tue, 3 Aug 2021, 15:44 Bert -Araali- Van Opstal, <> bert.araali.afritastic at gmail.com> > wrote:
>
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>> 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.
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>> 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.
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>> 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.
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>> 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.
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>> 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.
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>> 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:
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>>> 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.
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>> 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.
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>> 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.
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>> 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.
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>> 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.
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>> Greetings,
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>> Bert Araali
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>> On 01/08/2021 20:48, Geoffrey Kateregga wrote:
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>>> 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.
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>>> 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.
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>>> 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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