[OSM-Science] Special Issue on "Advances in Applications of Volunteered Geographic Information" in the journal Remote Sensing

Thu Sep 5 17:11:37 UTC 2019

@Frank:
It's really great that you elaborated on buzzwords. I didn't go into that
in my previous email but probably encountering low quality research with
buzzwords is what triggered this whole thread. This is unfortunately an
issue. On the  bright side, respected outlets usually don't bite for
buzzwords (not always anyway) and peer-review can be effective in weeding
these instances out. In high impact research you are less likely to
encounter buzzwords just for the sake of including them. In lower quality
contributions, well... In a way it's a matter of how you synthesize your
information which is easier for those who work in the field. If someone
happens to only encounter bad science and papers misusing VGI as a buzzword
then they can easily assume that scientists are a bunch of people doing
questionable stuff while fishing for attention. It seems that our views,
terminology and results can be misinterpreted easily. The question is, how
we as a community can overcome this and make sure that there's a meaningful
discussion between mappers and academic researchers so that we hear and
understand each another correctly. This discussion would be beneficial to
make sure that our findings can make it back into OSM and we could finally
make a real impact (I'm not sure if we do despite a lot of research being
done). This discussion would also help identify needs of OSM so that we can
address the right issues. And quite frankly, some researchers really need a
better understanding of OSM as a whole, not just the data. I'm really
curious how many academic researchers are actually on this list, and how
many of us actually know what the community we're researching is up
to?. Maybe we need to write OSM diaries or blog posts to regularly
communicate what we're up to and engage with others? I honestly don't know.
This is why I'm excited for the Academic Track at SotM19. It is my hope
that it will be able to fill in some of this void and will be a good
platform to facilitate a meaningful discussion. The kind that moves
forward, obviously. Sorry for the slightly off-topic rant. None of these
are aimed at you specifically!

Anyway, maybe my previous mail came out a bit off but I did not try to
imply that OSM wouldn't be volunteered geographic information. What I tried
to illustrate is that if you take the term apart and consider the literal
meaning of each word separately then one can easily say that it makes no
sense to use it at all. This is not the first time I'm hearing that someone
finds the terminology problematic in very similar way and I can see why.
Christoph also noticed that today still some research considers OSM mappers
non-professional volunteers who produce questionable data. Unfortunately,
it comes up in many papers I review (maybe I'm just not being asked to
review the good ones :)). In these papers the term volunteer really implies
what Christoph described. I totally agree with him in this as I believe
this is not right. Staying with the volunteer label, I was also thinking
about the data import example. Strictly speaking, a dataset is not entirely
volunteered if it contains not volunteered elements. In extreme cases, like
what we have in Miami, most parts of the map consists of non volunteered
elements (TIGER + 2 building imports) with no to very little local
community and occasional tourists editing here. In this regard the argument
against the term 'volunteer' makes sense to me, as in its current state,
the map in Miami is not necessarily a product of volunteer work. To
contradict this, I volunteered my time and resources to execute both of
those building imports so maybe it's still volunteered? :) Again, not
saying that OSM is not volunteered but I acknowledge why on the surface it
may look condescending. But then again, it really is arguing about
semantics which I also don't see the point of. It would be the same as
getting upset about the negative effects of using the word "Autobahn" since
word ultimately does not apply to motorcycles. Does it make sense to tell
people to stop calling Autobahn because it is clearly wrong? I don't think
so. I choose not to get upset about the semantics of such things and focus
on the real meaning of what these words describe. That's how we can focus
on important things and move forward instead of being stuck in an endless
cycle of arguments over nothing.  I hope it makes sense what my point was.
In summary, OSM is VGI, but I see how some people would question the
validity of the term when taking it out of the context it's supposed to be
understood.

@Christoph:

> What i find interesting in the comments received is that there is very
> little critique of my analysis and arguments in substance and most
> resposes seem to concentrate on justifying use of the term despite
> agreeing with my analysis.  That i would frankly consider
> non-scientific.  For real progress in science you need to question the
> assumptions and preconceptions of your field.  If you use an evidently
> non-fitting or inprecise term because you are used to it, because all
> your peers do so or because an important authority in your field
> (Goodchild) does so or for similar reasons you are not doing that.
>

I'm quite sad about what you seem to be implying here. It's a little
offensive, too. If you read carefully, my intention was to pitch in with
some thoughts that could contribute to a meaningful discussion about your
original statement (=VGI is ultimately wrong). You said it yourself that
you wanted "to raise this subject here again is to encourage everyone to
critically evaluate their use of terms like this and what it might
communicate about their view of their subject matter" and I believe I did
just that. There is a difference between questioning everything and
thinking critically. I was trained to do the latter and I believe I am
doing it (yes, this is the part that personally offends me). Probably I
didn't frame the letter right since my message seems to be lost between the
lines but I think there are explanations in there as to why I still use the
term VGI instead of just blindly accepting it. Justifying the use of VGI is
what could have started the conservation, actually. A conversations where
you are given insights as to why the term is still being used. Apparently
you chose to ignore that. I also gave examples of how VGI research evolved
naturally just by scientist doing what they're good at - questioning
assumptions. As I said, both "volunteers being non-professionals" and "data
quality being lower than ..." were valid assumptions at the time. Today,
these statements are not instantly accepted by all due to researchers
questioning these preconceptions and proving them wrong in some cases.This
is what I call real progress in my field (I can't take credit for these
examples), even though some research still wrongly just assumes what you're
referring to. Again, focusing on this progress is more constructive than
arguing about semantics, literal meaning of words and whether they apply on
a technical level or not. I am not sure how familiar you are with the
literature, to be honest. Digging deep and survey the literature seems to
be missing from your blog post and mails. IMHO doing this systematically
would be essential if you want to talk about how science gets it wrong.
Only then you can claim to have conducted an analysis with scientific
rigor. Otherwise you're just forming an opinion, which you're of course
entitled to.

@Joost:
Editing the Wikipedia article is a good idea and it shouldn't take much to
do so. I also had a conversation with Marco Minghini a while back about
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Research and how grouping research by
geography might not be the most suitable way to organize this page. Maybe
it's time to revisit this idea now that we have some activity here.

Best,
Levente

On Thu, Sep 5, 2019 at 7:37 AM f.o.ostermann at utwente.nl <
f.o.ostermann at utwente.nl> wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> it's great to have activity on the science mailing list! There has been a
> lot of discussion on the issue in academic literature, but it’s clear that
> we can’t expect non-academics to follow it because of time (I hardly
> manage) and also pay walls (not enough open access yet). But that is
> exactly what the OSM science mailing list is good for, isn’t it?
>
>
>
> I've posted the below also as comment to the blog post
> http://blog.imagico.de/science-and-openstreetmap-and-why-not-call-it-vgi/
>
>
>
> Cheers,
>
>
>
> Frank Ostermann
>
>
>
> So I teach a lot on VGI and OSM, and I tell my students that OSM is a
> prime example of VGI. Why? Because it is definitely volunteered (someone
> made an active decision to add something to the database, Christoph writes
> that himself in the third bullet point), it is geographic (about data
> points with a geographic location), and it is also information (because
> assigning tags etc. is an act involving semantics and other sources of
> prior information, so it is an interpretation, a cognitive process, more
> than simple perception and recording of a stimulus).
>
> I disagree with most of Christoph's arguments from the blog post (and by
> extension also Levente where he agrees with those). First, using terms like
> VGI is not an attempt at generalization (removing details), but at
> categorization (grouping similar items), to facilitate meaningful
> discussion. Unfortunately, people (including researchers) use terms
> indiscriminately and inflationary to push their work so that it turns up in
> searches and gets cited more often. That is the only part where I agree
> with Christoph, that often buzzwords are used whether they fit or not,
> because they are, well, buzzwords. We could do away with categories and
> discuss every project idiographically, but since (natural) science is about
> finding similarities and differences, what's the point? Second, on who can
> be a volunteer, this is one of the few things where literature seems to
> agree, so I don't understand why this post introduces artificial ambiguity
> here. "Voluntarism" is to my knowledge always associated with individual
> citizens (who can organize in groups or NGOs of course). I have never heard
> of a satellite image provider (or owner...) to be termed "volunteer". I
> know that there are bulk uploads from institutional sources, but that was
> never the intention, nor is it the majority. The next point on
> "information" I do not understand. Of course OSM is made up of data, but
> OSM (a map!) is full of semantics, so calling it information definitely
> makes more sense. Lastly, why associate or equal volunteered information
> with private information? If something is out there in the world but not on
> OSM, then of course I can volunteer to bring it to OSM, and it is
> verifiable by others. VGI is not about things only I can know. I really do
> not understand where this notion of information as property (in the context
> of VGI) comes from. I have not seen it being discussed in that context.
> Lastly, "crowdsourced" implies a hierarchy: There is someone (a person, an
> organization, a company) who needs something done but doesn't have the
> resources. So they outsource the task to a crowd. Does that describe OSM? I
> don't think so. To me it seems the exact opposite of what Christoph tries
> to argue previously.
>
> So in summary, I think that Christoph has a point in that too many people
> use terms like VGI without proper thought or to optimize citation metrics.
> But OSM not being volunteered geographic information? I disagree.
>
>
>
> *Dr. Frank O. Ostermann <http://www.linkedin.com/in/foost>* | Assistant
> Professor <http://www.itc.nl/resumes/ostermann>
>
> *Faculty of Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation (ITC)
> <https://www.utwente.nl/en/itc/>* | *University of Twente
> <http://www.utwente.nl/>*
>
> PO Box 217 | 7500 AE Enschede | The Netherlands
> Office: ITC Building 2-056 | +31 (0)53 – 487 4492 |
> f.o.ostermann at utwente.nl
>
>
>
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