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

[Christoph Hormann]

Glad to see arguments directly countering my analysis.

I am going to answer point by point and hope this will help better 
understanding my arguments and my critique.

> [...] First, using terms like VGI is not an attempt at
> generalization (removing details), but at categorization (grouping
> similar items), to facilitate meaningful discussion.

I would argue that any categorization is a form of generalization.  But 
it does not matter how you call it - by putting OSM in a category with 
a lot of of other projects with very different aims, paradigms and 
organization methods without reflecting on the differences you are not 
necessarily making a wrong statement (as long as there is some 
commonality between them in some aspect) but you also do not 
necessarily make a statement that contributes to a meaningful 
discussion.

> [...] 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?

Here might lie a source of our differences in view - i consider most of 
the reasearch that is being labeled to be about VGI to be social 
sciences rather than natural sciences.

> 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".

Ok, here we need to carefully look at the terminology.  There is a 
significant semantic difference between the concept of "the volunteer" 
and the concept of "to volunteer something".  A volunteer is 
essentially someone who volunteers his/her work time (and only their 
work time) to a certain purpose.

If this helps - in German i would probably translate these terms in this 
context as "Freiwillige(r)" for volunteer and "etwas zur Verfügung 
stellen" for "to volunteer something".

Goodchild's motive to use the term "to volunteer something" probably 
stems from his focus on the benefit of individual local knowledge 
(which is directly contributed by those who have it) which puts crowd 
sourced mapping at a significant advantage over the authoritive mapping 
done by official institutions which can only indirectly source this 
local knowledge in a very work intensive way.  But unfortunately this 
consideration is not part of the term chosen and as explained this is 
usually lost when people now use the term and cite Goodchild.

> 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.

These two points we need to consider together.  My understanding of the 
terms: Information is the semantics of data detached from the concrete 
data representation and independent of its perception by humans.  Like 
data information does not in any way have to be "correct".

Knowledge is information available in the human mind that has proven to 
be intersubjectively verifiable and thereby is considered to be 
correct.

What OSM aims to collect is local knowledge.  The mapper contributes 
this in the form of concrete data entered into the database.  The 
information level in between those two is not really of interest - we 
are not interested in information that is not knowledge (i.e. that is 
not verifiable or that has not yet made it into the minds of human 
beings) and neither the mappers nor the project itself claims ownership 
of the information contained in the concrete data in its database.  
Therefore while the statement that OSM is volunteered geographic 
information is not necessarily wrong it is not really a meaningful 
statement regarding what OSM is about.

That data can be property under certain circumstances has been 
established - most visibly in form of EU database law.  That knowledge 
cannot be property in a society with fundamental freedoms is quite self 
evident - if information can be independently verified it can also be 
independently gathered (patents, which grant exclusivity on economic 
use of certain knowledge but not control of the knowledge itself 
notwithstanding).  But the situation regarding information in general 
that is not verifiable is not quite as clear.

Official mapping authorities which Goodchild had in mind as a 
counterpoint to crowd sourced data projects traditionally have a fairly 
broad interpretation of their ownership of cartographic information.  
Much of this derives from traditions from pre-democratic times where 
these authorities indeed had de facto control over much of the 
cartographic information in their maps and also made use of that by 
deliberately falsifying information where deemed necessary by the 
authorities.  There are many countries where collection of geographic 
information is still legally restricted (and even in Europe it largely 
was until the end of the cold war).  This idea that information (and 
not just its concrete data representation) can be property is still 
quite widespread today - in particular in the domain of cartography but 
also elsewhere, just think of the recent discussion of the EU copyright 
directive which also tries to push such ideas.

As said i am not sure if this played a role in coining this term "VGI" 
originally.  I find it remarkable and significant that despite 
Goodchild's emphasis on local knowledge of people as a major advantage 
of crowd sourced geodata production he chose to use the term 
information.  Independent of what Goodchild thought i think the success 
of the idea of VGI might in particular also have happened due to it 
resonating with people who like the idea that information (and not just 
data) can be owned.

> 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.

Although i'd disagree that "crowd sourced" implies someone controlling 
and managing the crowd as a term itself it has been used mostly for 
crowds that are steered centrally so for reasons of historic practice 
it is probably not the best choice to avoid misconceptions.

Of course OTOH OSM is not in any way immune to attempts at steering from 
the outside so putting it in a category with other projects where such 
steering routinely happens is not that far fetched.  

> 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.

Note i never said OSM is not VGI - i explained why i think VGI is not a 
useful terms to subsume OSM and other things under and why using this 
term when writing about scientific research is usually a bad choice.

I hope these comments helped better understand my reasoning - your 
arguments helped me to better understand how you can see this 
fundamentally differently, thanks for sharing this.

-- 
Christoph Hormann
http://www.imagico.de/