[Tagging] QA in mind for tag

marc marc marc_marc_irc at hotmail.com
Wed Jun 20 10:54:56 UTC 2018


Hello,

2018-06-19 16:06 GMT+02:00 Bryan Housel :
> we need a dedicated corps of volunteers who care  
> about making the wiki simple and accurate.

I proposed and carried out several tag quality improvement operations
on the scale of several different countries.
On talk-fr I called it "the tag of the week". The result was very 
positive (no proposal were rejected) despite a modest participation rate.
Others before and after me launched the idea of "project of the month" 
to improve the quality of a given topic, including fix existing objets.

 From my little experience on the subject, here are some tips to make it 
happen:

- think collective, participatory. don't say "I have a problem, I notify 
tagging of the solution i have decided and I ask arms to implement my 
decisions" but "I have the impression that there is a problem, here is 
my issue, here is a proposal to fix it, what do you think ? other 
solution? are you interested that we work together ?"

- think community instead of leader <> not leader. this both on the form 
(presenting yourself as lead is ignoring how the osm community work and 
the best way to kill a good proposal) and on the substance (ideas must 
be able to come from anyone, which also implies avoiding "my no=closed")

- listening: if the initial idea is constructively criticized, it is 
sometimes necessary to hear them and modify or limit the initial idea. 
Recently, many proposals have been rejected because the original author 
ignored criticism. and yet there was often a way to achieve a positive 
result by slightly modifying the original idea.

- respect the existing. mechanical operations require a wiki page. 
therefore i don't see the advantage of making a github with a limited 
ammount of ppl having the control over it, which is precisely the 
advantage of the wiki where the community as a whole can interact
on an equal basis.
if the community want to do tag quality improvement operations,
it would probably be logical to create the same kind of wiki page.
The only advantage of github is the possibility to ping someon, a page 
on the wiki requires to write a message to the person to let him know.

- take the time... when there is no unanimity, announcing a delay
of a few days to pass in force is a diplomatic error.

I fully understand however that this is totally incompatible
with the "fix the issue for the next iD monthly update" wish.

To avoid any misunderstanding, this message is not a criticism or an 
request to abandon the idea, on the contrary, I would be very happy
that this idea succeeds, but for that we must avoid the frequent causes 
of failure in the ambitious changes concerning osm.

Regards,
Marc


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