[Talk-ca] BC2020 OD_tables wiki and project status

[OSM Volunteer stevea]

On Jan 26, 2018, at 8:12 PM, Stewart C. Russell <scruss at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 2018-01-26 09:56 PM, OSM Volunteer stevea wrote:
>> What I did was to "back-populate" the list of "approved" (by whom?  when?  how did these get here?) list of Canadian cities from
>> https://wiki.osm.org/wiki/Contributors#Canadian_Municipalities into OSM's BC2020 wiki.
> 
> These are very old and pre-date the formal import documentation process.
> The Toronto permission e-mail from 2011 or so amounted to not much more
> than “Sure ;-)” [smiley included in original]. I don't think the process
> would pass muster now.

OK, so "correct" is to immediately remove from https://wiki.osm.org/wiki/Contributors#Canadian_Municipalities EVERY SINGLE CITY (except Ottawa).  If it was an error to list them then, (that's what I read above) it is an error to list them now.  Anyone with an OSM wiki account can do this — and now, someone should, preferably someone in Canada with a sense of ownership that this process of entering additional Canadian cities into Contributors went awry.  This could be a majority of people reading this post:  any takers?

> Unfortunately, none of us are lawyers, the OSMF's lawyers are very busy
> and naturally conservative, and slogging through licence work (and
> myriad outdated wiki pages) is no fun for anyone, least of all volunteers.

Some of us are lawyers (I'm not), though any OSM volunteer should strive to "do the right things," especially in matters related to "proper licensing."  Proper OD licensing is one task which has emerged as an "obstacle" (so documented in WikiProject BC2020) from the desire to see continuing project forward momentum.

To go forward, if wiki pages are outdated (and Stewart says above that they are), well, please update outdated wiki pages.  You don't have to be a lawyer to do that, especially as the data are known to be outdated or wrong.  "Slogging through license work," partly DOES require being a lawyer (at least within OSM's LWG) and for the project to go forward, yes, that is a longer-term task to complete.  (I hesitate to say "slog," though it may be one).

I offer to "change from green to red" wiki table status for all cities (except Ottawa), although I'd also like to see Contributors be updated (with only Ottawa) as I suggest.  Teamwork, anybody?  Simply to keep our project-wide communication current?  It's neither difficult nor time-consuming and shares present status with "the rest of us."

We may not have brilliant ignition here, but at least the embers are orange and warm.  Though, after many lungfuls by me, I'm getting a bit dizzy stoking these fires.

SteveA
California