[Talk-GB] [Osmf-talk] Live OSM discussion in ~45 minutes (7.30pm UK time)

Simon Poole simon at poole.ch
Thu Jul 27 14:06:15 UTC 2017


The thread was mainly about bad science and how it effects the
perception of OSM in the public, including that it doesn't help in
addressing real issues.

Normally I would expect the moderators to suggest starting a new thread
if you want to discuss the issues around diversity and how to address
them instead of hijacking a thread with a different topic, but they seem
to be strangely absent

Simon

On 27.07.2017 14:41, Mikel Maron wrote:
> Takeaways
> * Everyone understands gender diversity is a problem
> * Some of us think it's very important to address, others think other
> issues are more important at this moment
> * The dudes arguing here among themselves about what's more important
> and dissecting arguments are not doing much to address the issue. 
> * The volume of discussion and overly sensitive responses to details,
> beating drums about our pet peeves, only shows that the key issue of
> gender diversity is not something some of us want to put energy into.
> * The discussion here doesn't matter. If we want to work on gender
> diversity, let's go away from here and support the women and men who
> have started good work on strategies at last year's SotM.
>  
> * Mikel Maron * +14152835207 @mikel s:mikelmaron
>
>
> On Thursday, July 27, 2017 7:54 AM, Frederik Ramm
> <frederik at remote.org> wrote:
>
>
> Hi,
>
> On 26.07.2017 23:58, Ilya Zverev wrote:
> > While I was dismissive of her arguments four years ago, now I see that
> > all of her points were valid, and are still valid.
>
> I think that it is possible for an insider of OpenStreetMap to look at
> Monica's work and see some valid points in there. But try to switch off
> your background knowledge and look at her work. What sticks with you is
> something like (quoting from a 3rd party web site that introduces the
> talk):
>
> "She looks specifically at the case of how "childcare" was not approved
> as map category within OpenStreetMap."
>
> This comes from her work massively exaggerating the issue for effect,
> and being extremely sloppy with OSM background research.
>
> Reviewing her talk, the OSM part begins with her showing group photos of
> past SotM conferences claiming "these are all men". Which clearly isn't
> true (you just have to zoom in on the picture). Maybe I'm putting the
> bar to high by measuring this with the "science" yardstick, but it feels
> wrong to me. Do you want future scientific papers to quote "according to
> <source>, no women have attended large OSM gatherings before 2013"?
> Because that's what she says.
>
> She then goes on to equate the number of different values in the
> "amenity" key space with the importance of something (arguing that
> because you have different amenity values for bars and pubs it is clear
> that this is an important distinction); this is not tenable as just
> slightly more research would have shown, there is no correlation between
> the importance of something and the number of different key values in
> the amenity space.
>
> She then claims that "amenity=swingerclub" was the (1) most recently (2)
> accepted (3) voted on (4) approved amenity - not a single one of the
> numbered points is correct as far as I can see from the Wiki history
> (but I invite readers to double check, I might have missed some page
> renamings?).
>
> Going forward, she gives listeners the impression that a successful tag
> proposal was a requirement for being able to tag features, which is
> plain wrong. At the very least, a non-misleading, non-sensationalist
> presentation would have to mention that
>
> (a) anyone can tag anything they find important,
> (b) this *may* be influenced by editor presets (which didn't feature
> swingerclubs at the time and don't now)
> (c) what appears on the *map* is a different issue again, and
> swingerclubs weren't on the map then and aren't now.
>
> (As a tiny nod towards the actual subject of this thread, point "b" was
> addressed in Andrew Hall'S "Wikimedia Research Showcase" presentation.)
>
> She then goes on to discuss the amenity=childcare proposal, which had
> been voted down in 2011. As you can see from
> http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/w/index.php?title=Proposed_features/childcare&oldid=789581
> the proposal itself had been framed sloppily; it claimed to be
> applicable to all age groups ("Example: 0-6") but didn't explain in how
> far it was meant to replace the existing amenity=kindergarten or just be
> for after-school/after-kindergarten care. A total of 9 people voted
> against the proposal; most because of this technicality, and two because
> they would have preferred amenity=social_facility.
>
> Did those 9 people vote because they "were ignorant" or "didn't care"?
> Maybe, but in my eyes the fault lies just as much with the proposal
> itself; the confusion with "kindergarten" and the question of whether
> "social_facility" would not be better didn't come from nowhere and they
> should have been addressed, the proposal refined, and brought to vote in
> a better shape.
>
> Do voters have a duty to pass a badly done proposal when it is for a
> good thing? Or are they right to shoot down a badly written proposal?
> The "post mortem" on the page says "Voters have either not grasped this,
> or have considered the fact of overlap sufficient to reject the proposal
> without taking the time to propose a proper alternative." - but is it
> the voter's responsibility to propose a proper alternative?
>
> Monica Stephens makes the proposal sound less confusing in her talk -
> she explicitly claims the proposal was for childcare for kids that are
> "not of kindergarten age", when the proposal explicitly lists "0-6" as a
> valid age example. So her listeners will not be able to understand the
> confusion.
>
> She then says "OpenStreetMap is a democratic society where people vote
> on which amenities will appear on the base map" which is, of course,
> wrong in several ways (see my a/b/c list above).
>
> In criticising the "against" voters, she picks out a few that have
> spelling mistakes and adds a prominent "[sic]" after each "refered" or
> "usefull" - something that may be scientifically correct but speaks of a
> desire to belittle these people for whom English is not their first
> language. She doesn't quote any of the "against" votes that say that the
> overlap needs to be explained, she only quotes those who believe the new
> thing is identical to kindergarten. And the correct tally of 9 "no" and
> 5 "yes" votes becomes, in her talk, "voting ended and was 15 to 4". Just
> sloppy?
>
> She then proceeds with some anti-German slurs, claiming that "all but
> 3... or 5 ... of the brothels in OpenStreetMap are in Germany, the rest
> are in Amsterdam". Now this "American values are the right values"
> attitude is something I could go on about for a while (are more children
> harmed by brothels or by guns) but I'll save that for another time; I
> have counted the objects tagged amenity=brothel in OSM at the beginning
> of 2012 and found 510 in Germany and a total of 825 world-wide, so I
> don't know how she counted but apparently it wasn't all that important
> to her. Just a little harmless fun at the expense of all those German
> and Dutch perverts, right, let's all have a good laugh? At the same time
> there were 16,693 amenity=kindergarten and 51 amenity=baby_hatch mapped
> in Germany, numbers which might have served to put the whole thing into
> perspective - sadly her listeners are denied that piece of information
> which a responsibly scientist should have shared.
>
> She concludes that "OSM is dominated by male contributions" (which is
> correct) "and excludes the other 1/2" (which I'd argue with). She says:
> "Women cannot really map their local community; their local information
> is particularly excluded from this base map and from what features are
> (inaudible) in OpenStreetMap."
>
> This is a very broad, I'd almost say outrageous, claim, and not at all
> supported by the evidence she has provided, even if that evidence were
> factual.
>
> She proceeds to claim that "... all of these options for child-care,
> day-care, have failed in OpenStreetMap, continually". Again, not at all
> supported by any evidence. She again claims that "swingerclub was
> democratically approved without a single opposing vote in 2012", when
> indeed no vote on that tag has taken place, ever.
>
> So, to close this off, Ilya I think you are doing OpenStreetMap a huge
> disservice by taking a talk that is so full of false claims, so biased
> and misleading, and publicly say that "all of the points are valid".
>
> There is a valid point in that it would be desirable to achieve gender
> parity in OpenStreetMap and that this would make for better discussions,
> better results, a better map. But almost every other point made in that
> talk is at least exaggerated for effect, if not blatantly false.
>
> I'm afraid I have now wasted two hours of my life doing what Christoph
> warned of, namely heightening the visibility of Monica's work by trying
> to point out the flaws in it, and I agree it would be nice if we could
> ensure that if researches criticize OSM in the future - and there's
> certainly a lot to criticize - they at least get their facts right.
>
> I want to live in a society where everyone is free to say their opinion,
> but I don't want to live in a society where everyone can claim facts
> that are simply and demonstratively wrong and not be called out for it.
> There's too much of that out there already.
>
> Bye
> Frederik
>
> -- 
> Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frederik at remote.org
> <mailto:frederik at remote.org>  ##  N49°00'09" E008°23'33"
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> osmf-talk mailing list
> osmf-talk at openstreetmap.org <mailto:osmf-talk at openstreetmap.org>
> https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/osmf-talk
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> osmf-talk mailing list
> osmf-talk at openstreetmap.org
> https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/osmf-talk

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk-gb/attachments/20170727/bc6f40e0/attachment-0001.html>


More information about the Talk-GB mailing list