[Talk-us] New List: osm-professional

Serge Wroclawski emacsen at gmail.com
Thu Mar 4 01:19:24 GMT 2010


On Thu, Mar 4, 2010 at 12:19 AM, Frederik Ramm <frederik at remote.org> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Serge Wroclawski wrote:
>>
>> Several people specifically asked me for a fully moderated list.
>
> Then please ask these people to go look for a project that does not do
> crowdsourcing. You cannot fix an engine without getting oil on your hands,
> and you cannot reap the benefits of a crowdsourcing project without dealing
> with human beings.

I think that what you're saying makes sense for some people, but not
others. OSM provides wonderful lists for both technical folks and
people who are deeply interested in the project. But what if I'm an
organization which has interest in OSM peripherally?

An example that's come up is a school system may want to do a project
involving OSM. A school administrator is interested in learning about
the community, but isn't really interested in the types of things we
talk about normally (technical issues, tagging discussions, data
representations).

Also, these types of people tend to be a little more (to use a British
phrase) 'prim and proper'. Maybe they'll personally never be
contributors to our project, but they may open the door for some great
work.

I'd like us to find a place for such opportunities, and in my mind,
this new list would be such a place.

>> At the same time, knowing this request and the reason for it, I
>> understood their concerns and wanted to let them know that this list,
>> unlike talk at openstreetmaup, would be monitored for behavior
>
> The decisive factor for me is: Will a message I write get through without
> you reading it before the others do, or will it not. Whether the community
> kick me out *afterwards* because I have written something that they don't
> like, that's another matter. But being pre-filtered (what you seem to call
> "fully moderated") is not acceptable, and I would even go so far as to say
> this is so much un-OSM that such a list should not be officially sanctioned
> by being hosted on OSM servers. Let people have their nice and cleansed
> community at Yahoo groups or on their own private mail servers but not at
> OSM.

Based on some feedback I've been given, I'm working on a code of
conduct for this list. Holding folks to this code of conduct seems
like it should satisfy both sides, probably without the need to (using
your terminology) "pre-filter". Would such a solution make you happy?
Even if it meant that if there was a violation, we might have to
remove this person from the list?

>> 1) We don't say anything. We say "This is a new list" and then there
>> are arbitrary decisions about moderation, or kicking people off.  I
>> don't think this is a friendly way to run a community.
>
> It is highly unlikely that an osm-professional list would even attract
> people you would want to kick.

Sometimes tempers flare, people become passionately involved. It
happens to me at least...

> You haven't even started and already you are  making rules about whom you want to
> kick out.

I was trying to avoid making rules to kick anyone out... but maybe
that's better than moderation?

And the list has been around for nearly two months, just not announced
and no traffic (while I sorted some things out).

>> 3) We don't do any moderation.  Well, we have a list like this already
>> and it's been a problem for us,
>
> Stop. - Are you saying that osm-professional is intended as a copy of
> osm-talk just moderated?

I see osm-professional as mainly focusing on a new audience of people
who currently aren't subscribed to any OSM list, with a focus on
people using osm in a professional context.

If it's similar to any other list, it'd probably be "newbies"- but
newbies is really about getting involved in the project in the sense
of contributing to the project, where I see osm-professional as about
people who may not want to be individual contributors but still have a
connection to OSM.


> Well these people surely haven't talked to me, or offered their opinion in
> any forum that I have been reading. Maybe we're just having a naming problem
> really. I thought that being a professional OSM service provider I should
> naturally be on that list. If you would select a name that makes it more
> clear that this is an entry-level safe forum for US newcomers rather than a
> mailing list for professional OSM users, that would then not give the
> impression of being the place where all the OSM professionals ought to be
> and I could safely ignore it ;-)

I don't intend the list to be only for US folks. The fact the
moderators are in the US is more to do with the fact that I know them.
It's similar to why most of the "old time" OSMers are British...

I think I understand Steve's concern, which is that he feels that OSM
as a project is about free expression, and any moderation is against
that.

I'm less sure I understand your concerns, so let me try to repeat them
to test my understanding:

You don't want any pre-filter on your messages because you feel it's
an insult to you as a professional. Furthermore, you don't understand
what it is I'm trying to accomplish with this new list vs existing
lists.

Is that a fair assessment?

If so, would a code of conduct satisfy your concerns?

- Serge




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