[Talk-us] Open survey on participation biases in OSM

[Joel Holdsworth]

Because the very notion that it is relevant to study OSM by gender is 
divisive.

Who cares what the gender balance of contributors to OSM is? I don't. I 
didn't even know what the split was until this thread. Because it 
literally doesn't matter.

Even it were 99% women, it wouldn't matter. So long as everyone has a 
chance to contribute if they want to.

Some people are saying about how awful it is to have a gender bias in 
the mapped data. If it were 99% women, I would imagine there might be 
better detail about the women's toilets. In that case, I would add data 
about the men's. No one owes me an apology, or a commitment to change 
their mapping habits. The solution starts with me - "Be the change you 
want to see."

It's simple - whatever gender, race, social group you are, come and use 
OSM. If some data you care about is missing, get mapping!


Joel




On 05/09/17 12:14, Charlotte Wolter wrote:
> 
> My goodness, all this anxiety! Why are you feeling that
> you have to justify what you map, just because someone is
> studying it by gender?
> 
> Charlotte
> 
> 
> 
> At 10:10 AM 9/5/2017, you wrote:
>> On Tue, 5 Sep 2017 08:25:33 +0200 Marc Gemis <marc.gemis at gmail.com> 
>> wrote: > One of the discussion points on her diary entry was female 
>> hygiene > products found in women's toilets. How is a man going to map 
>> that, > without access to women's toilets ? > > The real question for 
>> me is are men more likely going to map shop=car > than 
>> shop=clothes;clothes=underwear/fashion/ ... (sorry for the > 
>> stereotyping) > will men map leisure=playground or amenity=pub ? > 
>> will a roman catholic map a mosque ? > will a non-dog owner map 
>> leisure=dog_park ? > > in short: will we map everything we see or do 
>> we map only our > interests ? Furthermore, do we really see everything 
>> or do we only see > (and map) things we are conditioned to ? > > This 
>> is not about buildings, addresses, roads and paths. They are
>> > pretty gender neutral I think. It's about POIs.
>>
>> I know I map what I see (or more precisely, what my camera
>> captures). If it doesn't have a sign out front, I don't map it.
>> To take an example from the midwives vs. strip clubs debate,
>> the phone book lists seven midwives and/or midwife groups
>> in the Spokane area. Of those, three are attached to hospitals
>> and one to a community-health clinic, and so wouldn't have
>> signs. Two are operating out of private homes and don't have
>> signs (and I wouldn't map them if they did, just like I don't map
>> lawn care or computer repair businesses operating out of
>> private homes).
>> The last one is in the 95% of the city I haven't yet photo-mapped.
>> The phone book lists zero strip clubs in the Spokane area.
>> Despite that, I've found and mapped one strip club: it was on a
>> major street and had a clear sign out front.
>> Yes, there's a bias in my mapping, but it's a bias towards
>> "things identifiable from the street." I'm more likely to map a car
>> store than a clothes store, because car stores are generally
>> not found inside shopping malls. Playgrounds beat pubs,
>> because every playground is visible from the street.  And this
>> non-dog-owner didn't map the dog park, because it was
>> already mapped by the time I got started.
>>
>> -- Mark
>> _______________________________________________
>> Talk-us mailing list
>> Talk-us at openstreetmap.org <mailto:Talk-us at openstreetmap.org>
>> https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
> 
> Charlotte Wolter
> 927 18th Street Suite A
> Santa Monica, California
> 90403
> +1-310-597-4040
> techlady at techlady.com
> Skype: thetechlady
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Talk-us mailing list
> Talk-us at openstreetmap.org
> https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
>