[Talk-us] Senseless Sidewalks Part 2: Crisis Averted

Nick Bolten nbolten at gmail.com
Wed Jul 25 22:20:31 UTC 2018


Hello everyone! This is Nick Bolten with the OpenSidewalks group. By some
oversight, I wasn't subscribed to talk-us, and since the system is based on
mailing lists (in 2018) that means I can't jump into the previous thread to
help clear things up, so I'm making a new post.

First, the title: Frederik Ramm noticed that 9 ways, representing a total
of 18 nodes, in Austin, Texas were untagged, and they should've been tagged
as sidewalks (footways). I fixed them. It took less than two minutes as I
also cleaned up the area a bit to add some crossings, curb ramps, and
fixmes.

Those edits were made by a collaborator of mine, and I'll look into why we
didn't see the changeset comments to fix the data errors earlier. If in
doubt, you can always contact me about these issues, but I know that's not
going to be widely advertised and is a bit of a hassle - so we'll fix our
end.

As for the rest of the comments: I am very confused as to why a fairly
small number of data errors (ignoring the massive data contributions) seems
to result in an existential crisis on OSM mailing lists. I don't mean that
noticing and pointing out data errors is bad, just that the response is
completely disproportionate, full of contempt for others, and leads to
pointless infighting. As a community project that depends on volunteer
efforts, these forums should be much more welcoming and seek to build
consensus with constructive feedback. All I need to know is that there was
a data error and I'll fix it / have someone fix it.

Specifically, I unfortunately feel I must address Frederik directly: this
is not the first time you've addressed the OpenSidewalks project with open
contempt. In fact, receiving baseless and speculative contempt from
Frederik was one of our very first experiences reaching out to the
community. Luckily, our team was and is invested in creating high-quality
pedestrian data in OpenStreetMap, and this did not impact the project
itself - though it did make about half the team upset for half a day. I'm
addressing you specifically, Frederik, not because I want to pick on you or
create yet more email drama, but because your type of feedback in these
situations is both uncalled for, completely unproductive, and leads to
these massive wastes of time, and it would be good for everyone if it
stopped. Examples of comments that waste time, are needlessly negative and
speculative, or both:

> I really wonder what the purpose of this is. At least they're all tagged
with "project=OpenSidewalks" which makes it easier to delete them once the
project has run out...

> What pisses me off is when bumbling newbiedom goes hand in hand with
bigmouthed web sites about how the so-and-so project is making the world a
better place, and then I look at what the project with the cool "store
front" actually does in OSM and see rubbish.

> So my impression is, there's a project here that has invested a
significant part of their time into convincing third parties that they're
doing a great thing (maybe even convincing third parties that they're worth
funding), but they treat OSM with much less diligence than they spend on
their store front.

> If OSM was anything valuable to them, anything worth caring for, and not
just a vehicle to piggyback their project on, then they would provide
better training and supervision to their students so that mistakes like the
ones I randomly stumbled across either do not happen, or are corrected.

I'd like to remind everyone reading that this is in response to ways using
a total of 18 nodes that I fixed in less than two minutes. I'd also like to
interject and point to the thousands and thousands of high-quality
pedestrian ways that we've added, certainly to the Seattle, Washington
region, an area I've mapped large portions of by hand. Frederik is not
familiar with our work, nor has he done the research to understand it, nor
has he reached out to us: he is being speculative (frankly, dishonest) and
demeaning.

So, Frederik, in the future, please try to take more care with what you
write, and how you address contributors and others. As an American who
speaks German and has many German friends, I know this is neither a
language nor cultural issue, and is a matter of individual tact. Please
take this under advisement in future conversations.

Best,

Nick
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