[OSM-talk] Wiki: chriscf vandalism

Sebastian Hohmann mail at s-hohmann.de
Sat Jan 31 14:50:00 GMT 2009


Frederik Ramm schrieb:
> Hi,
> 
> Nop wrote:
>> I would consider it the basic principle of democracy/a community that
>> things established by vote need to be changed by vote, even if the need
>> for change is obvious.
> 
> Democracy usually means that the vote results decide something. (At 
> least in its textbook form it does.)
> 
> This is not true in OSM; we have votes, but they are never more than an 
> "indication". Our votes should perhaps better be called "straw polls". 
> Anyone can use a tag that has been rejected in such a poll, and 
> sometimes it gets even built into the renderers, and vice versa.
> 

Indeed, but the whole system suggests otherwise. When reading the wiki 
and listening to what many other people write about the proposal and 
voting system, you have to think that the whole thing means something.

The terms 'Accepted' and 'Rejected' are one example for that. They sound 
like they are much more than an indication. Even though no Proposal can 
really be 'rejected' in OSM (you can still use it if you want), almost 
everyone who will read 'rejected feature' will probably refrain from 
using the proposal.

I would prefer if there weren't any 'Accepted' or 'Rejected' proposal, 
but only 'Proposed' that are open for discussion and 'Finished' (or some 
better term) that have the details worked out so far, so you can be sure 
that they don't change completely over night.

> If we would just ignore the whole process saying that nobody cares 
> anyway, that would be much more to my liking.
> 

But that should also be documented on the wiki. We can't expect that 
people abandon or understand the proposal system, when the wiki tells 
them otherwise.




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