[OSM-talk] Cloudmade: "We are the Wikipedia of maps"

Tim 'avatar' Bartel openstreetmap at computerkultur.org
Wed Mar 11 09:02:41 GMT 2009


Hi,

2009/3/11 Frederik Ramm <frederik at remote.org>:
>    as an OSM community member, I'm taking offence at the following article:
> http://techpulse360.com/2009/03/10/startup-cloudmade-wants-to-be-the-wikipedia-of-maps/
>
> The article says that Cloudmade "relies on its OpenStreetMap project", and:
[factual errors, confusing OSM and Cloudmade]

As a long time member of the Wikimedia Press Team and also beeing
responsible for the Wikia press work, I *really* do know that
journalists can mix up things and write whatever they like with little
connection to what you have told them. Especially they do like mixing
up Wikia and Wikipedia and how these two projects are connected. This
is neither wanted by Wikipedians, nor by Wikia.

So what can you do about this if it happens to often?
Besides stressing this topics whenever we talk to press people, we
created a short Q&A about the typical topics which are often reported
inaccuratly. This Q&A is given to any journalist we talk to and is
also included at the bottom of press releases. For the topic mentioned
above this looks like this:

--[snip]--
Relationships between Wikimedia and Wikia

To avoid confusion, please be aware of what Wikia is and what Wikia is not.
* Wikia is not a Wikimedia project.
* Wikia is not a for-profit arm of Wikipedia
* Wikia is not a sister project of Wikipedia.

The Wikimedia Foundation is a non-profit organization which manages
Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia projects. Wikia is not a Wikimedia
project. Wikia is run by a separate company, Wikia, Inc., which is
independent of the Wikimedia Foundation, and therefore independent of
Wikipedia.
--[snap]--

...and even then some journalists still don't get it - in this cases
we contact them afterwards and try to get the errors fixed.

So if this confusion between Cloudmade and OSM will happen again in
the future, perhaps a Q&A for journalists may mitigate the problem.
And for the readers: Don't believe that everything you read in an
article/interview is reported accurately - and feel free to reach out
to the editor!

Bye, Tim.

-- 
http://wikipedistik.de




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