[OSM-talk] Editing of content that will be deleted on April 1st

[andrzej zaborowski]

Hi,

On 13 December 2011 23:03, David Earl <david en frankieandshadow.com> wrote:
[...]
> What are the precise, numeric criteria for proceeding? At the moment even by
> a vague definition I don't see how one could describe it as a critical mass.

I'm responding to this old thread because now I think whoever made the
criteria could have answered the question asked here.  But really
there's probably no answer because the date was pulled out of thin
air.  There are old comments in the mailing list archives from LWG
members that when and how to measure if enough data is ready, would be
decided later by the contributors at that time.  I think the reason
this hasn't happened is that the LWG and the board work like
committees (for some time, perhaps not since the beginning).  A
committee can easily allow itself to change its mind or not answer
questions and it has to be noted that this is none of the committee
members' fault.  It's just how committees work.  Their time is too
valuable to be spent answering every single question asked or
considering lesser problems (it really is, since they meet once every
some time), which frees a committee from having to justify many
decisions.  It also has the leisure of having a high authority (it's
assumed to be an expert group even in a do-cracy) but at the same time
not having to stick to everything it says, which is unique.  Now a
license change is generally a terribly complex thing to execute and I
guess there's no other way to do it than through a committee with an
assigned mandate, who won't stop once it gains momentum; so we have to
live with that.

Cheers
--
some fortunes I just found:

        The weaker the data available upon which to base one's conclusion,
        the greater the precision which should be quoted in order to give
        the data authenticity.

Cruickshank's Law of Committees:
        If a committee is allowed to discuss a bad idea long enough, it
        will inevitably decide to implement the idea simply because so
        much work has already been done on it.