[OSM-talk] Join the OSMF !

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

Graham Jones wrote:
> In my day job I look after quite a few 
> decision making processes to help our organisation make difficult 
> decisions.   I always say that I will have failed if at the end of the 
> day we have to resort to a vote to decide what to do 

That's good. But also remember that in your day job, it is very likely 
that the people who have to live with a decision in half a year will be 
more or less the same who have made the discussion, give and take a bit. 
Whereas in OSM, even if you find an excellent consensus today, you will 
have to find that consensus again, or at least be ready to re-evaluate, 
in half a year's time since things have changed so much.

> This is one area where I can see OSMF providing a valuable contribution 
> - to set down the processes by which the community makes decisions - not 
> necessarily making the decision, but helping to manage the process. 

Yes. OSMF is not the body that should make decisions for OSM; but OSMF 
could try and "facilitate" decision making (or consensus-finding) in the 
OSM community. Of course, a possible result is that the OSM community is 
actually happy with what we have now. It has downsides but so has any 
established decision-making process.

> You can imagine different processes for decisions of 
> varying significance to the community (something simple for agreeing how 
> to tag widget XXX,

Be warned that tagging is a field where consensus has usually not been 
reached, or sought, in discussions and decision-making processes, and we 
have often hailed that as a strength of OSM.

Bye
Frederik

-- 
Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frederik at remote.org  ##  N49°00'09" E008°23'33"