[OSM-talk] New Logo in the Wiki

Frederik Ramm frederik at remote.org
Sun May 1 11:21:53 BST 2011


Hi,

David Murn wrote:
> Unfortunately, being involved in an OSMF (or SWG, LWG, DWG, etc) meeting
> isnt as easy as 'just showing up'.  Infact, its not even really possible
> to be invovled by reading the minutes or the meeting notes.  Those of us
> who wish to be involved, join public discussions and forums.  Apparently
> those who are actually in the positions of power are no longer
> interested in public discussions and forums.  Exactly how was anyone to
> have 'shown up' to discussions about a new logo, when the first that
> 99.9% of us became aware of the change was when someone asks HERE after
> its already been decided and changed.

Thing is, we have a ton of people who like to have a say, but that's all 
you ever get from them - words. They demand to be informed, so that they 
can then pick and choose where they want to be "involved", where "being 
involved" means that they will say things like "I think this should be 
done differently".

This, however, is not how things work in OSM. There is hardly any part 
of OSM that is not open for you to participate; OSMF board may be an 
exception because you would actually have to persuade people to vote for 
you before, but any working group will most certainly accept anyone who 
offers to do a share of the work.

What you cannot do is join a working group, do not participate in the 
work, but expect to have a say. You can of course still say things like 
"I think this should be done differently", and you may even get heard, 
but if you instead say "I have made this plan and worked out the 
following and is everyone ok with me implementing that next week?" then 
you will have 10 times the weight of someone saying "this should be done 
  differently". Or 100 times.

This is something that I had to learn, and still have to learn, as well. 
  Still, I am tempted very often to say my opinion about something where 
I am not capable or not willing to help, and I frequently do - but at 
least I have learned not to complain if those who do the work choose to 
ignore me. OSM is not a democracy in which everyone has equal say with 
no questions asked. In OSM you have to earn your say.

Strategic working group can hardly be said to be doing things "behind 
closed doors", in fact their meeting notes were usually up online HOURS 
after a meeting was over, and meetings were always announced in advance 
and held on an open IRC channel.

 From time to time there may be really important things where one would 
like to have a broad input from people in the project. (I don't consider 
the logo change to be one of them.) And I can see that many of those who 
do the most work in this project are meanwhile critical of doing 
something like a post to talk becasue it will attract so many people who 
  don't help to do the work but actually pull the cart in another direction.

In a sane environment you would do it anyway, because any sane person 
must take into account the possibility of being wrong - so that 
sometimes people pulling the cart in another direction might help to 
prevent a mistake being made. Also, in a sane environemnt, for any one 
person who is disruptive you would attract five others, giving you a 
positive net contribution.

But I - very reluctantly - start to agree with those who say that while 
it would be desirable to involve the community-at-large, the mechanisms 
we currently have seem to somehow not target the community but a handful 
of malcontents whom you cannot please whatever you do. This is an 
unfortunate dynamic, and we should look to other large communities to 
find out how they deal with it.

Certainly, after this thread, anyone *not* wanting to involve the 
community-at-large will have one more reason.

It would be great if we could somehow reboot and arrive at something 
sane again. This should not be an "us against them" situation on any side.

Bye
Frederik

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



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