[OSM-talk] [OSM-talk-fr] Continued aggression against French contributors (cadastre integration)

Jo winfixit at gmail.com
Thu Oct 18 07:43:46 BST 2012


(Désolé d'envoyer ce mail en anglais sur la liste talk-fr, mais c'est
plutôt dirigé vers talk en général)

I have been following talk-fr myself and my opinion on the 'efforts' of
pnorman is that he is trying very hard to chase away well meaning
contributors in France. The French cadastre is just one of many sources of
data (I wish we'd have access to ours in Belgium, as the contributors in
Holland and France do).

The French are integrating the data of the cadastre, their surveys, their
local knowledge and Bing aerial images to improve Openstreetmap.org as a
whole. They are not doing a bulk import that needs to be sorted out later
on.

If it were 1 person doing such an import department by department, then it
would make a lot of sense for this person to create that separate account,
but that's not how they chose to proceed. So the requirement for using a
separate account doesn't hold water.

The local community's opinion should be more important in this matter, than
the opinion of one person in the UK and the DWG should wield its power to
block actual acts of vandalism, instead of annoying good contributors.

The French community is trying for quite a while already to talk to the
DWG, which has some results, but rather too slowly. As long as no
resolution has been reached they seem to expect the French contributors to
change their behaviour (and create a separate account when making use of
the cadastre), where it would be more logical that they stop their actions
of scaring away contributors with mails in a language those contributors
can't be expected to understand.

So pnorman: For starters, write your emails in French when adressing people
in France, if you feel you have to write them. As it is now, they get an
email out of the blue making them wonder what they did wrong, whereas they
did everything as the local community expects them to do it.

You are creating a lot of ill will, which is kind of odd in a project where
we depend on the contributions of all people who want to spend their time
on it.

Polyglot

2012/10/18 Eric Marsden <eric.marsden at free.fr>

> Hello,
>
> It is clear from discussions on the talk-fr mailing list that DWG
> members (in particular, Paul Norman) are continuing to hassle French
> contributors who are integrating cadastre data in a manner which is
> perfectly compatible with the local community guidelines for this source
> of data. These messages are being sent in English (perhaps DWG members
> need to be reminded -- again -- that some people are not able to
> understand English) and are aggressive in nature. This is despite
> sustained efforts over several months by members of the French
> community, who have volunteered to act as local intermediaries in this
> important and sensitive process of communicating with and helping
> contributors in a constructive manner.
>
> I am having trouble understanding how a group of people who presumably
> wish to make a positive contribution to this fantastic community-based
> project can be so blind to such basic principles of communication,
> community building, and simple respect for fellow human beings. My
> impression is that the majority of the anti-social behaviour is coming
> from a single person, and that other group members are unwilling to take
> a stand on this issue.
>
> Please take this opportunity to reflect on a proposed policy which you
> could decide upon as a group, propose for comment from OSM contributors
> (for example via the talk@ mailing list), document on the OSMF web site,
> and ensure that all DWG members follow the policy (no loose canons on
> deck -- the current situation is killing contributors).
>
> --
> Eric Marsden
>
> _______________________________________________
> Talk-fr mailing list
> Talk-fr at openstreetmap.org
> http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-fr
>
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