[OSM-talk] Import guidelines & OSMF/DWG governance

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

    I welcome a discussion about rules - which ones we need, who makes 
them, who executes them. It is clear that we need *some* rules, but 
until now there's no formal community process to create or amend such rules.

I'm happy to hear any suggestions that people might have. How can the 
will of the community be caputured and distilled into a rule - and where 
should we work without any rules? In what areas do we have to have rules 
that govern all of OSM, and in what areas can we afford to defer to 
local communities?

On 18.09.2012 11:08, Christian Quest wrote:
> This is a major governance problem for me, some guidelines are updated
> by someone on a wiki page (Nov 15th 2011 by Richard
> Fairhurst), something that was a recommendation becomes
> mandatory and then some contributor get blocked based on this wiki
> page edit that comes from nowhere.

Just to clarify this one point: The user had been contacted by DWG 
beforehand because he had imported several millions of objects under his 
account, and asked to continue his work in accordance with the import 
guidelines, using a separate import account. He ignored that request and 
was only blocked *after* that.

DWG does not usually block people without talking to them first, unless 
they are in the process of breaking things.

DWG does also not usually require people to use a separete import 
account if they are doing small imports (even though the policy does not 
mention an exception for small imports). This, however, was orders of 
magnitude above "small".

> My questions are:
> - Who decided this change (recommendation -> requirement) ?
> - What has been the process that lead to this major change ?

I don't think it is a major change, but anyway I think it would be wrong 
to make a big fuss out of hurt pride and focus on that one single 
requirement. Anyone who is unhappy with the current import guidelines is 
invited to propose and discuss a change; and anyone who is unhappy with 
how such guidelines are adopted and executes is invited to propose and 
discuss a change there as well.

DWG has also been looking for someone from France to join its ranks in 
order to better liaise with the French community in case of problems 
like this but we haven't had any applications.

Bye
Frederik

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