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

[Pieren]

On Tue, Sep 18, 2012 at 9:51 PM, Frederik Ramm <frederik at remote.org> wrote:

> It is a policy that has grown gradually. Just like other things in OSM have
> - you'll not find anything about a vote for highway=motorway on the Wiki
> either.

Perhaps this policy has reached its limits. And honnestly, you should
admit that the import guidelines was set up mainly by people
fundamentally against imports in general. But nobody cares about this
policy until he is directly concerned.

> We always expected people to set up a dedicated account for large imports.
> ../.. The user was only blocked
> after being made aware of the policy and then continuing to ignore it.

It's not ignoring, it's that the group importing this free dataset
does not agree with your policy. You, the anti-imports camp, is
defining the policy alone ! So please, the DWG, stop claiming that you
apply a policy defined by the community. It's a big lie. Say clearly
"we are against import, we try to refrain them and increase the
constraints to limit and possibly forbid imports in the future"
because each time the policy is modified, it's going to more
constraints.

> But if I tell someone not to do something and they simply
> ignore me then I will block them in order to be listened to.

"obey or I block you". Sounds "subservience", isn't it ?

> If the user wants to discuss something with me that's fine but please discuss first,
> import later.

That's why we are coming to this list because it is something beyond
Marc Sibert's individual case. We want that the policy is modified one
step backward and defines the separate user account as a
recommendation, nothing more.

> How would you *like* import guidelines to be decided? Do you have any
> workable concept for that? Because I would really be interested.

That it is discussed in a wide and public audience like here, not
after personal discussions or closed mailing lists and finally a
silent change in the wiki. I'm always happy to read comments from the
"pro-imports" camp (or the "not against it if is done properly")
because sometimes we read the 5 or 8 people complaining against import
(always the same) believing that the whole community agrees because
they don't get any feedbacks. Now, you get some.

Pieren