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

[Richard Fairhurst]

Christian Quest wrote:
> As you're joining this topic, can you explain why you changed 
> the guidelines in the wiki to make the dedicated account a 
> requirement and not a recommendation anymore ?

As a few people have already said (Michael, Frederik, Simon etc.) this was
basically codifying existing best practice; there was a widespread
understanding among the worldwide community that this was the way to do it.
At the time, I recall that we were having difficulties with a succession of
bad, unregulated and undocumented imports from newcomers - time dulls the
memory but I think there were several in Canada.

It's also been observed, quite rightly, that the nuances of British English
- which tends to "gently suggest" when other languages would say "you
MUST!!!?!1" - are not easily appreciated by non-native speakers. We had a
case on talk-gb at a similar time where the wiki explained "don't do it"
with typical British understatement; a chap of Polish origin completely
misunderstood this, imported some unwanted data (in the UK) without
discussion - and incorrectly - and then got very aggressive when challenged.
Firming up the language is an attempt to avoid this type of
misunderstanding.

The Cadastre 'imports' are an unusual case, and the enthusiasm with which
Marc has taken to them is more unusual still. Clearly someone who just
traces building outlines in their village should not need to set up a
dedicated account just for that. On the other hand, an import of 115 948
nodes (changesets 12758927, 12759290, 12759667) is heavy-duty stuff on a
TIGER/Canvec scale, and the community consensus - outside France, at any
rate - has generally been that a separate account is required for this.

It's an interesting question as to whether local practice trumps general
community consensus. But I would caution against taking this concept of
'subsidiarity' too far. It's great when global norms are extended within the
spirit of OSM: for example, the German community has adopted the additional
tag motorroad=yes because OSM's long-established highway tagging didn't meet
their needs, and I applaud them for this.

But if, for example, the Moldavian community decided not to use
highway=motorway/trunk/primary at all, but chose road=1/2/3 instead, this
would damage every consumer, every newcomer, and lead to fragmentation and
unnecessary complexity. Saying "the local community has decided this" can
potentially lead to fossilisation: a group of 50 experienced users establish
a way of working that suits them, but which may not be in the interests of
newcomers. It isn't a silver bullet. (It's a similar situation to some of
the more relation-heavy tagging concepts that are introduced, whose users
then get annoyed when well-meaning newbies come along and inadvertently mess
them up.)

I think there are two things we can take from this.

Firstly, the status of the import guidelines needs to become less ambiguous.
At present we have three largely overlapping policies ('Mechanical Edit
Policy', 'Automated Edits code of conduct', and 'Import/Guidelines') on the
wiki, which are not always easy to find or understand. These need to be
abbreviated into one short, simple, unambiguous document, one that reflects
both the majority will of the existing community and OSMF's responsibility
to encourage future mappers, and then signed off by the OSMF board.

Secondly, we've just finished the licence change and I realise that some
people might miss the arguments... but could I gently suggest (there's that
British English reserve again) that a debate is more likely to reach an
amicable resolution if carried out in a less combative fashion? "Assume good
faith" and all that. Rabble-rousing on talk-fr@ to say "come to talk@ and
argue with people" is not really helpful, though I will admit to laughing
out loud at
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk-fr/2012-September/047956.html
:) A friendly "this policy doesn't accord with our local practice, can we
work something out?" message to start the thread would have been less likely
to get people's backs up than a long screed with a series of pointed
questions at the end.

cheers
Richard





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