[OSM-talk] Admin boundaries - data consumers

[Jochen Topf]

I am sorry if I came across as arrogant or dismissive. This is absolutely not
my intention. Actually I think we are in violent agreement here, mappers and
data consumers must talk and help each other. And where we do that is on our
mailing lists, forums, etc. What I was arguing against is somehow feeling
responsible for data users who take our data, never talk to us and then think
it is our job to tell them when something changes. That is how I understood
Rob's argument and that isn't something I feel we have to do. If, to keep with
Rob's example, MySociety wants to know about boundary tagging changes in OSM,
they can get this info by participating in the OSM community and I'd welcome
their input as a user of the data. But they have to be active themselves in at
least a small way, it is not our job to somehow keep track of what they are
using from OSM and tell them if something changes that they would want to know
about.

Jochen

On Sat, Nov 09, 2013 at 06:55:53PM +0100, Colin Smale wrote:
> Date: Sat, 09 Nov 2013 18:55:53 +0100
> From: Colin Smale <colin.smale at xs4all.nl>
> To: talk at openstreetmap.org
> Subject: Re: [OSM-talk] Admin boundaries - data consumers
> 
>  
> 
> That does come across as a little arrogant, Jochen. The mappers and the
> data consumers need each other; neither can flourish without the other.
> A symbiotic model would be more accurate. As you say, we shouldn't
> change things willy-nilly, but to say bluntly "it's your problem" to all
> data consumers and to express such a dismissive attitude towards their
> feedback is misrepresenting the relationship somewhat. 
> 
> Colin 
> 
> On 2013-11-09 18:25, Jochen Topf wrote: 
> 
> > On Sat, Nov 09, 2013 at 03:25:35PM +0000, Rob Nickerson wrote:
> > 
> >> A few days ago there was a thread about the pros/cons of moving admin boundaries to a new database. I'm not going to give my opinion on this as the thread has now fizzled out, but I will suggest that decisions like this should involve as many of our end data users as possible (we have moved beyond a small isolated project). One such user is mySoicety. Check out the video of their MapIt Global talk at http://lanyrd.com/2013/sotm/scpkhg/ [1] to see how they use boundaries from OSM. Perhaps some way of tracking our data consumers would be useful. Or maybe we need a way for them to say which tags they are interested in so that they can receive mail just about these.
> > 
> > That's the wrong way around. If you are using OSM data it is your job to keep
> > abreast of developments in OSM. A volunteer project like OSM can't keep track
> > of all their "customers" the way a commercial company might. That's not to
> > say that we should change things willy-nilly, we should announce changes
> > beforehand etc. But we do that on our mailing lists etc. And yes, that puts
> > a lot of burden on the users of OSM data, but they get it for free, so there.
> > (Of course there are companies who will do this job for you, ie follow OSM
> > development while maintaining stable data formats etc. to their customers.)
> > 
> > Jochen
>  
> 
> Links:
> ------
> [1] http://lanyrd.com/2013/sotm/scpkhg/

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-- 
Jochen Topf  jochen at remote.org  http://www.jochentopf.com/  +49-721-388298