[OSM-talk] Some thoughts against remote mapping

[Sarah Hoffmann]

Hi,

On Sat, Jun 13, 2015 at 07:52:49PM -0700, Kate Chapman wrote:
>  What about in the situations where locals would like to make their own map
> but this is not financially feasible? If we are creating truly a free map
> of the entire world it is important to figure out how not to just make a
> map of the privileged. Should lack of access to internet and technology be
> a reason someone can't contribute to this map?

This is what humanitarian mapping truely should be about, about enabling people
to use mapping technology. It should not be about giving them prefabricated
maps.

For a truely inspiring example, I recommend a talk from last years SOTM:
https://vimeo.com/115410141 The map examples shown are truely beautiful
and are much more representive of the region than anything a remote mapper
could have done. 

> I've worked with groups where we did on the ground mapping both through our
> own digitizing or through that of others. Honestly in  most cases people
> were happy to not have to trace every building themselves. They could then
> simply put in the names/address information. Though we should think about
> what types of features and how we do our tagging where culture/experience
> can come in. For example what someone might think if as a track in their
> experience may be a secondary road in others.

Exactly. Large scale remote mapping projects like the HOT activations or
the Missing Maps projects are essentially foreigners creating maps for
foreigners (the NGOs) or their employees. It is no doubt very useful for
them but it creates a precedence that will shape the region forever. We've
essentially seen the same thing with imports in the western world. The
map of the US is essentially shaped by the TIGER imports, the French map
by Cadastre etc. The difference is that in these cases, it was the local
community that made the conscious decision to import this data and now
has to live with it for better or worse. In the case of remote mapping
it is somebody else who decides the fate of the map.

What I particularly liked about the talk above is that they started out
with letting people decide on their own what a map is. Such a bottom-up
approach might be useful in other cases, too. Start with creating a map
that is completely independent of the global community and once it is
sufficiently developped, look into integrating it in the global map by
mapping the features to our tagging schema. It would also be easier to
make a case for new features to be rendered this way.

> Diversity to me has never just been gender. Though it has been shown that
> if you make a place welcoming to women it also makes it more inviting for
> other underrepresented groups. Intersectional feminism is about equality
> for everyone.

This argument still has a sour taste to me. In my experience, the issue
is not that OSM is not welcoming for woman but simply that it is not
interesting enough for them. The outcome is the same but the actions to
take are vastly different. I do agree with you though, that finding
a solution to attract more woman will also show a way to attract other
underrepresented groups. After all, it is exactly the same argument as
above: the interests of the map makers and the potential map users
don't match.

I actually agree with Christoph here. In the end it always comes back
to the argument of the power of rendering.
The One Map we currently show caters mainly to the overrepresented tech
population (or, in the case of the HOT map, to NGOs) and that gives the
impression that the same is true for our data (which isn't).
So maybe both, the diversity movement and humanitarian efforts should
focus less on data collection and more on the data representation,
i.e. make specialised maps. Lots of them.
Invest in technologies that allow every community to make exactly the
map they need. Because this really is the resource intensive part of
OSM which most people cannot efford. Data collection is easy and cheap
in comparision. The local communities will eventually mangage to do
it on their own, once they see what the benefits are for themselves.

Sarah