[OSM-talk] Some thoughts against remote mapping

Tue Jun 16 02:53:53 UTC 2015

Interesting thread! And I'm glad it's civil.

I think everybody agrees that local mappers are best. But that's obviously
easier said than done. Like Robert said, it requires outreach and some big
efforts to find and empower those local mappers, as many people would never
have seen or thought to use OpenStreetMap for many reasons: maybe it's
technology or free time or knowledge about geography or something else that
I don't even know about. And maybe they just don't want to, which is
perfectly fine, but I think showing people it exists and what is possible
is a worthwhile effort. If you don't know something exists you're not going
to be interested in it.

There are a lot of good efforts already doing that: HOT of course in many
places, the American Red Cross does a lot with local Red Crosses in other
countries, Missing Maps, the project USAID is doing with a university in
Bangladesh, and lots of local communities doing their own projects and
finding members and doing more. (Full disclosure, my office at USAID also
funded HOT to build two OSM groups in Haiti, but I am talking as a guy who
loves OSM.)

When I was visiting one of those projects in Haiti I found that the tourist
map at a local hotel was basically a print-out of the city in OSM. That's
great, and an example of local people using OSM for their own goals (in
this case for marketing to tourists, which could be its own discussion, but
still it's a locally-generated use.) And I bet there are many more people
who would love to use OSM if only they knew about it.

It's certainly not an easy problem to crack, but to me there are many ways
to start -- technological solutions, training materials in local languages,
and so on. And a lot of those are being worked on now. And like Robert
said, they require people, not just to map -- people to teach, people to
write, people to talk, people to organize, and so on.

(And I do not agree that Missing Maps is a marketing ploy. You are free to
start your own effort.)

Kathmandu Living Labs is a great example of a local group leading the way
and serving as a hub -- but they were organized through the Open Cities
Project for this purpose.[1] To me that is not a bad thing, or colonialism,
or whatever -- a good development project helps local people do something
they want to do or find useful that they might not have had the money, time
or skillset to do before, and KLL is obviously very successful now. (And
psst, they could use some donations. [2]) That's not to say that everybody
should go around setting up KLLs, but assistance from afar is not a bad
thing per se.

Something else semi-related that might be a terrible idea: I wonder if
there ought to be some way to show which edits are by remote mappers and by
locals? Could you do this automatically via IP address or something by
seeing who was nearby and who was not? I do a fair amount of remote mapping
but tend not to fix existing things that appear to me to be wrong because
maybe a local person added it -- I assume they know better than me, the guy
looking at Bing from thousands of miles away. But if I could tell that edit
was also by a remote mapper, I would be more likely to fix it or send them
a message about it. I know you can do some research by looking at the
user's profile and the How Do You Contribute tools,[3] but that takes some
time and can be inconclusive. That's not to say there should be tiers of
edits, but maybe some more metadata about the edits would be helpful,
especially since people are not very diligent about changeset comments or
other such things. Just a thought.

Thanks,

Andrew

[1] http://www.opencitiesproject.org/cities/kathmandu/
[2] http://kathmandulivinglabs.org/
[3] http://hdyc.neis-one.org/

On Mon, Jun 15, 2015 at 7:40 PM, Clifford Snow <clifford at snowandsnow.us>
wrote:

> Following this thread makes me wonder how people feel about some of the
> issues raised. The link below is quick survey about some of the issues
> raised in the thread. Please take a minute or two to respond. If I get
> sufficient answers I will publish the results.
>
> https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/TRQYHFP
>
> Clifford
>
>
> On Mon, Jun 15, 2015 at 3:56 PM, Sarah Hoffmann <lonvia at denofr.de> wrote:
>
>> On Mon, Jun 15, 2015 at 06:11:50PM +0000, Eros, Emily wrote:
>> > Hi all,
>> >
>> > In the midst of the discussion about remote mapping, I couldn¹t help but
>> > notice this comment from Sarah:
>> >
>> > "In my experience, the issue is not that OSM is not welcoming for woman
>> > but simply that it is not
>> > interesting enough for them."
>> >
>> > I was surprised to see this and I have to say that I disagree. I find it
>> > hard to believe that half the population isn¹t interested in mapping
>> just
>> > because they are female; the active engagement of so many women in the
>> OSM
>> > community certainly suggests otherwise.
>>
>> This is naturally slippery ground and involves more guessing than solid
>> research but let me try to explain a bit more what I meant.
>>
>> The people who drove OSM in the early stages of development were almost
>> exclusively people who mapped for the sake of creating a map. The actual
>> use of the data was secondary. The satisfaction of showing that it can
>> be done was enough. In fact, the core of OSM contributors (the ones Simon
>> was eluding to) is still made up of this group. Without wanting to
>> speculate what the reasons are, numbers suggest that this kind of
>> motivation mainly appeals to men. Women think differently. They seem more
>> interested that the outcome of their labour is put to good use. The
>> vast majority of woman in OSM that I know is contributing for a very
>> specific purpose: they are professionals in GIS, humanitarian workers,
>> researchers or involved in a community project that requires maps.
>> Note that it doesn't mean that other women are less skilled or capable.
>> It is a simple question on where you invest your time and energy and
>> for a majority of woman, creating a map just to have something pretty
>> to look at at the screen does not seem sufficient. That's what I meant
>> with lack of interest.
>>
>> As it happens, HOT is a good example on how to do it right in that sense.
>> Humanitarian mapping has a very clear goal and the perceived outcome of
>> helping other people is obviously worth the time of more women than
>> completely mapping a neighbourhood.
>>
>> A volunteer projects stands and falls with the motivation of its members.
>> We've successfully tapped into the source of people that is motivated by
>> data
>> contribution. To create diversity, it's worth to look more into the
>> source of
>> people motivated by data use. The tried and true way to do that is
>> creating and promoting products for these people.
>>
>> openchildcaremap.org, any takers?
>>
>> Kind regards
>>
>> Sarah
>>
>> _______________________________________________
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>> talk at openstreetmap.org
>> https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
>>
>
>
>
> --
> @osm_seattle
> osm_seattle.snowandsnow.us
> OpenStreetMap: Maps with a human touch
>
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