[OSM-talk] Problems with the wiki (was "Why OSM and not another collaborative mapping service?")

Christoph Hormann chris_hormann at gmx.de
Sat May 9 08:08:27 UTC 2015


On Saturday 09 May 2015, Frederik Ramm wrote:
>
> Yes, as far as I can see many people have tried to influence Xxzme's
> behaviour over the last half year and none have succeeded; as things
> are my impression is we have a choice of accepting them like they are
> or asking them to leave. Yes it would be desirable to keep their good
> edits and drop only the controversial ones, and somehow convince them
> to respect other voices, but short of a miracle I don't see that
> happening. And if I balance the positive and negative things they do,
> at least in my opinion the negatives outweigh the positives.

That mostly also summarizes my view of the matter.  I have looked at 
quite a few of Xxzme's edits and interactions with others and had the 
experience of such interaction myself [1].  There seems to be an 
intelligent person behind this (or several - that is not really clear 
to me) with - despite deficits in English language - significant 
rhetorical skills.  But there clearly is no willingness or ability to 
use these qualifications to the benefit of the OSM community.

The problem is not exclusively Xxzme's attitude but also the combination 
with the dominance of his/her/their edits due to the large amount of 
energy and time spent.  This is also emphasized by the fact that normal 
community activity on the wiki is relatively low these days compared to 
the volume of work that exists there - in other words: much of the wiki 
is undermaintained by the community.  This gives someone like Xxzme a 
lot of room - both to the good and the bad.

You could of course argue that this is not Xxzme's fault - however i 
also think that from someone dominanting the editing activities to this 
extent you can expect basic social skills and the ability to interact 
on a basic social level with others - even if we do not require this 
equally from others who do only make the occasional change.

If there are examples of Xxzme productively interacting with the 
community this would be good to see, otherwise i strongly concur that 
the current situation is not working out for the vast majority of wiki 
contributors and a significant and sustained change to that is required 
to keep the wiki a place where OSM community members feel welcome.

Maybe the whole issue could serve as an incentive for the OSM community, 
esp. mappers, to get more involved in what is ultimately their wiki.  
And the troubles caused by Xxzme might make those very active on the 
wiki and sometimes overly protective of the current state appreciate 
contributions from newbies even if they are sometimes clumsy as long as 
they come with the willingness to listen to and interact with others.

[1] http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Talk:Environment

-- 
Christoph Hormann
http://www.imagico.de/



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