[OSM-talk] "NRCS basic OSM training" - low quality changesets in Nepal

[Dan Joseph]

Hi Frederik,

If someone lives in a place and starts learning how to use OSM to map their
surroundings they don't count as part of the "community"? If their first
edits aren't perfect then they don't pass your test and can't join the OSM
community?

Constrained by time and resources (as everything in life is), I can think
of many topics and skills that I would rank as higher priority then how to
engage in discussion on a changeset comment thread.

The changeset comment quoted by Andy is on some sort of automated edits
simplifying forests by user bdiscoe. Based on the type of edits and
http://hdyc.neis-one.org/?bdiscoe I think they probably are not associated
with the NRCS training.

Cheers,
Dan

On Thu, Jun 22, 2017 at 2:55 AM, Frederik Ramm <frederik at remote.org> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> On 21.06.2017 23:48, Dan Joseph wrote:
> > NRCS stands for Nepal Red Cross Society, so the people behind the edits
> > are part of the local community.
>
> The word "community" is used in a lot of different ways in OSM. When I
> speak of "the local community" I ususally mean "the OSM mappers who live
> there", not "anyone who lives there".
>
> I'd like to echo Pieree's question - are the NRCS in touch with KLL
> because that would certainly help avoid a lot of beginner problems *and*
> not require English.
>
> > I would also guess that changeset comments were not
> > part of the training.
>
> Then the training is seriously lacking.
>
> > Errant keys are relatively straight-forward to
> > find and fix in JOSM. If the tag value is legitimate local knowledge
> > then a little bit of cleanup work is worth it.
>
> I don't know about the localisation status of the software. Many of the
> problems mentioned here would trigger warnings with standard editing
> software. Is it possible that these warnings are not translated and
> mappers are taught to just hit "continue" whenver there's a popup they
> don't understand?
>
> > Someone at the Nepal RC
> > who does some GIS work is aware of the data quality issues and working
> > to fix it.
>
> With that, I hope they mean they will fix the training and not fix the
> problems. They are not doing well by the local volunteers if they
> provide them with training that results in most of their edits having to
> be corrected by someone else (worst case, someone else without knowledge
> of land or language).
>
> It would be interesting to know what the aims of this programme are, and
> how many volunteers are recruited/trained to do exactly what.
>
> > Changeset comments such as "It's likely we
> > have to fully delete it because it would take days to clean everything
> > up by hand." when talking about local knowledge added by locals seems
> > against the spirit of OSM.
>
> Well it depends on just how much pre-existing data was broken. If things
> are newly added and the tagging is bad, then the worst that will happen
> is that the data rots away unused. If however existing data - that was
> presumably added by locals with local knowledge - is broken then it is
> possible that the net worth of the contribution is below zero.
>
> This is of course something that an institution training volunteers
> should not allow to happen because not only will it was the the time of
> the volunteers in question *and* others in OSM who repair the damage, it
> would also throw a bad light on the organisation itself and the way they
> plan and staff their activities.
>
> I am concerned about a changeset comment quoted by Andy in another
> message: "Stop destroying detailed map using generalization tools. In
> developing countries like Nepal eactly map can save human life." --
> while this is certainly impolite, if this is talking about the NRCS
> edits discussed here, it points to existing data being reduced in value
> by the new contributions. People don't usually say something like that
> if someone just uses a wrong tag or accidentally moves a house.
>
> Bye
> Frederik
>
> --
> Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frederik at remote.org  ##  N49°00'09" E008°23'33"
>
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