[OSM-talk] Organised Editing Guidelines now officially live

[Martijn van Exel]

Hi Guillaume, DWG,

Thanks for the conclusion. I asked in a different email on this thread to post this on the OSMF web site, to have a permanent, immutable copy that we can refer to when it comes to enforcing / disputes. 

I am a confused about the statement 'not following the organised editing guidelines isn’t an offence per se'. I am trying to make a connection with what you said in the October 2018 board meeting: 'The DWG is going to enforce [the guidelines] just as it enforces anything else which comes from community consensus'[1]. If the guidelines are going to be enforced, could you add some clarity to the decision making process? Who decides when non-compliance becomes an offense and on what criteria? How serious of an offense, or how many, would it take to be banned? 

Martijn

[1] https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Board/Minutes/2018-10-18#Guidelines_contain_prescriptive_statements

-- 
  Martijn van Exel
  m at rtijn.org

On Thu, Jan 10, 2019, at 08:31, Guillaume Rischard wrote:
> The Data Working Group is happy to announce that our new Organised 
> Editing Guidelines have now been officially put online on the wiki at 
> https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Organised_Editing_Guidelines
> 
> I'm happy to answer any questions here. In the meanwhile, here's my 
> updated report.
> 
> We at DWG are, first of all, thankful for all the constructive input we 
> have received, from the advisory board, the humanitarian mapping 
> initiatives and the mapping community.
> 
> The organised editing guidelines took a lot of work to prepare. We 
> received and integrated a lot of feedback to reflect consensus and 
> existing good practice.
> 
> We looked at what similar policies would exist, on OSM or in other 
> organisations. I believe that no other project, open or proprietary, 
> has faced this exact issue before. On OSM, contributors generally 
> understand the current policies on automated edits and imports. We 
> wrote the organised editing guidelines in a similar way, while adopting 
> a slightly softer approach – not following the organised editing 
> guidelines isn’t an offence per se. Elsewhere, Wikipedia has numerous 
> policies some vaguely similar, but the problems they face are quite 
> different, and their policies tend to be a lot more complex.
> 
> Internally, we looked back at past problematic edits. We carefully 
> wrote the guidelines and defined the scope to prevent those problems 
> without creating loopholes or negative incentives like encouraging 
> salami tactics. They are not meant to apply to community activities 
> like mapping parties between friends or making a presentation on OSM at 
> a local club, but only to ‘sizeable, substantial’ activities. We wanted 
> something that doesn’t scare casual events off while letting us 
> regulate a geography class gone berserk or a misguided volunteer 
> mapathon.
> 
> We also didn’t want to set hard limits in stone since they would have 
> to go back to the Board constantly if we need to refine exactly what 
> falls under the guidelines.
> 
> Humanitarian activities deserve our fullest support. We therefore 
> adapted the guidelines for them, both implicitly, by requiring only a 
> best-effort approach, and explicitly, by exempting emergencies from the 
> two-week discussion period. Some humanitarian edits have been 
> problematic before, and the guidelines are easy to follow; a blanket 
> exemption would send the wrong signal.
> 
> We saw the amount of corporate good will at SotM, the tensions in the 
> community, and the (dis)organised edits that mappers have referred to 
> us. It is good for everyone that those guidelines are now online on the 
> wiki. Good actors, existing and new, will be able to trust clear 
> expectations. The community will be confident that this is the 
> consensus that will be respected. Confused newcomers will get a 
> blueprint for a successful organised edit.
> 
> We wrote guidelines that are easy to read and follow and provide 
> clarity on how good organised edits should run without having a 
> chilling effect on them.
> 
> I’m glad that this project is now concluded, and am convinced that it 
> will be a good thing both for OSM and for the OSM community.
> 
> Guillaume
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