[OSM-talk] Organised Editing Guidelines now officially live

Thu Jan 17 16:57:37 UTC 2019

Hi Guillaume,
Thanks, that clarifies it for me.
Just to be clear, where you mention 'special sources' -- those would still need to be vetted for compatibility with ODbL, and that would need to be done in the open. I don't think anyone, individual or organization, should be able to get away with using some undisclosed source even if the community somehow is willing to accept this and turn a blind eye. Am I misunderstanding that example?
-- 
  Martijn van Exel
  m at rtijn.org

On Thu, Jan 17, 2019, at 09:51, Guillaume Rischard wrote:
> Hi Martijn,
> 
> Gladly. I seem to recall that this is also one of the points that you 
> asked questions about during the board meeting.
> 
> What we mean is that we’ll intervene for edits the community has issues 
> with, and that we will not intervene for merely not following the 
> guidelines. Maybe a few examples will help.
> 
> If you organise a mapping activity and miss a topic when adapting one 
> of the wiki template, and the local community has no issue with 
> anything, no one is in trouble.
> 
> If you use a special source you can’t share, and the local community 
> understands and is cool with it, no one is in trouble.
> 
> If you ignore a part of the guidelines and the community complains 
> about that but agrees that the actual edits are excellent, we’ll kindly 
> ask you to try to follow that part, but that’s probably it. For 
> example, if you’re responding to a humanitarian emergency and don’t 
> wait for 14 days.
> 
> If there’s no wiki entry at all for an activity and the community 
> complains about the edits, DWG would look into it.
> 
> If the community is unhappy with some of the information it has 
> received, and objects to the edits being made, and you ignore the 
> objections, and the community complains, DWG would look into it.
> 
> If you do everything by the book, but the local community is unhappy 
> about the edits themselves and complains about it, DWG would look into 
> it. But that’s very unlikely if you really did follow the guidelines.
> 
> So the community truly has an effect on what DWG looks at. The 
> guidelines are the best way we know to have a constructive relationship 
> with the community, and a rich discussion is the most important part of 
> it.
> 
> Of course, following the guidelines also demonstrates good faith if the 
> DWG needs to look into the edits.
> 
> I hope this clarifies the intentions.
> 
> Happy mapping
> 
> Guillaume
> 
> > On 10 Jan 2019, at 22:37, Martijn van Exel <m at rtijn.org> wrote:
> > 
> > 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
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> talk mailing list
> >> talk at openstreetmap.org
> >> https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
> >> 
> > 
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