[OSM-talk] Organised Editing Guidelines now officially live

[Christoph Hormann]

On Thursday 17 January 2019, Guillaume Rischard wrote:
>
> 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. 

Note the guidelines themselves claim that they represent "consensus".  
Without opening the discussion on whether this is actually the case or 
not i would like to point out that you can't have it both ways.  You 
cannot at the same time say:  "These are standards of work on which 
there is broad agreement they should be followed" and also say they 
only need to be followed if there is someone positively insisting on 
them being followed.

Now i know this is not what you said, you were only speaking of 
enforcement by the DWG.  But you will see that organized actors will 
equate "not enforced" with "not binding" and a set of rules those for 
whom the rules are made for do not feel bound by cannot make a 
plausible claim to represent consensus.

You can also look at it from a different perspective:  Quite a lot of 
people have expressed the need to in the future evaluate if the 
Organised Editing Guidelines are working.  And the only basis for such 
evaluation could be to measure if they are being followed.

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