[OSM-talk] Call for verification (Was: Re: VANDALISM !)

[stevea]

On Aug 22, 2020, at 11:38 PM, pangoSE <pangose at riseup.net> wrote:
> Shawn K. Quinn" <skquinn at rushpost.com> skrev: (23 augusti 2020 00:31:28 CEST)
>> 
>> The big, huge difference between Wikipedia and OSM is that Wikipedia
>> does not allow original research at all, whereas OSM thrives on the
>> original research of everyone who contributes and in fact it is the
>> stuff that comes from third parties that has to be vetted more closely
>> for license compliance and copyright issues.

Very well stated by Shawn.

>> I agree we could do better in the quality control department but a lot
>> of things added to OSM will be added there first before any third
>> parties pick them up. That makes references a bit problematic, IMO.

Not very well stated by Shawn, as it doesn't specify a problem.  Problematic, yes, but ambiguously so.  What problem?

> All edits in OSM must be verifyable on the ground if I understood this correctly: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Verifiability

Verify-ABLE isn't the same as MUST-verify.  The former has a relatively low bar, the latter, a high one.

> Problem is to really make this easy to review without visiting the same spot we would in many cases need a good photo or perhaps multiple photos from different angles.

That's one solution, but not the only solution.  What problem are you trying to solve?

> Unfortunately we neither encourage nor support image uploading anywhere hosted by ourselves or others (we could probably easily integrate mapillary uploading in the website and in our mobile tools. I take photos with osmtracker sometimes but cannot upload them to mapillary from inside JOSM). I'm not saying it should be a demand, but I think we would gain a lot in many changeset discussions if adding images to the chat and changesets is made possible or if images in mapillary in the area were visible and referencable on the changeset discussion page.

Whenever I hear somebody say about OSM "it can't" I immediately think "well, it could."  It might be a lot of work and can often happen outside and around OSM (with a wrapper, with an API, with a layer of spaghetti-to-spaghetti translation...), precluding the necessity that a wholesale tagging change take place within OSM (as it appears this proto-proposal would, but remains too vague for me to be sure).

> Alternatively we could cook our own image storage service if we want. We got the money for it now and commercial persistent object storage solutions are available from multiple providers releasing the burdon of infrastructure maintenance on our operations working group. WDYT?

With all these bubbling ingredients, I'm still unclear what it is you are trying to brew.  Will you cook first and taste along the way?  Will you develop the recipe first before cooking anything?  Will it be a cake, a beverage, a repository, a translator, a fast storage exchange mechanism, a portal between other naming / semantic identity hives, what, exactly?  Spec it out!

> This and my proposal to mark features as verified at this point in time could potentially make it much easier to judge the overall quality of our data and map.

Now it sounds like we get closer to what you (or you and others might be aiming to do):  judge the work / data of others.  Judges are made, not born.  I feel OK judging certain software and data, this is after decades of software development and quality assurance engineering at Silicon Valley giants and startups alike.  May I ask pangoSE to offer qualifications and / or a portfolio of work by which we might elevate him / her to such an important position?

> We would still be lacking a REAL granular referencing system where every statement (tag) is references individually with a date, author and optionally a photo. That would be really awesome, but it would require additions to the main database model and ruby website to support (this is perhaps a perfect GSoC project). Being able to browse to a specific tag on an object and discuss that would be a crucial addition to the website because now we are forced to comment on the changeset (or sending pms) and I think its really cumbersome to manually reference which one of the sometimes hundreds of objects I'm talking about.

Please stop cheerleading this unclear concept, instead, spec it out.  This list and the wider OSM community will read that and see if it might have merit.  Such things in OSM merit their way in, they don't force or crowd their way in by a single, vocal individual.  Unless and until they are well-presented.  So, make a presentation rather than a list of complaints with a wish list.

> Andy Allen (he runs  http://www.thunderforest.com/ which has a nice vector map service by the way on a free limited tier) a former member of the operations working group and current co-maintainer of the rails website posted this a year ago: 
> https://gravitystorm.github.io/osmf-infra-plans/ and this july the OSMF and the operations working group announced hiring of a Senior Site Reliability Engineer: https://mobile.twitter.com/OSM_Tech/status/1287395222847139846
> 
> This seems like a good move. We would benefit a lot from being able to easily load balance and adjust VMs on our own or someone elses openstack infrastructure where we can easily provision new servers for development or testing when needed instead of having dedicated physical hardware servers that causes availability issues if they break because of single point of failures.

Yes, Andy is a very smart and clever man, I've worked with him here and there over years.  Be inspired by him, I am.

> See also https://operations.osmfoundation.org/ 
> 
> BTW osm-fr already made this move and is mostly running VMs now and has moved some of their VMs (heavy tile rendering) into the OVH cloud to manage their hardware more efficiently. See https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/FR:Serveurs_OpenStreetMap_France

That's great, a white paper about this could communicate "lessons learned" and perhaps pass the torch of knowledge about how to leverage the best of these technologies for the audience(s) who could benefit.  Might you write one?

pangoSE, I read your unclear proto-proposal to "change naming" (to solve what problem?) and that a Reliability Engineer will be hired by the OSMF's OWG.  While the latter seems unrelated, the former still remains quite vague to me and I suspect most readers of this list.  If you are going to write about this more here, can you please present a clear technical specification (tech spec) of what you wish to see built?  But before you do that, please first present at least one problem it might solve.  Then we will better understand what you might propose.

SteveA