[HOT] Board Elections: another Personal Opinion
Hi All, Nobody answered to this unorthodox email, so II feel I will do it, but I will remain orthodox and not provide my own vote (and actually I did not choose yet). I prefer to say I am debating positively without any irritation: for those (and they are numerous I guess) who do not know it, Kate and I really get well on work and I will have the same pleasure to discuss with her on Thursday on our now regular meeting. Basically, despite I already applied last year for this position, being a board member is actually not a must get once in my life I feel I dream and need to achieve. I am also aware about the concern regarding transparency rules and I agree it should be this objective should be reached one day. But my personal concern is that according this logic and considering the remaining candidates, the board would not include anymore any member with GIS, humanitarian field skills and experience, though the HOT field activities, if they do not involve a lot of people (but this is growing), are one of the HOT capacities and expertise and a key activity to involve both the authorities and the citizen communities of the developing countries. The board will have to discuss and decide about specific, technical things on these projects, and I would like to know how these decisions would be handled: eg I would worry if was in a board with people having my kind of background, mixing human sciences, GIScartography and humanitarian field would state about matters related to social medias or software development. Another concern: the HOT board would then be fully made of American, Canadian and UK people, what would be less representative than before of a worldwide community, IMHO. One thing we should all decide over the next year is, as said recently, the role of the membership. It is also what we want to get as a transparent organization, and the flexibility of the good governance concepts. Compensated people are one, but people acting in various, sometimes close and almost competing organizations might also be considered as another one, and this should also be fixed somehow, in order any BBB or other organization could point out potential conflict of interest. So do we consider this as OK and if not, how do we solve this? Other kind of flexibility we have to state is the example of Heather potentially passing non HOT member to board member in one month: I actually totally agree with Kate about Heather and would vote for her without any problem and even pleasure; it just makes me smile after the din some did about the nominations of field volunteers last month, and only as members. :) Sincerely, Severin Message: 3 Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2013 06:57:40 +0700 From: Kate Chapman k...@maploser.com To: hot hot@openstreetmap.org Subject: [HOT] Board Elections a Personal Opinion Message-ID: CAGn7mOpwUE4PHuvxsQmQ=Q2r5+Uen7Zip63= xyjufknapia...@mail.gmail.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Hi All, I was going to share who I am voting for and why for the board elections. Feel free to ignore me and this perhaps unorthodox email. I'm sending it though because it can be difficult sometimes to be intimately aware of the candidates. So this is my thoughts/strategy about who I think should be on the board and why. Firstly I think describing the role of the board is important. I view the board as necessary and important for the policy and strategy of HOT. What does that really mean? Well the board should not be involved in the day to day running of the organization, but should set the policies that allow those working for the organization to function. Meaning the board would set a policy on how the hiring works, but others would actually make sure people were hired using that policy. The same goes for strategy. That isn't to say the membership shouldn't be involved in these discussions, just that the board should be thinking about things from a high-level and ensuring such decisions are made. Joseph Reeves: Joseph has been involved in the majority of operation aspects of HOT's work. I think this allows him intimate knowledge of the problems and the solutions that the board could implement through policy. Mikel Maron: Mikel has been intimately involved in both the founding of HOT and the general OSM community for years. He has already proved himself as an asset to HOT through the development of the HOT strategy document, helping create partnerships and often providing advice. John Crowley: John's ability to connect informal communities to large organizations is core skill the HOT board needs in development of strategy. Harry Wood: Harry consistently makes sure we don't lose our connection to our OSM roots. Meaning OSM volunteers are core to the success of HOT, we cannot alienate them and need to make sure we are still inline with the community. Heather Leson: Heather has consistently been a great partner through her work at Ushahidi, CrisisCommons and Random Hacks
Re: [HOT] Board Elections: another Personal Opinion
Hi Severin, Thanks for your discourse. On Mon, Jan 14, 2013 at 4:00 PM, Severin MENARD severin.men...@gmail.com wrote: Hi All, Nobody answered to this unorthodox email, so II feel I will do it, but I will remain orthodox and not provide my own vote (and actually I did not choose yet). I prefer to say I am debating positively without any irritation: for those (and they are numerous I guess) who do not know it, Kate and I really get well on work and I will have the same pleasure to discuss with her on Thursday on our now regular meeting. Yes, we do work together well. Our public debate doesn't represent anything other than differences in opinions. I think it is important to have these discussions publicly so the community can be involved. Basically, despite I already applied last year for this position, being a board member is actually not a must get once in my life I feel I dream and need to achieve. I am also aware about the concern regarding transparency rules and I agree it should be this objective should be reached one day. But my personal concern is that according this logic and considering the remaining candidates, the board would not include anymore any member with GIS, humanitarian field skills and experience, though the HOT field activities, if they do not involve a lot of people (but this is growing), are one of the HOT capacities and expertise and a key activity to involve both the authorities and the citizen communities of the developing countries. The board will have to discuss and decide about specific, technical things on these projects, and I would like to know how these decisions would be handled: So I think this is part of the difference in views. The board should not be making technical decisions. Staff typically would implement the projects. Board sets policy, so to me this is not an issue. For example the board would make a policy that HOT hires people using a certain procedure, the staff would then follow that procedure to carry out the policy. The same would work for technical implementation. For example it is in HOT's mission to use open source software, there have been on occasions where this is impractical at the moment. The board would write a policy that the reasons for the exception need to be documented and agreed on by the staff. The staff would then write the exception. Being a board member should be a 5-10 hour a week proposition. Having people review all the technical proposals makes it more akin to a job (hence why there are people that work for HOT full-time). I don't think there is going to be a wall built between the wall and the staff and they are never going to speak again. I view the reaction as that the board is going to make decisions and then force everyone to do them as some faceless group of unreasonable people. I don't believe that is the case. The only reason the board is included in technical decisions right now is because of their individual expertise. It is never a board decision. We are lucky to have that expertise available. eg I would worry if was in a board with people having my kind of background, mixing human sciences, GIScartography and humanitarian field would state about matters related to social medias or software development. Another concern: the HOT board would then be fully made of American, Canadian and UK people, what would be less representative than before of a worldwide community, IMHO. There was opportunity to nominate more people previously. Hard to say if it is less representative. There are currently only 3 countries represented on the board and the lack of representation in areas we work I think is even more problematic. I personally hope we do not end up with a board of entirely men, which could also happen. One thing we should all decide over the next year is, as said recently, the role of the membership. It is also what we want to get as a transparent organization, and the flexibility of the good governance concepts. Compensated people are one, but people acting in various, sometimes close and almost competing organizations might also be considered as another one, and this should also be fixed somehow, in order any BBB or other organization could point out potential conflict of interest. So do we consider this as OK and if not, how do we solve this? The document from the BBB speaks to these types of conflicts as well and could be a guideline. The staff issue is more clear than other related organizations in the document. (http://www.bbb.org/us/Charity-Evaluation/) Other kind of flexibility we have to state is the example of Heather potentially passing non HOT member to board member in one month: I actually totally agree with Kate about Heather and would vote for her without any problem and even pleasure; it just makes me smile after the din some did about the nominations of field volunteers last month, and only as members. :) I don't see that as the same thing. Heather has been a
Re: [HOT] Board Elections: another Personal Opinion
Hi Good topics. These are important to keep in mind for the election, and definitely top issues for HOT in early 2013. considering the remaining candidates, the board would not include anymore any member with GIS, humanitarian field skills and experience, though the HOT field activities A good Board brings a variety of skills to the table. For HOT, field experience is definitely one of those things. Among the candidates (that are not also paid by HOT), this is actually very well covered. Schuyler has trained OSM in Palestine, India, Afghanistan, Haiti. Joseph has been in Indonesia. John was on the ground for Sandy. Etc. Another concern: the HOT board would then be fully made of American, Canadian and UK people, what would be less representative than before of a worldwide community, IMHO. That's a concern. But we shouldn't risk our status as a charity in good standing, and an organization with proper accountability mechanisms, in order to meet this. people acting in various, sometimes close and almost competing organizations might also be considered as another one, and this should also be fixed somehow, in order any BBB or other organization could point out potential conflict of interest. So do we consider this as OK and if not, how do we solve this? This is a common situation boards need to deal with, both in competition and cooperation. Qualified people are going to have other stakes in the same field. With OSM Foundation, every Board Member declares their potential conflicts of interest up front, and whenever items come up that might pose conflict, proper action is taking (ex. reclusion from that particular discussion). If necessary, MoU can be drawn up to guide this. This is exactly what has been happening already within HOT. -Mikel * Mikel Maron * +14152835207 @mikel s:mikelmaron From: Severin MENARD severin.men...@gmail.com To: hot@openstreetmap.org Sent: Monday, January 14, 2013 3:00 AM Subject: [HOT] Board Elections: another Personal Opinion Hi All, Nobody answered to this unorthodox email, so II feel I will do it, but I will remain orthodox and not provide my own vote (and actually I did not choose yet). I prefer to say I am debating positively without any irritation: for those (and they are numerous I guess) who do not know it, Kate and I really get well on work and I will have the same pleasure to discuss with her on Thursday on our now regular meeting. Basically, despite I already applied last year for this position, being a board member is actually not a must get once in my life I feel I dream and need to achieve. I am also aware about the concern regarding transparency rules and I agree it should be this objective should be reached one day. But my personal concern is that according this logic and considering the remaining candidates, the board would not include anymore any member with GIS, humanitarian field skills and experience, though the HOT field activities, if they do not involve a lot of people (but this is growing), are one of the HOT capacities and expertise and a key activity to involve both the authorities and the citizen communities of the developing countries. The board will have to discuss and decide about specific, technical things on these projects, and I would like to know how these decisions would be handled: eg I would worry if was in a board with people having my kind of background, mixing human sciences, GIScartography and humanitarian field would state about matters related to social medias or software development. Another concern: the HOT board would then be fully made of American, Canadian and UK people, what would be less representative than before of a worldwide community, IMHO. One thing we should all decide over the next year is, as said recently, the role of the membership. It is also what we want to get as a transparent organization, and the flexibility of the good governance concepts. Compensated people are one, but people acting in various, sometimes close and almost competing organizations might also be considered as another one, and this should also be fixed somehow, in order any BBB or other organization could point out potential conflict of interest. So do we consider this as OK and if not, how do we solve this? Other kind of flexibility we have to state is the example of Heather potentially passing non HOT member to board member in one month: I actually totally agree with Kate about Heather and would vote for her without any problem and even pleasure; it just makes me smile after the din some did about the nominations of field volunteers last month, and only as members. :) Sincerely, Severin Message: 3 Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2013 06:57:40 +0700 From: Kate Chapman k...@maploser.com To: hot hot@openstreetmap.org Subject: [HOT] Board Elections a Personal Opinion Message-ID:
Re: [HOT] [Tasking Manager] enhancements - testers required
Hi I think validators need more help in this step. Integrate general QA tools (like Keep Right), and some basic, specific analysis. Take a before/after data view of the tile; simply analyse the number of new roads/buildings/trees/etc; visualize the change. Mikel * Mikel Maron * +14152835207 @mikel s:mikelmaron From: Kate Chapman k...@maploser.com To: Pierre GIRAUD pierre.gir...@gmail.com Cc: HOT Openstreetmap hot@openstreetmap.org Sent: Sunday, January 13, 2013 7:09 PM Subject: Re: [HOT] [Tasking Manager] enhancements - testers required Hi Pierre, I think it is a requirement to validate tiles. Yes we haven't figured out how to get people to do it, but I think that is an instructional issue. Perhaps if the validators were given access to a greater number of tiles to validate at a time. Maybe they could pick multiple tiles at once. Long-term I'd like to see the workflow so that you can define the steps a task goes through. Meaning I could say I want all squares to go through the following phases. Map the roads - map the buildings - validate. Then another task could have a complete different set of phases. Map the residential areas - map the water ways - map the roads. We haven't quite figured out the validation yet, but it is important. -Kate On Mon, Jan 14, 2013 at 4:30 AM, Pierre GIRAUD pierre.gir...@gmail.com wrote: Ok, I've gone further with my experimentations. I'm really not satisfied with the validation workflow and I've tried to change it completely. I'm convinced that it's not really a requirement to be able to validate tiles. It appears (looking at the statistics) that very few tiles have been marked as valid in the past jobs. I suppose that's because validation itself is not easy. It's easy to tell that a tile in invalid though. Thus, it's really a requirement to be able to invalidate tiles. In the version currently installed on dev server, the validation button doesn't exist anymore. The tiles can now take only 2 statuses done or not done. Colors have been changed too. They're now more common to people's habits and they match the buttons colors too. Also, there's no need to lock a tile to tell it's invalidate. I think this should be a quick process. I intend to add a message box. Users could for example receive messages from the application to be informed that a tile they previously worked on has been invalidated. One other thing I changed is the users tab. I simplified things by removing the numbers telling how much the users worked. As someone already told me, this is not a race. We don't need a winner. What I added though is the availability to see which tiles the given users worked on by highlighting them on the map. This feature has been asked several times. Once again, feedbacks are welcome. On Sun, Jan 13, 2013 at 6:43 PM, Augustin Doury augustin.do...@hotosm.org wrote: Sorry for this second email, I just want to add something about this point of my last email : 1) Limit how many times you could split the tasks, for a zoom level of 17, maybe not more than once. sometimes tasks are splitted twice or more, it really slows the mapping. On the users page,the number of tiles done by a contributor could depend on the size of the tiles he has done : - if he did not split tiles, show 1 for one tile - if he did, show 0,25 for one tile which is from a tile splitted once. Augustin On Sun, Jan 13, 2013 at 5:11 PM, Augustin Doury augustin.do...@hotosm.org wrote: Hi! Couple things I realized this morning using the Tasking Manager : 1) Limit how many times you could split the tasks, for a zoom level of 17, maybe not more than once. sometimes tasks are splitted twice or more, it really slows the mapping. 2) Make it easy to find which task you're working on, In the current version all current worked on tasks are highlighted in orange, maybe the task linked to your OSM account could be highlighted in an other colour. 3) It's too easy to delete a task, it could be great to add one step more for security checking Great to imagine how the new version will be! Augustin On Sat, Jan 12, 2013 at 9:39 PM, Augustin Doury augustin.do...@hotosm.org wrote: Thanks for that Pierre! Here are some comments : On Sat, Jan 12, 2013 at 8:18 PM, Pierre GIRAUD pierre.gir...@gmail.com wrote: - with this in mind, tiles url (in the address bar) can be used to be shared to someone else. This might be useful to use a tile as reference in a discussion between mappers, this is a real enhancement, especially with new mappers who want to have their work checked or to share it easily. I would use it like every week. - comments are now required when marking a task as done or (in)validating one, great, it could be good to have an informative message to explain what kind of comment is expected, maybe the person who create the job could choose this informative message. -
[HOT] HOT Activation WG meeting - January 2012
The next HOT Activation WG meeting will be on Thursday 17 January 2013 at 1600 UTC. Thanks to everyone who filled out the doodle. The meeting will be held on the #hot IRC channel on irc.freenode.net. All are welcome. The meeting will last at most one hour. The agenda will be to review the current state of the working group's activities, to define immediate next tasks, and parcel those tasks out to volunteers. Please let us know if you have any questions about how to join the meeting. See you then! SDE ___ HOT mailing list HOT@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/hot
Re: [HOT] [Tasking Manager] enhancements - testers required
Hey Katrina, Thinking on the low tech end, perhaps we could pull together a complementary workflow guide template? Drop picture here, place explanation here, intro paragraph here, etc? That way task managers who don't know Inkscape / Illustrator can still pull something together pretty easily? It took us a couple hours and hard copies of high-res imagery to pull together our workflow guide. It would be great if it was easier for others to follow in our footsteps. Cheers, Robert Robert Banick | GIS Coordinator | International Services | Ì American Red Crosshttp://www.redcross.org/ 2025 E Street NW, Washington, DC 20006 Tel 202-303-5017 | Cell 404-964-3451 | Fax 202-303-052 | Skype robert.banick From: Katrina Engelsted [mailto:katrina.engels...@hotosm.org] Sent: Sunday, January 13, 2013 10:34 PM To: HOT Openstreetmap Subject: Re: [HOT] [Tasking Manager] enhancements - testers required Hey all, To piggy-back on the workflow discussion, it would be nice if all tasks had specifics like the pdf that the Red Cross included in their task: http://tasks.hotosm.org/job/50#workflow Therefore, new mappers can understand the process better and it makes digitizing much more clear for all mappers. In the long run, it would probably help with speeding up the validation editing. I am not sure what would be the best avenue for ensuring that task managers include information like that, but I think that it is worth mentioning. Ideally, there could be some sample screenshots and descriptions that task managers could quickly choose so that people understand what to look for and what the goals of the remote activation are. On Mon, Jan 14, 2013 at 7:09 AM, Kate Chapman k...@maploser.commailto:k...@maploser.com wrote: Hi Pierre, I think it is a requirement to validate tiles. Yes we haven't figured out how to get people to do it, but I think that is an instructional issue. Perhaps if the validators were given access to a greater number of tiles to validate at a time. Maybe they could pick multiple tiles at once. Long-term I'd like to see the workflow so that you can define the steps a task goes through. Meaning I could say I want all squares to go through the following phases. Map the roads - map the buildings - validate. Then another task could have a complete different set of phases. Map the residential areas - map the water ways - map the roads. We haven't quite figured out the validation yet, but it is important. -Kate On Mon, Jan 14, 2013 at 4:30 AM, Pierre GIRAUD pierre.gir...@gmail.commailto:pierre.gir...@gmail.com wrote: Ok, I've gone further with my experimentations. I'm really not satisfied with the validation workflow and I've tried to change it completely. I'm convinced that it's not really a requirement to be able to validate tiles. It appears (looking at the statistics) that very few tiles have been marked as valid in the past jobs. I suppose that's because validation itself is not easy. It's easy to tell that a tile in invalid though. Thus, it's really a requirement to be able to invalidate tiles. In the version currently installed on dev server, the validation button doesn't exist anymore. The tiles can now take only 2 statuses done or not done. Colors have been changed too. They're now more common to people's habits and they match the buttons colors too. Also, there's no need to lock a tile to tell it's invalidate. I think this should be a quick process. I intend to add a message box. Users could for example receive messages from the application to be informed that a tile they previously worked on has been invalidated. One other thing I changed is the users tab. I simplified things by removing the numbers telling how much the users worked. As someone already told me, this is not a race. We don't need a winner. What I added though is the availability to see which tiles the given users worked on by highlighting them on the map. This feature has been asked several times. Once again, feedbacks are welcome. On Sun, Jan 13, 2013 at 6:43 PM, Augustin Doury augustin.do...@hotosm.orgmailto:augustin.do...@hotosm.org wrote: Sorry for this second email, I just want to add something about this point of my last email : 1) Limit how many times you could split the tasks, for a zoom level of 17, maybe not more than once. sometimes tasks are splitted twice or more, it really slows the mapping. On the users page,the number of tiles done by a contributor could depend on the size of the tiles he has done : - if he did not split tiles, show 1 for one tile - if he did, show 0,25 for one tile which is from a tile splitted once. Augustin On Sun, Jan 13, 2013 at 5:11 PM, Augustin Doury augustin.do...@hotosm.orgmailto:augustin.do...@hotosm.org wrote: Hi! Couple things I realized this morning using the Tasking Manager : 1) Limit how many times you could split the tasks, for a zoom level of 17, maybe not more than once. sometimes tasks are splitted
Re: [HOT] [Tasking Manager] enhancements - testers required
Hi Pierre, I'm really happy to see such live interaction between the code and the community! There is something that zooniverse does with their participant training.. example images.. and I think it wouldn't be that hard to implement. A new Task manager could select a representative image and enter a complete description of what is being looked for. This image would have a layer visibility toggle for the volunteer to see raw image and the desired tracing. The new volunteer could read the description presented and select the map layer on/off to get a better feel for what the goal is. A few of these examples could also be provided as merely a series of 'validated' tiles for that data goal (roads, buildings, huts etc.) The interface would use existing objects and functions, allows easy customization by a manager. I'm thinking that each 'phase' would be a separate workflow with layer tag attribute set by the manager (i.e. each of the current set of tiles are given a keyword attribute automatically based upon what was entered from the manager console.) These tags might come from an existing list for better cross-utility. The workflow would be simple but the entry point would specific to that goal, or 'campaign'.. Example, http://tasks.hotosm.org/job/126/roads This way a mini tutorial can be the responsibility of managers but (not time-prohibitive) and reduce the amount of training overall. This would also be helped if the 'validators' could indicate (by a star and a comment) some images as particularly good at representing some aspect of the image task.. unusual examples, common mistakes etc. This 'star' system could do much more training than written tutorial, alleviate FAQ time, be inherently adaptable to any type of task, be always available, and reduce errors overall. Om ___ HOT mailing list HOT@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/hot
Re: [HOT] [Tasking Manager] enhancements - testers required
Robert, It is already possible to export the tile grid by adding /export to the url : /job/#no/export Pierre De : Banick, Robert robert.ban...@redcross.org À : Kate Chapman k...@maploser.com; Pierre GIRAUD pierre.gir...@gmail.com Cc : HOT Openstreetmap hot@openstreetmap.org Envoyé le : Lundi 14 janvier 2013 14h17 Objet : Re: [HOT] [Tasking Manager] enhancements - testers required Kate, I like your thoughts on a sequential mapping and validation process. I always do this informally (roads, then buildings) and find it to be a lot more productive. One unrelated, entirely selfish wishlist item I'd like to throw out is the ability to download the tile grid itself. I've been working with some universities to do specific mapping tasks and for organizational purposes it would be great to download the tile grid so we could print it and manually parcel out tiles. It's kind of a specialized use case but I think that functionality could be useful to any on-the-ground group trying to use the tasking manager as an organizational tool. Robert Banick | American Red Cross -Original Message- From: Kate Chapman [mailto:k...@maploser.com] Sent: Sunday, January 13, 2013 7:10 PM To: Pierre GIRAUD Cc: HOT Openstreetmap Subject: Re: [HOT] [Tasking Manager] enhancements - testers required Hi Pierre, I think it is a requirement to validate tiles. Yes we haven't figured out how to get people to do it, but I think that is an instructional issue. Perhaps if the validators were given access to a greater number of tiles to validate at a time. Maybe they could pick multiple tiles at once. Long-term I'd like to see the workflow so that you can define the steps a task goes through. Meaning I could say I want all squares to go through the following phases. Map the roads - map the buildings - validate. Then another task could have a complete different set of phases. Map the residential areas - map the water ways - map the roads. We haven't quite figured out the validation yet, but it is important. -Kate On Mon, Jan 14, 2013 at 4:30 AM, Pierre GIRAUD pierre.gir...@gmail.com wrote: Ok, I've gone further with my experimentations. I'm really not satisfied with the validation workflow and I've tried to change it completely. I'm convinced that it's not really a requirement to be able to validate tiles. It appears (looking at the statistics) that very few tiles have been marked as valid in the past jobs. I suppose that's because validation itself is not easy. It's easy to tell that a tile in invalid though. Thus, it's really a requirement to be able to invalidate tiles. In the version currently installed on dev server, the validation button doesn't exist anymore. The tiles can now take only 2 statuses done or not done. Colors have been changed too. They're now more common to people's habits and they match the buttons colors too. Also, there's no need to lock a tile to tell it's invalidate. I think this should be a quick process. I intend to add a message box. Users could for example receive messages from the application to be informed that a tile they previously worked on has been invalidated. One other thing I changed is the users tab. I simplified things by removing the numbers telling how much the users worked. As someone already told me, this is not a race. We don't need a winner. What I added though is the availability to see which tiles the given users worked on by highlighting them on the map. This feature has been asked several times. Once again, feedbacks are welcome. On Sun, Jan 13, 2013 at 6:43 PM, Augustin Doury augustin.do...@hotosm.org wrote: Sorry for this second email, I just want to add something about this point of my last email : 1) Limit how many times you could split the tasks, for a zoom level of 17, maybe not more than once. sometimes tasks are splitted twice or more, it really slows the mapping. On the users page,the number of tiles done by a contributor could depend on the size of the tiles he has done : - if he did not split tiles, show 1 for one tile - if he did, show 0,25 for one tile which is from a tile splitted once. Augustin On Sun, Jan 13, 2013 at 5:11 PM, Augustin Doury augustin.do...@hotosm.org wrote: Hi! Couple things I realized this morning using the Tasking Manager : 1) Limit how many times you could split the tasks, for a zoom level of 17, maybe not more than once. sometimes tasks are splitted twice or more, it really slows the mapping. 2) Make it easy to find which task you're working on, In the current version all current worked on tasks are highlighted in orange, maybe the task linked to your OSM account could be highlighted in an other colour. 3) It's too easy to delete a task, it could be great to add one step more for security checking Great to imagine how the new version will be! Augustin On Sat, Jan 12, 2013 at 9:39 PM,
Re: [HOT] Board Elections: another Personal Opinion
On Jan 14, 2013, at 12:00 AM, Severin MENARD wrote: Other kind of flexibility we have to state is the example of Heather potentially passing non HOT member to board member in one month: I actually totally agree with Kate about Heather and would vote for her without any problem and even pleasure; it just makes me smile after the din some did about the nominations of field volunteers last month, and only as members. Severin, while I agree with much of what you had to say, the situations with Heather and with the 20 or so EUROSHA volunteers are not at all comparable. Prior to their nomination, the EUROSHA volunteers were completely unknown to me, and probably to most of the people on this mailing list. In fact, I think none of them have ever posted a message to this list, or otherwise introduced themselves or their work to our community. While I'm sure we all appreciate their contributions, I don't see what could possibly entitle them to a voice in determining the organization's policy. By contrast, Heather Leson is a long-time friend and collaborator of HOT. She has been involved in crisis mapping for years, and has a proven record of dealing wisely with the sensitive issues of mapping vulnerable parts of the world. More to the point, in volunteering for a role of responsibility on the Team, she took pains to introduce herself and her intentions for doing so. She is no stranger to our community, and I am proud to endorse her for a seat on the Board of Directors. SDE ___ HOT mailing list HOT@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/hot
Re: [HOT] [Tasking Manager] enhancements - testers required
Hi Pierre, thank you for working on the Task Manager. It is an important piece of S/W in- and outside of HOT. On 2013-01-12 21:18, Pierre GIRAUD wrote: The most important (new) things to notice are: - tiles can be accessed in a read-only mode, - with this in mind, tiles url (in the address bar) can be used to be shared to someone else. This might be useful to use a tile as reference in a discussion between mappers, That was something quite confusing about the task manager: you had to login to do *anything*. I see on the dev server, that it's still a requirement to login to browse the tasks. Is this really necessary? It would be nicer if a login would be *only* necessary for write actions, like locking/commenting ? - you need to explicitly lock the tile before working on it, So I can load and edit things without locking? To my engineering mind, that sounds like a recipe for conflicts. I do not understand the use case. Is there a workflow, where one needs to lock the task, but not load it into an editor? That would be better served with lock, lock and load. With my UX head on, lock also sounds very technical and forebidding. Perhaps Work on this might be more inviting. Also in the history Locked by ... does not describe what's happening. X started to work or X reserved the tile, might be more to the point. BTW, would it be possible to get a link/integration to one of those whodidit services? Not everything that happens in a location is going through the task manager. https://www.google.com/search?q=whodidit+openstreetmap - comments are now required when marking a task as done or (in)validating one, What should users put there? Thinking back to the tiles I did, I can only remember one or two tiles where I felt a comment was required. - users have access to the tile change history. Which surely helps making comments more useful. But required? I'm not sure how important the locking is when an advanced user wants to (in)validate the work done on a job. How about allowing validation without any lock. Or maybe we should rethink the validation process. Any thoughts? I think locking is important when the workflow expects the user to write to the tile. Regarding the question of motivating people to re-take tiles for validation, this too (like lock) might be a problem of the used word: validation sounds academic, important and of high responsibility. As a arm-chair mapper with only very little knowledge of the task's background, it is not my place to *validate* edits. Perhaps call it second-pass? That could lower the barrier. Also, I'm of the opinion that the data-user (in all of OSM) has to do her own validation to see whether the data is up to the required accuracy for the intended usage. Again this is not something someone from the wider community can do. Third, real validation can be done in batches, where much more than a single tile is pre-loaded into josm, background tiles are downloaded in batches and then quickly checked. This would not require locking or loading through the TM, but only invalidating or accepting the checked tiles. Best Regards, David ___ HOT mailing list HOT@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/hot
Re: [HOT] Board Elections: another Personal Opinion
Hey all Joining this thread after an interesting trip to Bruxelles (DG ECHO) for HOT presenting the lessons learned from 3 months of EUROSHA deploy (blog post in the next days) and hearing about the terms of the new call for participants on a third round of similar projects. Prior getting to this conversation I had to spend some time figuring out ways forward in the design of a possible next project for HOT in Haiti for which our classic open hiring will be open soon, I had little sleep in the last nights but feel that there is a need for an intervention here as the closure of the vote is 48 hours from us. I'd like to state the value that I place to all present board members, to Kate with whom I have disagreement on this matter but with whom I enjoyed working with and the board she composed, surely a beautiful set of talents and for most of them people I met around this use of OSM in humanitarian and development work. I am also sharing here a frustration as per the limitations that English is putting on me in this debate when there is a need to articulate complex and subtle elements. I think that HOT as a new organization is half way from the vision of the organization portrayed by Kate and that there is a need to continue progressing towards them, but that we as an organization are not there yet. I am not going to question in this thread fhe model of organization that HOT ultimately want to have, this is part of another debate. I just like all of us to think through what we ultimately serving and enabling: the development of the OSM project in Least Developed Countries or Developing countries in humanitarian and development contexts where reslient empowered local mappers can eventually step in and lead the response to a crisis or run a project without needing HOT support nor the humanitarian IM/GIS support or partnering from an equal foot. This makes of field work and the growth of local osm groups in Developing Countries something of an art that HOT has been inventing, which has an impact, which make HOT a rather unique set up even in the realm of Voluntary Technical Communities. I think that the underlying skills and knowledge needs to be well represented at the board amongst other skills. I also think that those who have been more active in fostering this growth in different contexts, with different modus operandi over long time need to represent this perspective in the board. This field rooted innovative aspect of HOT as well as Sev and I past practical knowledge of the humanirian realm have been beneficial to the Team and instrumental to achieving our mandate. It has informing with other necessary view points the course of HOT actions and through myself has a voice in our board able to step in decision making process when this was necessary. I just want to distinguish here different levels of field experiences which I do not feel sound enough to replace yet the perspective Sev or I would have made. This being said, HOT is active growing this field expertise in the Team through various venues so that more willing hotties can get this exposure and be familiar with field/ humanitarian and development and gain over time this experience and have it informed their decision. This is because of this risk of disconnect that I deem necessary to re-run for the board. Kate wrote a beautiful blog post about HOT achievements in 2012 at a time when two paid employees were boardees. Was this a problem for our organization? Did this question the legitimacy of HOT amongst hum/ dev actors and donors? Why would this situation be all of sudden different in 2013 when clearly our organization is gradually growing and getting more robust and mature.. I am failing to see why this run up of Sev and I would no longer be positive to the organization but a threat. How can two longtime committed hotties (as you can read, this started for me in Nov 2007), working solely for HOT and volunteering only for HOT an important amount of their time can be disloyal to the organization they contribute to create? Would we think this of Heather newly hotified and very possibly on the board when one could have thought about a transition phase where the organization could have benefited from her inputs as a member or as an adviser? No. The current rules of the organization allow for Heather to join and support at the board and I think that this is a good thing for HOT. Shall HOT have to question the loyalty to the organization of boardees who have side interest when no MoU between the the organizations have been put in place? No because of the trust built over time, the expertise deployed and the impact made. I believe that being on this transition, in its current phase of gorwth, HOT needs these talents to be present in the board even though things are not perfect to remain on track with its mission and growth. I would also echo the point made by Severin about the geographical diversity and the need for other cutlures
Re: [HOT] Board Elections: another Personal Opinion
On Tue, Jan 15, 2013 at 11:45 AM, nicolas chavent nicolas.chav...@gmail.com wrote: Kate wrote a beautiful blog post about HOT achievements in 2012 at a time when two paid employees were boardees. Was this a problem for our organization? Did this question the legitimacy of HOT amongst hum/ dev actors and donors? Why would this situation be all of sudden different in 2013 when clearly our organization is gradually growing and getting more robust and mature.. Actually people have repeatedly emailed me off list and said they did not think it was appropriate for employees to also be on the board of directors. This began after the HOT strategic meeting last year when the decision to pay you and I stipends was made. It is not that the situation it is different, it is that we were acting incorrectly before. I've since done research, I would suggest others do their own research. Additionally within the membership survey there as a not insignificant amount of people that indicated they did not think that paid people should be on the board. I find it ironic that if we had incorporated in France it would be impossible for anyone to be on the board who was also compensated by the organization. So had you known how to do the incorporation paperwork instead of I we would not be even having this discussion. -Kate ___ HOT mailing list HOT@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/hot
