Re: [OSM-talk] Règles d'éditions organisées / Directed editing guidelines

[Christoph Hormann]

On Tuesday 25 June 2019, Frederik Ramm wrote:
>
> I would ask everyone who is unhappy to see some players short-cut or
> even ignore the rules, to engage with these players, explain to them
> that the guidelines exist and that following them is a demonstration
> of good intentions vis-a-vis the community.

I don't want to discourage anyone from doing that but for me personally 
there is no 'assume good faith' w.r.t. organizations in contrast to 
individuals.  If an individual human being takes resposibility for 
organized editing activities i would be perfectly willing to engage 
with them about their edits and giving them the benefit of the doubt 
when they make mistakes.  In cases like the ones Severin pointed to 
however, in particular if they also ostentatiously reject any personal 
responsibility and discourage any direct communication attempts i am 
not.

> Things like this take time. [...]

The question is of course how much time does OSM have?  One important 
factor that motivated initial discussion on regulating organized 
editing activities was the time factor and that organized editing 
activities can dominate the map in an area much faster than individual 
mappers.

> While I won't dispute that local communities can and should have a
> lot of influence, I think you're speaking prematurely - perhaps you
> are just a bit too eager to see your "predictions" come true ;)

Actually i find it much more enjoyable (and also more educating) if 
negative predictions from me turn out to be wrong.  Pointing to my past 
predictions does not have the purpose to gloat but to explain why i do 
not revisit this point of discussion in detail again.

> Don't just sit there and sigh "it's just how I predicted, the world
> is ending and there's nothing I can do".

My core message was meant to be that we should focus on enabling and 
encouraging local communities around the world to take control of the 
map locally.  That is very different from "sitting there and waiting 
for the world to end".

What i do not want to do is sitting there and hoping for corporations to 
discover morality and realizing that in the long term this is more 
important than short term profits.  See:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scorpion_and_the_Frog

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

___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] Règles d'éditions organisées / Directed editing guidelines

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

On 25.06.19 12:27, Christoph Hormann wrote:
> Responsible mappers would invest a lot of work into 
> following the policy - mostly unnecessarily because since they are 
> responsible they would do the necessary things even without there being 
> a policy.  Irresponible people however only do the absolute minimum of 
> the most lenient interpretation of the rules - often garnished with the 
> usual corporate communication redirection and avoidance strategies.

I hope that people will continue doing their best to adhere to the new
policy because as we go forward, we have a growing body of "good
examples", and we can slowly but surely tighten the strings for those
who try to get away with the "absolute minimum" and some corporate
image-speak.

I would ask everyone who is unhappy to see some players short-cut or
even ignore the rules, to engage with these players, explain to them
that the guidelines exist and that following them is a demonstration of
good intentions vis-a-vis the community.

Things like this take time. It has taken years until the ideas of
"imports and mechanical edits need prior discussion" have caught on, but
now you very frequently see people, all over the world, pointing a
would-be data importer to the import guidelines. It is going to be like
that with the organised editing guidelines too, and the fact that
there's a "soft launch" doesn't mean people can get away with ignoring
them forever.

> My own conclusion meanwhile is that if there is to be any meaningful 
> regulation of organized mapping activities it has to come from the 
> local communities.

While I won't dispute that local communities can and should have a lot
of influence, I think you're speaking prematurely - perhaps you are just
a bit too eager to see your "predictions" come true ;) I think that
there's a lot of yet-untapped potential in enforcing these guidelines
and adherence to the guidelines will improve.

Of course this is something that also needs help from the community. If
you see organised editing that goes wrong or causes damage, check if the
project has been documented properly, point out the guidelines and the
issues to the mappers, and expect that they will behave professionally
and fix the problems. If they don't, report the situation to DWG and
we'll repeat the request and take the measures needed to ensure compliance.

Don't just sit there and sigh "it's just how I predicted, the world is
ending and there's nothing I can do".

Bye
Frederik

-- 
Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frede...@remote.org  ##  N49°00'09" E008°23'33"

___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] OSM user diary etiquette

[Mateusz Konieczny]

25 Jun 2019, 11:19 by frede...@remote.org:

> I think that many soft rules, like "you shouldn't use this to post a
> question", can also be developed and enforced by the community without a
> well defined process and without ever being written down. If someone
> posts a question and three others tell them that this was not a good
> idea, they will likely learn, and everyone else who reads the exchange
> will learn, too.
>
I think that using diary entries for questions can be very useful and 
appropriate.

For example https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/Mateusz%20Konieczny/diary/35437 

that was basically a question "is this a good progress toward improving map 
style, 
or is there something that should be done differently?"

It resulted in a very useful feedback, especially  
"Ok - will try to explain briefly on the problem of too strong colors. (...)" 
but also
other comments.

There only other place where I could reasonably publish this was a Github 
repository,
where it would reach different and smaller group of people - even with 
announcement
on mailing lists.
___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] Règles d'éditions organisées / Directed editing guidelines

[Christoph Hormann]

On Saturday 22 June 2019, severin.menard via talk wrote:
>
> At present, this policy concerning directed editions is therefore,
> paradoxically, not respected or even totally neglected by the main
> organizations it targeted.

This is something by the way i predicted to be the likely outcome of 
introducing a vague policy very early in the process leading to these 
guidelines.  Responsible mappers would invest a lot of work into 
following the policy - mostly unnecessarily because since they are 
responsible they would do the necessary things even without there being 
a policy.  Irresponible people however only do the absolute minimum of 
the most lenient interpretation of the rules - often garnished with the 
usual corporate communication redirection and avoidance strategies.

I also predicted in

https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/Stereo/diary/45132#comment42989

what we now see with the various pro forma attempts at following the 
guidelines that many of them respond "in kind" with the with the same 
non-commital vagueness as the policy.

Regarding evaluation of the guidelines - although it would certainly be 
good if there was a critical evaluation i have very little hope that 
there will be such in the near future.  It is not that during the past 
half year there have been significant developments as a result of the 
policy that were not predictable and argued to be the likely outcome 
with clear reasoning in advance.

My own conclusion meanwhile is that if there is to be any meaningful 
regulation of organized mapping activities it has to come from the 
local communities.  This is particularly important for still small 
communities just starting off to happen before well organized corporate 
interests start their coordinated invasion leaving nothing but a data 
wasteland for locals to deal with after the invadors have left.

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

___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] OSM user diary etiquette

[Simon Poole]

There is a very big difference between "lively debate", and hurling
insults at individuals. Being of a different opinion than our system
administrators and expressing that, if very long in the tooth and
annoying in its repetitiveness is quite OK, and like most I simply
switched to ignoring the individuals posts. Calling people names is off
limits and doesn't need any additional confirmation in a CoC or whatever.

Simon

Am 25.06.2019 um 10:45 schrieb Harry Wood:
> I definitely support moderation actions on the diaries (or indeed any
> channel) when somebody steps way out of line.
>
> > It is unfortunate because this means that quite a few useful comments
> > written by some of you - the main subject was ways of fighting diary
> > spam - were dropped too.
>
> Do you have the option of *editing* a diary entry to delete sections
> of it, or even delete the whole text?  e.g. leaving a message
> "---This section has been removed because it did not meet our
> community standards".
>
> Not saying you should have done so in this case. Just wondering if it
> is an option.
> This would leave the comments. Some of the comments might then lack
> context, but it might still be a better outcome if the discussion was
> useful.
> Weirdly it's also a stronger moderation slap-down. The perpetrator
> suffers the ignominy of this message publicly on display within their
> diary. I've seen this approach a website elsewhere.
> I guess one consideration is that when diaries are moderated away,
> they are actually "soft deleted" whereas *editing* a diary would lose
> the original text.
>
> Anyway...  on the broader principle. At the risk of bringing back the
> "code of conduct" discussion... If we set out somewhere a set of
> community standards in terms of "be nice to eachother", but also the
> types of topics we expect to appear as OpenStreetMap diaries, what
> would we set out?
>
> I think we might decide that the standards of behaviour on the diaries
> should be higher than those of the mailing list. I mean the
> counterargument on the mailing list is always the desire to promote a
> "space for lively debate", but diaries are less of a discussion
> medium, more of a broadcast medium. We don't want to disallow people
> putting forth "political" thoughts or manifestos about the project,
> which inevitably will stray into bad-mouthing groups or even
> individuals on occasions, but in general we want diaries to be more
> carefully worded and well thought out. On balance a diary entry should
> be "respectful", "considerate", and "collaborative" ...but I'm quoting
> from the code of conduct now :-)
>
> We could also say diary entries should "make sense", e.g. minimum
> length. Not just some a few random words. This would allow us to
> delete quite a few weird diary entries from new users which clutter
> things (And they're possibly spammers flagging), but I'd be creating
> more work for moderations with that idea.
>
> We could also say diary entries should not be used a place to pose a
> question, or engage in communication styles which obviously fit better
> on other channels. For example I saw someone post a diary entry asking
> if the tile servers were currently offline. He argued that this was
> the best way to get attention, which may well be true, but it was an
> obvious misuse of the diaries feature to my mind.
>
> Harry
>
>
>
> On Tuesday, 25 June 2019, 00:23:34 BST, Frederik Ramm
>  wrote:
>
>
> Hi,
>
> I am writing this with my DWG hat on.
>
> The OSM user diaries are not routinely moderated but the DWG has the
> technical means to hide comments or whole posts, and will make use of
> these in extreme situations.
>
> I am writing to inform you that there as been one such situation, where
> a contributor time and time again over recent months used various
> expletives and insults to belittle the work of others in the project.
> He's been told to stop it numerous times; at one point when told that
> insults don't get him anywhere he said that he disagreed, because he had
> actually got a reaction to an insult. In another situation where he was
> told that his message could be heard better if he weren't wrapping it in
> so much bile, he responded "don't tell me what to do".
>
> We first tried to only hide those comments that were absolutely
> inacceptable ("viciuos brat", "violent little shit" etc.) but even those
> messages that were factual were always seasoned with a sentence
> explaining how this and that other person was an idiot, amateur, etc.,
> so in the end we just hid a handful of blog entries altogether. We
> wouldn't normally moderate someone for calling someone else an "amateur"
> but if it's framed by constant, stronger abuse then that lowers the bar
> considerably.
>
> It is unfortunate because this means that quite a few useful comments
> written by some of you - the main subject was ways of fighting diary
> spam - were dropped too.
>
> As I said, it's a rare exception for us to have to do this; these
> me

Re: [OSM-talk] OSM user diary etiquette

[Warin]

On 25/06/19 18:45, Harry Wood wrote:


Anyway...  on the broader principle. At the risk of bringing back the 
"code of conduct" discussion... If we set out somewhere a set of 
community standards in terms of "be nice to eachother", but also the 
types of topics we expect to appear as OpenStreetMap diaries, what 
would we set out?


I think we might decide that the standards of behaviour on the diaries 
should be higher than those of the mailing list. I mean the 
counterargument on the mailing list is always the desire to promote a 
"space for lively debate", but diaries are less of a discussion 
medium, more of a broadcast medium. We don't want to disallow people 
putting forth "political" thoughts or manifestos about the project, 
which inevitably will stray into bad-mouthing groups or even 
individuals on occasions,


Err ..no. The discussions should be about OSM, not about people or an 
individual.


I have found going through any outgoing mail, diary and eliminating the 
words 'you', 'they', even 'we' can lead to more objectivity on my part 
and hopefully less personal offence elsewhere.


There are a number of thing I don' like about OSM, trying to change them 
is one thing... abusing others with a different point of view? Not going 
to help.


___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] OSM user diary etiquette

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

On 25.06.19 10:45, Harry Wood wrote:
> Do you have the option of *editing* a diary entry to delete sections of
> it, or even delete the whole text? 

No. This is something the admins can do by fiddling directly with the
database, obviously, but there's no user interface for anyone but the
author doing it. I guess that would not be too difficult to change, but
that would then raise the question of whether we need to keep track of
changes (who made what change when), and thereby potentially open a
feature can of worms. Plus, since users can edit their own diary
entries, they could of course always remove the note saying that
something has been removed... you could argue this could become part of
a constructive process but I don't know, it sounds complicated.

> We could also say diary entries should "make sense", e.g. minimum
> length. Not just some a few random words. 

"Hello I am  and I am standing for election to  of " ;)

> We could also say diary entries should not be used a place to pose a
> question, or engage in communication styles which obviously fit better
> on other channels. For example I saw someone post a diary entry asking
> if the tile servers were currently offline. He argued that this was the
> best way to get attention, which may well be true, but it was an obvious
> misuse of the diaries feature to my mind.

Interestingly we have simply added the feature at some point, without
telling people what to use it for. The term "diary" - and I don't know
how it has been translated - seems to say that the idea was for people
to record what they have experienced (while mapping, I guess?), rather
than being a blog with general comments about the state of the world.
But then again, simply putting the feature out there and see what people
would use it for does have something very OSM-y to it.

I think that many soft rules, like "you shouldn't use this to post a
question", can also be developed and enforced by the community without a
well defined process and without ever being written down. If someone
posts a question and three others tell them that this was not a good
idea, they will likely learn, and everyone else who reads the exchange
will learn, too.

Bye
Frederik

-- 
Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frede...@remote.org  ##  N49°00'09" E008°23'33"

___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] OSM user diary etiquette

[Harry Wood]

 I definitely support moderation actions on the diaries (or indeed any channel) 
when somebody steps way out of line.
> It is unfortunate because this means that quite a few useful comments> 
>written by some of you - the main subject was ways of fighting diary
> spam - were dropped too.
Do you have the option of *editing* a diary entry to delete sections of it, or 
even delete the whole text?  e.g. leaving a message"---This section has been 
removed because it did not meet our community standards".
Not saying you should have done so in this case. Just wondering if it is an 
option.
This would leave the comments. Some of the comments might then lack context, 
but it might still be a better outcome if the discussion was useful.Weirdly 
it's also a stronger moderation slap-down. The perpetrator suffers the ignominy 
of this message publicly on display within their diary. I've seen this approach 
a website elsewhere.I guess one consideration is that when diaries are 
moderated away, they are actually "soft deleted" whereas *editing* a diary 
would lose the original text.
Anyway...  on the broader principle. At the risk of bringing back the "code of 
conduct" discussion... If we set out somewhere a set of community standards in 
terms of "be nice to eachother", but also the types of topics we expect to 
appear as OpenStreetMap diaries, what would we set out?
I think we might decide that the standards of behaviour on the diaries should 
be higher than those of the mailing list. I mean the counterargument on the 
mailing list is always the desire to promote a "space for lively debate", but 
diaries are less of a discussion medium, more of a broadcast medium. We don't 
want to disallow people putting forth "political" thoughts or manifestos about 
the project, which inevitably will stray into bad-mouthing groups or even 
individuals on occasions, but in general we want diaries to be more carefully 
worded and well thought out. On balance a diary entry should be "respectful", 
"considerate", and "collaborative" ...but I'm quoting from the code of conduct 
now :-)
We could also say diary entries should "make sense", e.g. minimum length. Not 
just some a few random words. This would allow us to delete quite a few weird 
diary entries from new users which clutter things (And they're possibly 
spammers flagging), but I'd be creating more work for moderations with that 
idea.
We could also say diary entries should not be used a place to pose a question, 
or engage in communication styles which obviously fit better on other channels. 
For example I saw someone post a diary entry asking if the tile servers were 
currently offline. He argued that this was the best way to get attention, which 
may well be true, but it was an obvious misuse of the diaries feature to my 
mind.
Harry


On Tuesday, 25 June 2019, 00:23:34 BST, Frederik Ramm  
wrote:  
 
 Hi,

I am writing this with my DWG hat on.

The OSM user diaries are not routinely moderated but the DWG has the
technical means to hide comments or whole posts, and will make use of
these in extreme situations.

I am writing to inform you that there as been one such situation, where
a contributor time and time again over recent months used various
expletives and insults to belittle the work of others in the project.
He's been told to stop it numerous times; at one point when told that
insults don't get him anywhere he said that he disagreed, because he had
actually got a reaction to an insult. In another situation where he was
told that his message could be heard better if he weren't wrapping it in
so much bile, he responded "don't tell me what to do".

We first tried to only hide those comments that were absolutely
inacceptable ("viciuos brat", "violent little shit" etc.) but even those
messages that were factual were always seasoned with a sentence
explaining how this and that other person was an idiot, amateur, etc.,
so in the end we just hid a handful of blog entries altogether. We
wouldn't normally moderate someone for calling someone else an "amateur"
but if it's framed by constant, stronger abuse then that lowers the bar
considerably.

It is unfortunate because this means that quite a few useful comments
written by some of you - the main subject was ways of fighting diary
spam - were dropped too.

As I said, it's a rare exception for us to have to do this; these
messages, especially because they weren't one-off heat-of-the-moment
posts but a sustained onslaught, far surpassed in offensiveness anything
I've seen on this or any other OSM mailing list in recent years.

I won't say who the user is - those of you who were involved will
recognize it, and those who weren't probably shouldn't waste any time
with it.

Bye
Frederik

-- 
Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frede...@remote.org  ##  N49°00'09" E008°23'33"

___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk