Re: [OSM-talk] Analysing the OSM community
On 30 March 2011 01:12, john whelan jwhelan0...@gmail.com wrote: I shall simply agree with you that a sociological study based on 16 people falls short of accepted scientific study. My personal view is much of sociology would like to be accepted as science but is for the most part subjective. most sociologists would be horrified by the idea of this kind of work being accepted as science. qualitative analysis is for the most part a rejection of the scientific method. to say it is subjective somewhat misses the point, mainly as this is such a loaded word according to adherents of the scientific method By the way it can be scientific I've worked on a number of Statistics Canada surveys were we did interview the required number of people from random samples and followed the ideals of the scientific method. yes, but that would be a quantitative study - a wholly different approach to studying people, with different intended outcomes (mainly: testing of theory, rather than generation of theory) and a different philosophy/ideology -- robin http://tangleball.org.nz/ - Auckland's Creative Space http://openstreetmap.org.nz/ - Open Street Map New Zealand http://bumblepuppy.org/blog/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Analysing the OSM community
I found today this article A qualitative enquiry into OpenStreetMap making Author: Yu-Wei Lina Abstract Based on a case study on the OpenStreetMap community, this paper provides a contextual and embodied understanding of the user-led, user-participatory and user-generated produsage phenomenon. It employs Grounded Theory, Social Worlds Theory, and qualitative methods to illuminate and explores the produsage processes of OpenStreetMap making, and how knowledge artefacts such as maps can be collectively and collaboratively produced by a community of people, who are situated in different places around the world but engaged with the same repertoire of mapping practices. The empirical data illustrate that OpenStreetMap itself acts as a boundary object that enables actors from different social worlds to co-produce the Map through interacting with each other and negotiating the meanings of mapping, the mapping data and the Map itself. The discourses also show that unlike traditional maps that black-box cartographic knowledge and offer a single dominant perspective of cities or places, OpenStreetMap is an embodied epistemic object that embraces different world views. The paper also explores how contributors build their identities as an OpenStreetMaper alongside some other identities they have. Understanding the identity-building process helps to understand mapping as an embodied activity with emotional, cognitive and social repertoires. http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~db=all~content=a935694438~frm=titlelink ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Analysing the OSM community
On 28/03/2011 15:30, Maurizio Napolitano wrote: I found today this article A qualitative enquiry into OpenStreetMap making Author: Yu-Wei Lina *Single Article Purchase:* US$41.00 ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Analysing the OSM community
On Mon, 28 Mar 2011 16:32:21 +0100 SomeoneElse li...@mail.atownsend.org.uk wrote: On 28/03/2011 15:30, Maurizio Napolitano wrote: I found today this article A qualitative enquiry into OpenStreetMap making Author: Yu-Wei Lina *Single Article Purchase:* US$41.00 I didn't find the abstract meaningful as it was full of politically correct speak. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Analysing the OSM community
On Tue, 29 Mar 2011 08:09:30 +1100 Elizabeth Dodd ed...@billiau.net wrote: On Mon, 28 Mar 2011 16:32:21 +0100 SomeoneElse li...@mail.atownsend.org.uk wrote: On 28/03/2011 15:30, Maurizio Napolitano wrote: I found today this article A qualitative enquiry into OpenStreetMap making Author: Yu-Wei Lina *Single Article Purchase:* US$41.00 I didn't find the abstract meaningful as it was full of politically correct speak. Having read the first page and skimmed the rest it seems to be a sociological investigation, sample size 16, discussing the user base of a FLOSS project rather than the developer base. A more correct email subject would be Discussing the OSM community ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Analysing the OSM community
On 29 March 2011 10:09, Elizabeth Dodd ed...@billiau.net wrote: I didn't find the abstract meaningful as it was full of politically correct speak. well done, an entire scientific study dismissed with a meaningless piece of jargon. perhaps a more in-depth analysis would be more useful? -- robin http://tangleball.org.nz/ - Auckland's Creative Space http://openstreetmap.org.nz/ - Open Street Map New Zealand http://bumblepuppy.org/blog/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Analysing the OSM community
Speaking as someone with a background in science I think I agree with Elizabeth's interpretation. I get the impression the study is much more subjective than solid, the sample size far too small to get any meaningful results other than this needs more research dollars to further define etc etc. I've just been reading a study on licensing by a consultant. Take out the jargon and it says the more liberal the license the more likely it is that people will use your Open data. Well yes but did we really need a study to discover that? I like jargon when it is used as a short hand way of expressing something to a group of people working in a field but not when it is used to add respectability to a report. Cheerio John On 28 March 2011 19:05, Robin Paulson robin.paul...@gmail.com wrote: On 29 March 2011 10:09, Elizabeth Dodd ed...@billiau.net wrote: I didn't find the abstract meaningful as it was full of politically correct speak. well done, an entire scientific study dismissed with a meaningless piece of jargon. perhaps a more in-depth analysis would be more useful? -- robin http://tangleball.org.nz/ - Auckland's Creative Space http://openstreetmap.org.nz/ - Open Street Map New Zealand http://bumblepuppy.org/blog/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Analysing the OSM community
On 29 March 2011 12:26, john whelan jwhelan0...@gmail.com wrote:
Speaking as someone with a background in science I think I agree with
Elizabeth's interpretation.
I get the impression the study is much more subjective than solid, the
sample size far too small to get any meaningful results other than this
needs more research dollars to further define etc etc.
ah, you mean the language is elitist and highly complicated? yes, i
would agree - welcome to academia. i'm not sure what the catch phrase
of the angry redneck ('politically correct') has to do with that
though
and unfortunately this (complicated language) is common to any area of
any complexity, even the holy OSM itself.
personally (having a background in sociology), the abstract is
meaningful and does make sense. to a sociologist. to expect to
understand the language is like reading a phd thesis on astro-physics
and complaining because you can't understand it. these are complicated
themes, based on complicated theories. it's not written with amateur
GISers in mind, although it perhaps should be so the knowledge is made
available to the source it draws from
dissecting what and why: the type of study done here demands a small
sample set - it is not supposed to be representative, generalizable,
or follow any other ideals of the scientific method.
the value is in a huge amount of data from a small number of people,
learning about their understanding of the concepts, not bland
statistics like the number of edits they do, the date they joined osm,
etc. it is typically used to guide the creation of new theories, which
are then tested with quantitative research (asking for bland stats).
to anyone used to working with the scientific method (most comp sci,
engineering, physics, biology, electronics, etc, professionals), this
can look a bit lightweight, but it's a different way of ascribing
meaning
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualitative_research
for more
I've just been reading a study on licensing by a consultant. Take out the
jargon and it says the more liberal the license the more likely it is that
people will use your Open data. Well yes but did we really need a study
to discover that?
is that all it said? i'd be surprised if there wasn't slightly more
I like jargon when it is used as a short hand way of expressing something to
a group of people working in a field but not when it is used to add
respectability to a report.
this is true, i'd agree, but you're in a difficult situation. how do
you explain difficult concepts, which may themselves rest on other
difficult concepts, without talking in this way?
--
robin
http://tangleball.org.nz/ - Auckland's Creative Space
http://openstreetmap.org.nz/ - Open Street Map New Zealand
http://bumblepuppy.org/blog/
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Re: [OSM-talk] Analysing the OSM community
On Tue, 29 Mar 2011 14:07:25 +1300
Robin Paulson robin.paul...@gmail.com wrote:
On 29 March 2011 12:26, john whelan jwhelan0...@gmail.com wrote:
Speaking as someone with a background in science I think I agree
with Elizabeth's interpretation.
I get the impression the study is much more subjective than solid,
the sample size far too small to get any meaningful results other
than this needs more research dollars to further define etc etc.
ah, you mean the language is elitist and highly complicated? yes, i
would agree - welcome to academia. i'm not sure what the catch phrase
of the angry redneck ('politically correct') has to do with that
though
big SNIP
You have jumped in again. The paper describes what it describes, and
from the small sample set makes some good points, but we don't see the
reasoning behind the choice of the sample set, which by its nature has
to have excluded a number of user groups.
Discussion of that point, or acknowledgement of the difficulties
inherent in making the choice, would have added to the paper.
The study is subjective because it is in sociology, and that is a
feature of that sort of research, where students just don't have access
to the resources needed to survey a few million or even a few thousand
people.
I'm not concerned about complicated themes and complicated
theories. I've been through enough of the tertiary education system
that I should be able to cope with sociology.
I object to the overuse of jargon in the abstract.
The abstract should be meaningful to the average university graduate.
Writing the abstract in jargon, while it seems 'exact', is a means of
isolating various parts of the education community from each other, and
discouraging the spread of knowledge. I guess its an antithesis of
FLOSS.
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Re: [OSM-talk] Analysing the OSM community
Unfortunatly my professor decided not to support this kind of research. I might start another try at the end of the year. Of course only if nobody else did it before ;) cya Matthias ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Analysing the OSM community
Matthias I like the sound of this. Not only useful research, but useful for the active OSM community, and for building new communities. A question I get often is what does OSM look like in X country? These kind of community statistics, easily accessible, would be great step towards this. Similar, and very brief, thoughts at http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Talk:Stats#Thoughts_on_improved_metrics Privacy, I only see the issue with private messages. Easy enough to focus on datamining other channels. -Mikel == Mikel Maron == +14152835207 @mikel s:mikelmaron From: Matthias Meißer dig...@arcor.de To: talk@openstreetmap.org Sent: Sun, March 20, 2011 10:05:10 AM Subject: [OSM-talk] Analysing the OSM community Hi there, I'm thinking about doing some research on our community itself. I would like to do a statistical approach to analyse our commmunication channels -mailinglists -Forums -wiki -OSM private messages -OSM changesets to be able to do some datamining e.g. 'most mappers work strictly local', 'users just reading mailinglists in their native language',... But as far as I know, this informations are unvailable to the public, so I had to use the main system instance. I'm not that sure who might be the right person to talk with, cause of the different aspects e.g. technical, privacy, Matthias ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Analysing the OSM community
Hi Mikel, thanks. To this question this new series might provide a good answer http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/How_do_you_map_in but currently I wait for the russian author. Concerning the statistical analyse, I contacted the OSMF Communications Working group. regards Matthias ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
[OSM-talk] Analysing the OSM community
Hi there, I'm thinking about doing some research on our community itself. I would like to do a statistical approach to analyse our commmunication channels -mailinglists -Forums -wiki -OSM private messages -OSM changesets to be able to do some datamining e.g. 'most mappers work strictly local', 'users just reading mailinglists in their native language',... But as far as I know, this informations are unvailable to the public, so I had to use the main system instance. I'm not that sure who might be the right person to talk with, cause of the different aspects e.g. technical, privacy, Matthias ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Analysing the OSM community
Nice! I started the same kind of research :) Maybe we can work togheter. 2011/3/20 Matthias Meißer dig...@arcor.de: Hi there, I'm thinking about doing some research on our community itself. I would like to do a statistical approach to analyse our commmunication channels -mailinglists -Forums -wiki -OSM private messages -OSM changesets to be able to do some datamining e.g. 'most mappers work strictly local', 'users just reading mailinglists in their native language',... But as far as I know, this informations are unvailable to the public, so I had to use the main system instance. I'm not that sure who might be the right person to talk with, cause of the different aspects e.g. technical, privacy, Matthias ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk -- Maurizio Napo Napolitano http://de.straba.us ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Analysing the OSM community
Great Maurizio, well currently it's just an idea and I might have the time to realize it in the next month. Before I would ask my university, I would like to get a go or not go from the community if datamining in this kind might be possible. What I try to do is to collect attributes per user of this channels and try to link them using nick or email. Later I would like to pseudomize the dataset (random names, userid, no email, jitter in edit bboxes,...) and make it available to other researchers. Of course I would sign a contract to the foundation about privacy. You already linked your work here Maurizio? http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Research ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Analysing the OSM community
well currently it's just an idea and I might have the time to realize it in the next month. Before I would ask my university, I would like to get a go or not go from the community if datamining in this kind might be possible. [...] Nice ... we are on the same way ... You already linked your work here Maurizio? http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Research i started in this period. I hope to link some in the list In this moment i have only some school projects. I readed some papers very nice. I like works like this http://www.slideshare.net/nbudhat2/sotm-us-2010-nama-r-budhathoki (a presentation for the sotm 2010) ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
