Re: [OSM-talk] Organizational mapping policy, the role of the DWG
At May 13 Paul Norman wrote a posting on behalf of the Data Working Group (DWG) stating that “…For this reason the DWG is considering if it is necessary to issue guidelines for organizational editing.” Also the words “guideline requirements” were used in this post. My daily job for over 25 years at various organizations involves striking the balance between interests in many ways, like governance issues, like segregation of duties. And having multiple discussions about which one is better: control or trust? Peoples behaviour unfortunately needs both control and trust and it’s a never ending story as to which degree both are needed. In his trias politica Montesquieu took the view that the Roman Republic had powers separated so that no one could usurp complete power. Balancing of powers by separating them into legislative, executive and judicial powers is needed to avoid centralized power or even dictatorship. Translated to OSM, legislative can be compared to setting formal/informal standards, guidelines, policies and requirements, all needed to control the project and to avoid arbitrariness (‘a motorway should not be tagged as a footway’). Executing is carrying these out. And judicial could be compared to ‘grey-haired independent persons’, to which you can turn in case one does not agree with a decision by the executive body. To my knowledge OSM does not have such a judicial body. Centralized power which combines two or three powers can sometimes be very handy, for example in emergency situations: one or two persons take control, the rest has to obey their commands. “The building is on fire, everyone has to leave this building immediately”. Back to this thread. I was wondering why it is the DWG considering issuing guidelines. The DWG has a powerful position, since the DWG can block users and revert edits. That’s an executive role. The possible impact of that power: massive. The Mechanical Edit Policy (although it seems to be a draft?), which has no set start date, contains the following line: “Your edit may be reverted even if you have followed this policy; this doesn't guarantee your edit will be accepted.”. Wow. That means the DWG even has the power to revert the import of the original Tiger dataset in the U.S. without the U.S. community being able to defend itself. Having much power in an executive role because a judicial role is missing requires integrity and delicacy. I have no doubt that the DWG members are integer and delicate. So why also pick up the legislative role? Is there a fire within OSM, which needs central control these days? To answer this question I checked the various postings in this thread. Paul uses the following phrase in his posting of May 14: “Recent events in a project similar to OpenStreetMap - Wikipedia - have demonstrated that the participation of organizations in data editing can occasionally lead to misunderstandings or disharmony in the project, particularly where a lack of transparency is involved.” On a question of Simon Poole (May 14), asking whether there was a fire, Frederik Ramm (May 14) answered that there was a fire: four “no bad intent” organizations in Germany alone in the past year, Mapbox and Telenav being open but on a “totally voluntarily” basis and “likely a bunch of other companies who do the same kinds of things but do not talk about it”. It’s even wondered whether there is a fire: "The problem at hand is currently at a scale that can still be handled on a case-by-case basis” and “we assume that the number of such cases might be on the rise.” (Frederik Ramm, May 14). Mikel Maron enquires about the scale of the problem on May 14: “From the DWG and others, would be good to know more specifically about problem instances from the past. Exactly what scale of a problem are we talking about?” Than on May 16 Clifford Snow challenges the DWG to show the fire: “I would challenge the DWG to share with the community their data on why they are bring up this topic.” Till date no answer. It might never come because there is no fire. Though it might be polite to answer him. Mikel wrote (May 14): “It's wise to contextualize all of this as part of "best practice", rather than policy requirements. We want to encourage people how to do things well within OSM, rather than discourage them from getting involved at all. No reason to take a defensive stance, unless an epic problem is erupting. So, if there’s no fire, no epic problem and a constant need to be integer and delicate, why is the DWG picking up the legislative role? To answer that question for myself, I wanted to view the DWG minutes. They can be found on this page: http://www.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Data_Working_Group That is, the DWG only seems to meet once a year. The last meeting minutes are from 2014-01-05. The previous one is from 2013-02-07. Too bad, nothing in this minutes resembles discussions about an organizational mapping policy. This lack of transparancy, along with a luckily failed attempt to issue gui
Re: [OSM-talk] Organizational mapping policy, the role of the DWG
Johan,
On 05/23/2014 12:43 AM, Johan C wrote:
> So, if there’s no fire, no epic problem and a constant need to be integer and
> delicate, why is the DWG picking up the legislative role?
I'd perhaps not word it in such a manner.
The DWG is occasionally (by those whom we admonish or block for bad
behaviour) accused of acting in an arbitrary way - people would prefer
to have a rule that says: Don't do this or we will intervene, instead of
just having a general hand-wavy "as long as nobody complains you might
be fine".
And people are right - for the DWG, too, it would be nice to be able to
say "these are the rules that the community has agreed on", instead of
making things up as we go along.
These things take a lot of time and discussion. It can easily be a year
from suggesting that the community think about something, to the
development of something that might be called a policy. The DWG cannot
and will not usually poll the community on a concrete issue ("we have
received this complaint where a company did this and that without
consulting anyone, now what should we do"); and by looking at Wikipedia
I think it would be naive to assume that OSM won't see more and more
corporate or organised editing.
Aren't you active in the "Future Group" - should you not have some
understanding for the idea of looking ahead and thinking about
tomorrow's problems? Instead you essentially say, "the house is not on
fire so why establish safety rules". That's not very forward-looking is it?
My take is: We don't need a policy now but we will some day need one;
even today, while not yet strictly necessary, having a policy would
create a fair playing ground for everyone.
I don't think this is "DWG picking up the legislative role" - it's more
"DWG consulting the community" because, as I said, as long as there's no
guideline we'll decide things on a case-by-case basis.
> To answer that question for myself, I wanted to view the DWG minutes. They
> can be found on this page:
> http://www.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Data_Working_Group
> That is, the DWG only seems to meet once a year. The last meeting minutes are
> from 2014-01-05. The previous one is from 2013-02-07. Too bad, nothing in
> this minutes resembles discussions about an organizational mapping policy.
I don't know what the problem is here. Most of DWG discussions happen on
the DWG mailing list. We discussed an issue, we decided to ask what the
community was thinking - where's your problem?
> This lack of transparancy, along with a luckily failed attempt to issue
> guideline requirements
What? Do we have a language problem here? Let me quote from Paul's message:
"For this reason the DWG is considering if it is necessary to issue
guidelines for organizational editing."
So, "considering if it is necessary". He doesn't even say that we have
made up our mind yet, nor that we were "attempting to issue" something.
Then further:
"Some possible guideline requirements could involve ..."
All this was meant as an (early) consultation of the community on this
list with the aim of hearing what people think. I don't know how in the
world you got the impression that we were "attempting to issue
guidelines" and that this attempt had "luckily failed"!
In fact, this message from Paul constitutes the very transparency that
you were asking for earlier. What can be more transparent than emailing
the list and saying: "Look, people, we think we might need some policy
here, what do you think?"
> makes me confused, worried and even a bit terrified.
That's because you have been involved in a data import which didn't
follow the import guidelines properly, and now you're biased against DWG
because we called you out on it and terrified you. But you shouldn't mix
those bad feelings with the issue at hand here as they are completely
separate.
> Some questions for the DWG, as a call for transparancy:
I will answer these questions to the best of my ability but I think the
questions are at odds with the way the DWG, or indeed almost any other
OSMF working group, functions. I am very much interested in separating
the questions "should we have an organisational mapping policy and what
should it say" from your other point that I'd paraphrase as "are the DWG
really a bunch of secretive power-grabbing bastards that should stop
meddling with stuff outside of their mandate" ;)
> 1)Being an executive body, why do you think you have the mandate to being
> a legislative body as well?
I think you're misunderstanding the situation. If you want to stick with
political analogies, DWG is an executive and partly also judicative
body, but the laws on which we base our work are extremely general -
with a few exceptions, essentially it's "don't be a dick". We then have
to decide who is a dick and why. You can get blocked and your edits
reverted today for letting 20 of your pupils add imaginary data to OSM -
organizational edit policy or no organizational edit policy.
Having a few more rules that
Re: [OSM-talk] Organizational mapping policy, the role of the DWG
Hi Frederik, > That's because you have been involved in a data import which didn't follow the import guidelines properly, and now you're biased against DWG because we called you out on it and terrified you. But you shouldn't mix those bad feelings with the issue at hand here as they are completely separate. [Don't take the following paragraph personally, it's about your role and not you as a person:] Ha, Freud speaking :-) To be honest, the SWOT of OSM ( http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Talk:Future) already has several items about decision making. But as you bring it up, you can compare the current level of decision making on imports in OSM by the following example. Person A is having a discussion with person B. Person A knows that person B has a gun which could be used to kill person A, but person A tries to forget about that in the discussion. Than person B has two wishes. Person A decides after serious consultation with a group of other persons to incorporate wish 1 in the decision, but not to incorporate wish 2 for reasons which are valid for the group. Five months after the decision is made person B does not like that wish 2 was not seen as an order. So, person B shows his gun. What should person A do now if he wants to stay alive? It's not that 'we' called out. You as a list member (since you did not identify in a role speaking on behalf of the DWG) posted something which is to date still unclear to me: you didn't answer three questions relevant to me. So nope, I don't have bad feelings against DWG. In fact, I think they are doing an important job in keeping the database healthy. And they could even do a better job when roles are divided. Since it's likely that imports will increase in the near future because of the massive release of open geodata in 2015 in Europe the role of the DWG in taking decisions based on clear guidelines and some clear requirements will even get more important. > The DWG is occasionally (by those whom we admonish or block for bad behaviour) accused of acting in an arbitrary way - people would prefer to have a rule that says: Don't do this or we will intervene, instead of just having a general hand-wavy "as long as nobody complains you might be fine". And people are right - for the DWG, too, it would be nice to be able to say "these are the rules that the community has agreed on", instead of making things up as we go along. I completely agree with you. It wouldn't be difficult to have a right balance of powers. https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Open_Data_License/Community_Guidelines/How_We_Create_Community_Guidelines already shows a way that the community is involved in a good manner (transparancy) and that the balance of powers is correct (OSMF in the legislative role by endorsement). We can learn from Wikipedia about the judicial role: they have got mediation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Mediation_Committee/Policy. Balancing of powers in which the DWG only has an executive role can make decisions by the DWG more accepted by the community. > Aren't you active in the "Future Group" - should you not have some understanding for the idea of looking ahead and thinking about tomorrow's problems? Instead you essentially say, "the house is not on fire so why establish safety rules". That's not very forward-looking is it? OSM can't do without rules. That's why I think the line 'supporting, but not controlling' is ridiculous. Indeed, central command without governance is dangerous: the community should be in charge. But no, a motorway has not be be tagged as a footway just because an indivual member likes that. I'm one of the people behind the SWOT so I'm forward looking. It wouldn't be bad to have a SWOT for the DWG. That would lead to risk assessments of current and future risks and enable a workplan made in conjunction between DWG and the community. > I don't think this is "DWG picking up the legislative role" - it's more "DWG consulting the community" because, as I said, as long as there's no guideline we'll decide things on a case-by-case basis. Also when there are clear guidelines, policies, requirements en so on decisions will be made on a case-by-case basis. But within the boundaries of these clear guidelines, policies, requirements and so on. That's the fate of an executive body. Clear guidelines, policies, requirements etc. should always have a context, a goal: what are they made for, what's the spirit behind them? And with mediation in place, the community will have a place to go to when they don't agree with a decision by the DWG. And that may result in an improvement of guidelines, policies, requirements and so on. > I don't know what the problem is here. Most of DWG discussions happen on the DWG mailing list. We discussed an issue, we decided to ask what the community was thinking - where's your problem? In the fact that it fell out of the sky, in the fact that the LWG approach was not followed and in the fact that questions (like the question
