On Mon, Jul 11, 2011 at 5:00 PM, Steve Coast <st...@asklater.com> wrote: > I'm speaking strictly personally here, posting to talk@ and opengeodata. > > OSM often crosses bridges in it's growth. Mostly they're technical, like > introducing color maps, rendering new things or speeding up the system. We > have a much more ugly bridge to cross in front of us. > > Would you want to be part of a community which includes people explicitly > working to disrupt it, trolling it and breaking data? Would you want to be > part of a community where people are literally scared for their jobs when > thinking about helping run it? > > Over the last few days there has been a bunch of discussion on talk-au which > you can read in the archives, though for your own sanity you might want to > skip it. > > For the most part the posts revolve around the OSMF, the LWG and the license > process. I considered my presence there over the last few days as both a last > ditch attempt to salvage the data and more importantly the community that's > there. As RichardF pointed out, their license acceptance rate is about half > what most EU communities have achieved. I would say that the people on that > list feel disaffected with the process and their representation in it. > > Despite multiple attempts at trying to have a reasonable dialog over both > what happened and what we can do about it, mostly I've been met with extreme > animosity. > > Most of that comes from people either banned from the main lists, been > deleted/blocked from OSM or been moderated or who have publicly stated > they're here to disrupt the project. > > I've tried to get many people involved posting there in what I thought was a > worthwhile effort, in effect to save that list. Almost everybody declined to > do so. Only RichardF braved it and was met with a predictable response. > Frederik has given up and from my reading of his email considers talk-au dead > (I think you should make that email public). I find that understandable. > > I've been trying to find someone to moderate the list along the Etiquette > guidelines on the wiki. Mikel has given up, understandably, and he leads the > main moderators. We found one native Australian to moderate but they backed > out because they literally feared for their job safety, that the people who > now inhabit the list would make life with their employer difficult. Thus, > they declined to do so after initially accepting. I actually am convinced > that was the right decision and the people on that list are capable of it.
I don't think there is a need for moderation. It's not that bad. It is very easy to ignore/skip over posts, there is no need to block them. I haven't seen any abusive personal attacks or spamming (mind you I do skip over a lot of the quick back and forth messages...). > > I don't think anyone I know in OSM would want to be part of a community like > that. I think it's a sad low point in what otherwise is a wonderful project > to be involved in. > > Let me be more clear, *I* don't want to be part of a community that accepts > this. Who in their right mind would want to be a part of a community run by > people explicitly out to disrupt, fork and troll? > > In the best traditions of open projects our ideas and code are Free. It's not > clear that our time and server resources should be. Unlike our ideas and > code, they're finite and open to abuse. Make no mistake that our time and > resources are being used explicitly to destabilize the very project which > provides them. Used by mostly anonymous or pseudonymous people who as I say > have been kicked, banned or explicitly stated they want to destabilize OSM. > > This is not about censorship. If you read the lists, you'll find we've made > available repeatedly both the methods and the people to help resolve issues. > These people are free to fork the project and the data, it's all available > for download. They have their own mailing lists. Are there genuine questions > about license, it's implementation and so on? Absolutely. But level-headed > discussion is not welcome on talk-au for the most part. There are a few > people who can discuss this stuff impersonally there but it's a small part of > the list. > > Now - why are we at this point? > > The OSMF and the working groups, the apparatus of how a chunk of this project > is set up, are unable to deal with direct threats like this, even if it's > been going on for a year or more. One of the main forks of OSM (if you can > call it main, it doesn't yet display a map) is run by an ex-board member. > When you have someone like that working together with those who've explicitly > declared they want to disrupt OSM, it's very hard for a young, open and > democratic organization to deal with. For the most part we have no idea how > many of these people are even real too, it's been suggested that a few of the > pseudonyms are in fact just one person creating them on the fly. > > We simply don't have the tools for it. Until last week we had no moderation > at all, and that took many, many months (perhaps years) to set up. The board > meets too infrequently to be able to respond to people explicitly working for > its downfall, which perhaps is a little ironic. The working groups likewise I > don't think have the bandwidth as they currently operate. Generally in an > otherwise do-ocracy there is a lack of people who feel they have the > authority to take on a role like moderating. Even if they do, it's an > extremely thankless task that almost nobody will take on. > > So - what do we do now? > > Well to answer that I have to assume you agree with both the horrific tone on > that list and that it should not be part of the community we represent. For > that, you might be wanting references to some of the things I cite (like this > http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk/2011-April/057947.html ) but > I'll allow others to do that exhaustively (Grant is usually good, hint hint). > > I want to get back to mapping. I can only do that if we do something about > these people on our lists. > > I don't want to contemplate ignoring the problem, which is one extreme end. > > I don't want to be a part of a community that accepts this, so leaving it > as-is is not an option. > > We've tried hard to find moderators and failed. If you want to volunteer and > moderate under the Etiquette guidelines, this is the first option I would > consider, but you will get a lot of flack. And a beer from me. > > We can remove everyone from talk-au and start afresh. No pseudonyms, no > license talk (would have to go to legal-talk) under the new list. This would > hit reset but remove people who have legitimate concerns and those just > trying to get on with mapping. > > We can block the 'main' people. Then you have to draw the line somewhere > between the good and the bad anonymous posters. I would suggest anyone who's > posted that they want to disrupt the project and anyone operating under a > pseudonym. > > We can place everyone under the emergency moderation flag and clear each post > one by one, by moderator, by vote, I don't care. I can log in and do that too. > > Lots of people from talk@ could join talk-au@ and make it a nice place to be > again, the way we took back legal-talk@ from the very same people. > > Maybe you have a better option? > > Either way, this is an ugly bridge to cross. We need to do something to make > it clear this is not how things work in OSM. We need to make the message > heard that this is not normal, this is not the reputation we want to be known > by and we won't let it be this way. _______________________________________________ Talk-au mailing list Talk-au@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-au
