Dear all, The DWG has decided not to allow votes for mechanical edits. Andy Townsend wrote me privately, on behalf of the Data Working Group:
> Please also don't try and organise "votes" for subsequent mechanical edits - > the consensus of the comments on the talk-gb list is clear that it's _not_ an > appropriate mechanism. For the sake of transparency, I thought it would be good to share this message also with the list. It is not clear to me why the DWG believes that the consensus on this list is that voting is not an appropriate mechanism. During the procedure for my mechanical edits, I had the impression that while some members, perhaps a majority, were against voting, there were also members who supported the voting process, or at least thought it is the best process available. Personally, I also don't think this decision is particularly helpful for the community. For the three mechanical edit proposals I have run, voting has helped me a lot to gauge the amount of support within the community. From discussion alone it's hard to estimate if there exists opposition - often people ask critical questions, which might lead one to think they oppose the edit, but then these people still express support when confronted with an approve/oppose question. Also, the mechanical edit policy states that 'As a rule of thumb, you should have 90% of the community behind you when you make the edit'. It's unclear how someone who proposes a mechanical edit can find out what part of the community he has behind him, when polling the community is not permitted. In any case, the citation above is the decision of the DWG. I respect this decision, and I will therefore not use voting as a means to gauge the community's opinion in further mechanical edit proposals. Finally, I would like to thank Andy and the rest of the DWG for their hard work. Even though I don't agree with their decision in this particular instance, I realize they do a lot of unpaid hard work that is invaluable for the community. Kind regards, Matthijs _______________________________________________ Talk-GB mailing list Talk-GB@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-gb
