Hello again. I recently volunteered to serve on the DWG as a form of intellectual self-punishment, and that's working out pretty well for me so far.
One thing I'm nudging for in the DWG is more documentation around the cases dealt with by the DWG. What evidence is considered, and where there are any major differences in interpretation amongst the group. I'm modelling this on a half-arsed understanding of the American Circuit Court of Appeals, or a less flavoursome version of the Teaches of Peaches: "The Deliberations of the DWG". There's no resistance there at all, more a matter of finding the time between fighting fires. With my DWG hat on, in this case I haven't seen any new deliberations. I've seen references to a discussion that was held two years ago with a check-the-sentiment-holds at the end. There's no public collection of the evidence and interpretation backing the decision that was made at that time; but there will be more available next time, so this will incrementally improve, in the way changeset discussions seem already to have led to small improvements. With my cynical hat on, I read http://wiki.osm.org/wiki/Mechanical_Edit_Policy and it doesn't look worth the pixels it's printed with. It's a draft for inclusion in another draft that claims it wants to be part of the Import Guidelines, which could use compression. http://wiki.osm.org/wiki/Import/Guidelines With my personal hat on, I laugh with scorn in the face of this so-called Mechanical Edit Policy. And i'm in agreement with Matthijs' proposal to automatically clean up some errant shop name spelling variants. Jewsons has as much naming authority over itself as the local council IMO and it's not bad policy to follow theirs for their property. I quite like this hat trick, glad the hat is back in fashion, ttfn On Thu, Dec 18, 2014, at 01:17 AM, Matthijs Melissen wrote: > 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 _______________________________________________ Talk-GB mailing list Talk-GB@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-gb
