Frederik Ramm wrote:
>Sent: 08 April 2008 2:31 PM
>To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>Cc: OSM-Talk
>Subject: Re: [OSM-talk] Voting
>
>Sven,
>
>> I can't remember that ULFL ever claimed that.
>
>Ok. There we go again. Nobody has claimed anything, but the fact of the
>matter is that a number of people seem to think that those who vote make
>a decision that is "a decision of the project" rather than "a decision
>of those five people who voted".
>
>I've been critcised for not suggesting an alternative. So here's my
>suggestion:
>
>* Continue your discussion and voting as before
>
>* Give yourselves a name ("OSM Tagging Task Force" or whatever) and
>create a mailing list.
>
>* Do not talk about "approved", "rejected", or "deprecated" features;
>instead, if something is voted in favour, it becomes a "recommended by
>OSMTTF" feature.
>
>* Be very clear that any feature *not* voted upon, or any feature which
>got less votes than something else, or any feature that a majority of
>voters didn't like, is still perfectly valid to use - you just don't
>actively recommend it.
>
>* Never try to keep people from using tags you didn't recommend (i.e. do
>not add a big message to the Wiki saying "THIS FEATURE IS NOT
>RECOMMENDED!").
>
>* Be very clear that the group you form is a small subset of the
>project; you create recommendations based on today's knowledge and on
>what you like and dislike. There may be any number of *other* groups in
>the project who also create recommendations and who have the same right
>to exist that you have. You are not special, the project has not asked
>you to please give recommendations, and has not given you any special
>powers that others don't have. (Much as the project never asks anyone to
>please write software and be the project's premier software contributor
>- anyone can do it and if it proves to be good, it is used.)
>
>* Be very clear that your recommendations create no obligations
>whatsoever on the part of renderers and editors; your tags are not
>better or more important than anyone else's.
>
>Do all this and I will stop complaining. I might even actively refer
>people to you ("better talk this over with the guys on the tagging task
>force list, they usually have good ideas" or so).
>
>> Will this discussion only end when Ulf, Robin, me and several others set
>> up a separate wiki for those who want to agree on and use a consistent
>> tagging sheme because they believe it's a good thing? When this project
>> is so open, why are we always blamed for what we do?
>
>I'll draw a parallel to the licensing debate here. Over on legal-talk, I
>constantly advocate PD, saying that nothing can ever be more "free" than
>PD because it has no restrictions. I am then routinely criticised by
>share-alike advocates who say that the freedom of PD might be abused by
>people further down the line to actually *reduce* freedom.
>
>In this discussion, I find myself on their side: Our project is so open,
>and I have the impression that you are trying to *reduce* that openness
>by setting up a voting process. I have the suspicion that in the end you
>want a project where new tags aren't even allowed unless they underwent
>discussion and voting. And that's where my fierce opposition comes from.
>
>Bye
>Frederik
>I haven't expressed my view too much on this aspect of late. I think most know that I'm an advocate of the "let it evolve" approach. SteveC pointed me last night to this: http://youtube.com/watch?v=WMSinyx_Ab0 If you haven't seen it already its principally discussing the arguments and issues surrounding wikipedia and whether it can stand for truth or not. OSM basically has the same dilemma. There will always be those that think the prescribed approach, and this applies beyond tags too, is the only way the project will be considered authoritative and therefore in the longer term useful/successful. I don't hold this view, and this is why. Like another poster I too use international standards in my life as an engineer. But daily I come across poorly conceived standards and differences in interpretation, usage and supposedly equivalent standards in different jurisdictions. I also see standards having to change with time and that these changes don't usually keep pace with technological developments or new research and best practice. The final minute of the above video for me is the important point. An expert, whether it is on tags or anything else, has a high degree of knowledge about the subject, but that is not the only knowledge. Any knowledge, whether from an expert of not is knowledge gained about the subject and has relevance. This is why I think the original wikipedia approach was fine, provided that it would never be considered authoritative. If you want an "authoritative" version, in the same way that the Encyclopaedia Britannica or OED might be considered authoritative, then fine, make your rules and produce your work to standards, each individual then has the option to consider these alongside any other sources of information when making a decision or taking a view about something. If we turn this point to OSM we can see that if the community pools its ideas on a point, tags in this instance, then we reach through discussion on the lists/IRC wiki etc a level of general consensus about a tag, it is immaterial whether the consensus reached is right or wrong in the wider context. It's what the community feels is appropriate at the time. The problem comes along only if a subset of the community decide to "approve" the consensus and cast it in stone as an immovable statement. Doing so stops further revision of the community consensus, and thus in my view makes it less authoritative with time. As Frederik says, there is absolutely no problem with a subset of the community voting and deciding what it recommends, the result can even be part of the consensus, but I don't see it in any way as a benefit to the project to enforce and standardise the result and make that the "official way". I'll make one final point, apologies for some of the nostalgia in what follows, though the background might be useful to record for posterity. I drafted the original map features following a pub discussion with SteveC and Alex Willmer in November 2005. It was the first time I had met Steve and he had specifically come up to Birmingham to meet us to get our input on the project, it was early days of course and reaching consensus in those days was often a matter of a beer in the pub. Point 10 on his agenda said "Tags and the data structure. The ideas on the wiki appear unstructured." In those days the community was little meetings and discussions like this. I was keen to show that I had some ideas about how we might display our data beyond just making nodes and segments and adding a single "class" attribute. I had knocked up a list of features in a document called "WAYS". Its here if you want to see what it looked like: http://ajr.hopto.org/osm/WAYS.pdf You can see from it where most of the original Map Features came from. Nobody has ever suggested we approve the original map features list. The vast majority of which is still in use today, warts and all. The community acted pragmatically, it saw the list was useful and used it. What has been the real surprise to me is that nobody has done the same thing in a wholesale way for other "non map" aspects of OSM, such as routing. So the point I wanted to make is that even if just one individual has an idea and implements it and it gets used buy someone else then its useful, it benefits the project. We need to get back to encouraging and embracing new ideas that individuals or groups come up with. The project has seen a number of them in the past and they have all been defining moments in the history of the project. We need more of them to keep the evolution of OSM moving. So rather than debating an idea or proposal lets be more pragmatic and get on and finish the map. It may not be the cleanest set of data out there, but right now it's the only free set there is of its type and we have stolen a march on everyone else. As a human race we continue to evolve. OSM should be the same. Lets keep it that way. Apologies for droning on a little long ;-) Cheers Andy _______________________________________________ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/talk
