Hi, David Murn wrote:
Unfortunately, being involved in an OSMF (or SWG, LWG, DWG, etc) meeting isnt as easy as 'just showing up'. Infact, its not even really possible to be invovled by reading the minutes or the meeting notes. Those of us who wish to be involved, join public discussions and forums. Apparently those who are actually in the positions of power are no longer interested in public discussions and forums. Exactly how was anyone to have 'shown up' to discussions about a new logo, when the first that 99.9% of us became aware of the change was when someone asks HERE after its already been decided and changed.
Thing is, we have a ton of people who like to have a say, but that's all you ever get from them - words. They demand to be informed, so that they can then pick and choose where they want to be "involved", where "being involved" means that they will say things like "I think this should be done differently".
This, however, is not how things work in OSM. There is hardly any part of OSM that is not open for you to participate; OSMF board may be an exception because you would actually have to persuade people to vote for you before, but any working group will most certainly accept anyone who offers to do a share of the work.
What you cannot do is join a working group, do not participate in the work, but expect to have a say. You can of course still say things like "I think this should be done differently", and you may even get heard, but if you instead say "I have made this plan and worked out the following and is everyone ok with me implementing that next week?" then you will have 10 times the weight of someone saying "this should be done differently". Or 100 times.
This is something that I had to learn, and still have to learn, as well. Still, I am tempted very often to say my opinion about something where I am not capable or not willing to help, and I frequently do - but at least I have learned not to complain if those who do the work choose to ignore me. OSM is not a democracy in which everyone has equal say with no questions asked. In OSM you have to earn your say.
Strategic working group can hardly be said to be doing things "behind closed doors", in fact their meeting notes were usually up online HOURS after a meeting was over, and meetings were always announced in advance and held on an open IRC channel.
From time to time there may be really important things where one would like to have a broad input from people in the project. (I don't consider the logo change to be one of them.) And I can see that many of those who do the most work in this project are meanwhile critical of doing something like a post to talk becasue it will attract so many people who don't help to do the work but actually pull the cart in another direction.
In a sane environment you would do it anyway, because any sane person must take into account the possibility of being wrong - so that sometimes people pulling the cart in another direction might help to prevent a mistake being made. Also, in a sane environemnt, for any one person who is disruptive you would attract five others, giving you a positive net contribution.
But I - very reluctantly - start to agree with those who say that while it would be desirable to involve the community-at-large, the mechanisms we currently have seem to somehow not target the community but a handful of malcontents whom you cannot please whatever you do. This is an unfortunate dynamic, and we should look to other large communities to find out how they deal with it.
Certainly, after this thread, anyone *not* wanting to involve the community-at-large will have one more reason.
It would be great if we could somehow reboot and arrive at something sane again. This should not be an "us against them" situation on any side.
Bye Frederik -- Frederik Ramm ## eMail frede...@remote.org ## N49°00'09" E008°23'33" _______________________________________________ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
