Hi, On 20.09.2012 13:46, Lucas Nussbaum wrote:
Are there plans to increase diversity amongst members of the DWG?
We've long been looking for native speakers of a couple of Eastern European languages (Russian, Ukrainian) because an above-average number of disputes arise in that area and it would be great to have the support of a native speaker or two.
Having said that, DWG is not actively recruiting - we're keeping our eyes open and dropping a hint here and there and will consider applications when we get them, but we don't have a recruiting drive going, for fear of attracting the wrong people (those who feel that DWG would give them power). And while language capabilities are great, the most important thing in a DWG member is that they can listen to people, that they are reasonably polite and don't allow themselves to be drawn into an argument too quickly. So if we have another good person from the UK or Canada or Germany applying we certainly won't sent them away just because we'd prefer someone from South America.
You may, from this discussion, get the impression that DWG is a powerful police force who make their own rules and block anyone who doesn't listen. In reality, DWG work means that you spend a lot of time trying to mediate mini conflicts. A mapper calls and complains that another mapper has deleted his work; you contact the other mapper and they claim that no, the other guy was at fault because he made too many errors and didn't listen, and so on - all the time you try and find out what has really happened, and who is to blame, and what you can do to make these people work together instead of against each other. We're not looking for jurors, judges, or policemen at DWG, we don't need politicians or the hot-headed and trigger-happy; we mostly need kindergarten teachers ;)
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
