On 12/07/2016 17:29, Éric Gillet wrote:
So at least one user should reach out to the contributor before
involving the DWG ? That would be great but that's not currently the
case in my experience.
The vast majority of my DWG interactions with other OSM users are "if
you see something amiss, please comment on the changeset discussion so
that the person making a mistake knows there's a problem". It's
actually rare for DWG members to see something and act immediately; most
are reported to us directly, often by multiple users.
What might happen is that we jump fairly quickly on obvious sock-puppets
(see for example the ones at the top of the
http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/SomeoneElse/blocks_by list - but even
in that case the recipient has a clear route to engage with the DWG to
say "you made a mistake").
To my mind, the biggest and most important requirement in
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Automated_Edits_code_of_conduct is
"document and discuss". It's important that large-scale edits
(especially worldwide ones) catch the ear of those mappers and data
consumers that they're going to affect. Also, sometimes well-meaning
tag-changers sometimes don't have as much domain knowledge as others
about the things that they're proposing to change (the "trees" change
mentioned upthread was a good example of this - most needleleaved
(coniferous) trees are evergreen, but not all, and the person making the
(undiscussed) change didn't know that). Discussing proposed changes in
the open means that everyone can benefit from that wider knowledge.
It's also important to remember that OSM is supposed to be something
representing the real world, not a bunch of data that is semantically
described by the wiki. Essentially, it's a geography project, not a
computer science one*. There will be cases where the data that's in OSM
is "a bit woolly", and doesn't quite get the sense of a real-world
entity across (but without an on-the-ground survey it's difficult to say
what the problem is). Sometimes the fact that OSM mappers have captured
something that "doesn't quite fit" OSM's frequently used categories is
really useful, because it identifies something that we should categorise
better - so it's important that the _sense_ of what the original mapper
reported is kept, rather than their square peg being hammered down into
a round hole**.
I've read through your posts in this thread, and while it's clear that
you have an issue with the way that things work now, I can't see what
that problem actually is. Can you provide some specific examples of DWG
actions that you think were inappropriate? What do you think should
have happened instead?
However do bear in mind that just like the vast majority of people in
OSM everyone in the DWG's a volunteer. Some volunteered; others were
asked to join but everyone's unpaid. Also bear in mind that everyone in
OSM's a human being and deserves a basic level of respect - even new
users creating invalid POIs simply because they don't realise they're
editing a worldwide map.
Best Regards,
Andy (aka http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/SomeoneElse , member of the
DWG but writing in a personal capacity).
* full disclosure - I'm part of the problem here, as I'm a computer
scientist rather than a geographer by trade.
** part of my background was in statistical analysis of
electromechanical data (while that was still a thing), and a key lesson
from there is that you need to keep as much data as possible in order to
be able to detect odd or expensive events as they occur - part of this
has since been described as "black swan theory", but there's a bit more
to it than that.
_______________________________________________
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
