On 2018-06-29 17:27, Carlos Cámara wrote:
Dear all,
After participating in this openstreetmap-carto issue [1] discussing
to create an icon for casinos in which I stated that they should not
be highlighted with an icon due to their grave consequences derived
from gambling addiction (there are plenty of scientific literature
about it),
I totally oppose this stance. If we start censoring casinos, why not
censor brothels? Why not censor butchers? Why not censor churches and
mosques? Why stop at that point that you propose because someone or
another thinks he sits on a moral highground and thinks he can decide
for others what they should see (or how they should behave)?
An attitude like that is wrong on so many levels.
First: Any map is also a political act in terms that the mappers
decide which information is displayed and which one is not, but also
This argument is wrong. Any single mapper may decide he does not want to
add certain information because from his moral believes or ethical code
he thinks it is wrong to have that in the map, but any other single
mapper may decide he will add that information. And at that point it is
not for that first mapper to delete that information.
You are proposing that if any single mapper should decide a certain
piece of information should not be added, no one can.
The latter is a political standpoint. The former is not.
Second: The very foundations of OSM as a project are techno-political
in terms that it was created to overcome the lack of certain
geographical information about certain areas or topics. This is even
more obvious in HOSM or the not-at-all-accidental use of open licenses
from its very beginning.
What argument is this for not adding certain pieces of information from
a moral reason?
Third: by creating the map the way we love, we are also creating the
I love a map that displays everything that is there. That includes
casinos.
In order to overcome those matters (and if I am not wrong), so far the
position on this regards is to render everything on
openstreetmap-carto provided the following conditions: A) there is a
significant number of uses (don't know how much is "significant"), B)
someone creates an issue requesting for it, C) someone designs an icon
or a representation for it, D) someone implements it by creating a
Pull request that is merged into openstreetmap-carto project.
It seems a sensible approach as it tries to be both as objective as
possible and pragmatic but is not free from polemics: behind the
appearance of not taking part on the political debate, the truth is
that the resulting map has a strong Eurocentric and heteropatriarchal
perspective which may not take into account diversity either in the
world nor in OSM's community (which does not have to do with figures
about representativity). Or in other words, it is like European white
heterosexual males were doing a kind of digital colonization of the
world by imposing their rules simply because other groups are not
participating in the decision-making process and hence their
needs/opinions have not been taken into account.
Do you have examples why you think so? You say yourself, anyone having a
proper reason or case for displaying anything and/or is willing to
invest the time to do so, is welcome to.
How does this exclude the non-european, non-heterosexuals and non-male
people from doing this?
And again: do you have examples for this?
And no: displaying something that a homosexual japanese lady does not
want us to display is not an example.
It may be true that the map is as you describe because the people on the
carto team are as you describe.
If this is about diversity, if this is an outcry that the carto team
should have less eurocentric and heteropatriarchal people or view, than
you should do something about that. And please do not propose a minimum
percentage of gay asian women to be included in the carto team, that
does not work. But if you are one, you are welcome to join that team, I
suppose.
If the map were really eurocentric then why are not all place labels in
latin script? (pet peeve)
Regards,
Maarten
_______________________________________________
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
