No. Without commenting on the concrete issue at hand, the general idea of “let others map what they want, that’s freedom” is dangerous. We all have a shared responsibility for OpenStreetMap, and that includes making sure that bad/damaging/problematic stuff does not go into the database. We can discuss whether disputed boundaries are bad/damaging/problematic, but we cannot discuss about allowing bad/damaging/problematic stuff into the database on the grounds of “freedom”. People protecting OSM from bad/damaging/problematic stuff are not evil gatekeepers taking away the freedom of others. And frankly, the trope about the “few vocal individuals” from someone who has single-handedly not only added hundreds of thousands of wikidata entries to OSM but is now also slowly re-structuring the wiki according to his wikidata habits? I guess they’re only a vocal minority if they are not you!

This is an interesting project. However, as has been said in the ongoing discussion about dissenting views on administrative boundaries, there is often very little on-the-ground evidence of these claims. So if someone should come along and delete some of these claims that you plan to map in OSM on the basis of lack of evidence, they would have established OSM best practice on their side. This is especially true for geometries you add (as opposed to adding tags to existing geometries). To reduce the risk of disputes about disputed boundaries, I would suggest that you try your best to document the sources so that if something is not verifiable on the ground, it is at least verifiable through the source that you have specified. If OSM’s on-the-ground rules should turn out to be too much of a stumbling block for this project, then maybe as a compromise disputed boundaries in OSM could receive a pointer to an external “world-view database” that would allow data processors to query that separate database where needed. (Speaking in personal capacity, not in that of a DWG member.)

I salute your enthusiasm but:

• the article you quote as the source in your changesets is not suitably licensed; the article itself quotes work that is based on Google aerial imagery
• these are “suspected” prison/re-education camps. You have mapped https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/672425843 as a “prison camp”. I don’t really see any of the features the article mentions as tell-tale signs of a prison camp when I look at our available imagery - no watch towers, no straight walls, no patrol roads… are you sure it is a good idea to tag random assemblies of buildings as prison camps just because an article mentioned a few coordinates?

A long time ago I was the “secretary” of the OSMF and responsible for writing the OSMF board meeting minutes. I tried to make them as detailed as I could, explaining which arguments were raised and what was decided. I was then asked to stop doing that, as there was an - admittedly real - risk of me “spinning” things by giving some arguments more room than others. I remember discussing this with two other board members in person. I said: “Perhaps we should record the meeting and release a transcript, then there’s no danger of being partisan.” One of them replied: “No, that would make us look silly.”

So, seconding Richard (with whom I briefly served on the board) I have to say I find the fact that the public is nowadays allowed to listen in a very good corrective against the stuff that makes us look silly. I found this past meeting rather civilised.

The strength of OSM, compared to closed commercial map offerings, is its community. If OSM were just a mix of imported third-party data sets, the HEREs and Googles of this world would long have overtaken us because they have more engineers than we have.

Any import into OSM must be seen through these eyes: Does it help the community? Is there a group of local mappers who were only waiting for this import to now start improving it and caring for the data? If yes, then that import can help OSM become better.

If, however, the import is done not by locals but by people who can be thousands of miles away, not “with” the community but “instead of” a community, then it is just window dressing: Making the map look better on the surface, but there’s no community to maintain it. Sadly, most imports are of this second kind, often done by people thousands of miles away with a phony promise of “making OSM better” - but OSM does not become better by some engineer hitting “upload” on a hundred thousand building footprints.

The claim that “one of the most important contributions you can make toward OpenStreetMap is by importing existing datasets” is fundamentally wrong, and demonstrates a deep misunderstanding of what OSM is all about.

I think the current guidelines are better, not worse, than not having guidelines. Because they are a compromise, they also have more weight: They are the core that (almost) everyone can agree to. This means that if you fall foul of these rules, then you won’t have many friends who say “yeah, those rules are biased anyway” etc. And yes, the rules are not rules but a wishlist so it is technically impossible to “violate” them, but honestly, if the community says it would like you to do the following 10 things and you cannot be arsed to do a single one of them, you really can’t claim that what you are doing is “following best practice” or anything. These guidelines are not meant to be a legal document, they’re more a value signifier, telling potential organised editors: If you don’t share our values, fair enough, but don’t expect us to become friends then. Implementing these guidelines, weak as they might be perceived by some, is a step in the right direction, an explicit agreement that a problem exists and some regulation is required… and if these rules don’t solve the problem, they can pave the way for stricter rules down the line.

Christoph, I’m afraid the political situation in OSM is such that the “hobby mapper community” punches way below their weight. I was the one who published the results of DWG’s initial survey which was promptly rubbished as being one-sided and non-inclusive, and I also published our first draft of a policy. In the discussion, the number of “hobby mappers” who supported the draft was countable with the fingers of one hand, while people involved in corporate and humanitarian mapping cried havoc on Twitter and the mailing lists, demanding either my head on a platter or at the very least the whole policy to be re-written from scratch. The problem with the “hobby mapper community” is that it is just that - people whose hobby is mapping and who are otherwise not very much interested. They might be the majority in OSM but they certainly don’t participate in democratic opinion-forming like a majority.

I’m super happy that Stereo had the stamina to continue the process, talk to various “stakeholders” and listen to their issues. The resulting guidelines are miles away from the strict “hobby mappers tell organised mappers how to behave if they want to play” rules that I had initially hoped for, but the fact is, hobby mappers are not organised enough to tell anyone anything. That’s a political reality and we must live with that.

Even these guidelines will still be questioned by some, and I hope that we can stand firm on what we want. Shooting down this policy on the grounds that it is not precise enough, that it is not “executable code” but rather a wishlist, would be a mistake. Even if we don’t write “you must do X” but “we would like it if you do X” is much better than not writing anything because I can point anyone who wants to be our friend to this wishlist and say “well if you want to support OSM as you say, here’s a list of things we would like you to do”. Even if this is not the law but just as wishlist.

I know how much work Stereo put in this process and it pains me to see this work attacked by people who are critical of organised editing. I think these guidelines are as far as we can go in the current political climate, and the alternative is not a stricter policy, but no policy. And that would certainly be worse.

Re. “unnecessary multipolygons”, there’s another class that is as unnecessary but even more difficult to spot and that’s when someone draws, say, three disjunct but close patches of landuse=forest and puts them all in one multipolygon relation. I have heard practitioners of this technique argue that it saves space since “landuse=forest” only needs to be stored once, but in my mind this is really not worth the added complexity we burden mappers with when doing that. The only situation in which this might make sense if the three patches of forest form a named entity together.

Bei Nacht sind alle Tasten grau.

Harry, please would you let the Data Working Group know who the person and business in charge is (it seems unlikely that a private individual would hire that many contractors to work on OSM), since they are yet to contact DWG. Unless you haven’t already done so, it would also be good to convey to them the community expectation that in a concerted mapping effort like this, the individual accounts be recognizable (by e.g. a statement in their user profile) as being part of the team.

Harry,

1. Have you or one of your team members tried commenting on a changeset by any of these accounts? What was the response, if any?
2. You said you used imagery from “Geo Center USA”, but that is not the image that comes up by default when you edit OSM in Jakarta with the ID editor, nor is it even available as a selectable background layer. How should contributors participate in mapping Jakarta?
3. OSM has a working group dedicated to helping with issues like this - the Data Working Group. I am a member of that working group and will open a ticket for your case, but the next time you have an issue like this, it is safer to write to data@osmfoundation.org instead of making a diary post and hoping that someone reads it!

Best Frederik

Hallo q_un_go,

es stimmt, ich habe alle 2017er Edits dieses “schwierigen” Users revertiert, sofern sie nicht bereits von anderen erneut bearbeitet wurden. Und dabei habe ich fraglos viele gute Edits kaputt gemacht.

Aber: Dieser “schwierige” User hat sich schon mehrere Ausraster bei OSM geleistet, die dazu geeignet waren, den “Frieden im Projekt” zu stören. Ich hatte ihm vor einem guten halben Jahr gut zugeredet und ihn gebeten, doch seine Angriffe auf andere Benutzer und seine kindischen, beleidigenden Nickname-Wechsel zu unterlassen (die Liste http://whosthat.osmz.ru/?id=4473763 ist leider unvollständig, zwischendurch hiess er auch “nationale organisation männer gegen frauenherrschaft”, und als ich den Revert gemacht habe, hiess der Account “Jemand der sich wehrt-gegen den Abschaum-die Betrüger-die Hobbyschlampen die im Internet jedem ihre Möse zeigen-gegen die Prohleten die jeden Satz mit ‘Ich schwöhr’ beginnen und 10mal pro Minute ‘Alter’ sagen-jemand der keine Lust mehr hat auf den Dreck”).

Jemand, der so klar zeigt, dass ihm unsere minimalen Anforderungen an Respekt und guten Umgang miteinander am Arsch vorbeigehen, jemand, der so deutlich sagt “ich will mit Euch überhaupt nicht kommunizieren”, dessen Edits können wir nicht gebrauchen, auch dann nicht, wenn sie faktisch richtig sind.

Ich weiss, das sagt sich jetzt für mich leicht hier aus Karlsruhe an Dich vor Ort, aber: Lieber ein paar Fehler in der Karte, die irgendwann von vernünftigen Leuten repariert werden, für die OSM mehr ist als eine Gelegenheit, anderen mal so richtig den Stinkefinger zu zeigen, als korrekte Edits, die von einem User stammen, der sich morgen aus einer Laune heraus “Fick Dich Du Arsch” nennt.

Ich hatte ihm das, wie gesagt, vor Monaten geduldig zu erklären versucht und dabei auch an seinen Mapper-Ehrgeiz appelliert, die Qualität seiner Edits gelobt und darum gebeten, einfach das nächste mal tief durchzuatmen, bevor er wieder ausrastet, aber offenbar kann oder will er das nicht, und dann müssen wir auch zu seinen Edits “danke, aber nein danke” sagen.

Ich mache das auch nicht leichtfertig, aber ich bin der Ansicht, dass für uns eine gute und funktionierende Community wichtiger ist als korrekte Daten.

If I may add a data point, I’m on two of the three lists you mention and I don’t feel that I am either abusing or being abused, please let me know if you think otherwise. You make it sound as if one of the two was true for every person on the lists.

For as long as I can think there have occasionally been heated topics where there was a staccato of messages about something; think of the license change, or even before that the “let’s eliminate poisonous people” discussion that was recently quoted. The “dopamine” thing you said certainly rings true but that in itself is not something If things get too heated I am inclined to tune out for a moment, just as I would leave a group at a party who’s starting to shout. Doesn’t mean I have to go all drama about “here look at me I’m leaving and I suggest everyone else do it too”.

I think that hand-wavy accusations are dangerous. If you say “there have been instances of racism”, you don’t say how many or what they were but the whole context of your message makes it sound that OSM lists must be a place where racism is rampant. Personally I think (and I’m only on 2 of the 3 lists you mention) that you would have to have an extremely far-fetched definition of racism to find anything that warrants that accusation, and if you find something it will be an isolated case. Or else my moral compass is totally off.

Uttering unfounded accusations publicly also carries the danger of sabotaging what little gender and race diversity there is; after 10 diversity opinion leaders have publicly declared OSM lists to be a sexist place, will there (a) be any woman inclined to join the lists, or (b) any woman already on the lists and feeling ok inclined to say “actually I’m fine here”?

Everyone who feels the need to talk publicly about how bad OSM mailing lists are should really include a concrete pointer, so that (1) readers can judge for themselves instead of having to blindly trust the writer, (2) the majority of peace-loving, courteous, and respectful mailing list participants aren’t unfairly accused.

Kann man das irgendwie automatisch regelmässig ausrechnen und dann vielleicht in den OSMI-Routingview mit hineinstecken? Der wird immerhin regelmässig von Leuten angeschaut, die sich dieser Fälle in ihrer Region dann vielleicht mal annehmen. Wobei natürlich die Gefahr besteht, dass “false positives” dann einfach abgerundet werden, um richtiger auszusehen…

Ich habe jetzt mal die aktuellen Versionen von allen ~ 2200 Nodes runtergeladen. Die gute Nachricht ist: kein einziger davon ist noch bei Version 1. Allerdings sind insgesamt 256 zwar uin den Tags modifiziert, aber doch am gleichen Fleck gelassen worden; eine stichprobenartige Prüfung zeigt mir, dass die meisten davon tatsächlich immer noch an unrealistischen Positionen liegen. (Den entsprechenden Bearbeitern sollte man die Ohren langziehen - mal eben einen Tag “korrigieren” und dabei nicht merken, dass der Kindergarten mitten auf der Straße liegt…)

Hier ist eine Liste der 256 seit damals un-verschobenen Nodes. (Der Link wird nach 2017 nicht mehr funktionieren.) Fast alle sind in Berlin, bis auf zwei in Hessen. Oft wird man die Nodes einfach löschen können, weil das entsprechende Objekt längst gescheit gemappt ist, wie z.B. hier http://www.openstreetmap.org/node/268918182

Scheint, als ob die problematischen Daten aus einem undokumentierten und mängelbehafteten Import von 2008 stammen:

http://www.openstreetmap.org/changeset/89948#map=7/50.083/11.145

Heute würde sowas nicht mehr durchgehen, aber 2008 war halt noch wilder Westen bei OSM ;) viele der importierten Nodes sind im Laufe der Jahre gelöscht oder repariert worden. Man müsste sich aber mal die Mühe machen, all diejenigen aus dem Changeset ausfindig zu machen, die noch an unveränderter Position existieren, und die dann alle überprüfen.

I agree that we do have to think about how to deal with large-scale directed mapping activity, and what requirements we have there. Like with an import or a mechanical edit, a mistake that someone makes in designing a task for 100 employees or 100 students or 100 contractors to follow, can have dire consequences and they can unfold quickly. I think that Martijn’s plan to have volunteer challenge administrators is a good first step provided we can find the volunteers ;) community guidelines about directed mapping can follow later.

Further accounts with similar patterns: * http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/Eva%20Blue/history * http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/James%20Millar/history * http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/kevin%20Prince/history * http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/Jones%20Sandy/history * http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/Edward%20Munch/history * http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/Becca%20Wilson/history * http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/Sandro%20Alex/history * http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/Jenny%20Johal/history * http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/Lexi%20Johnson/history * http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/Philip%20Guston/history

@Sam Wilson, +1 to your considerate use of that external data source to improve OSM. It is a pleasure to see someone choosing the manual, careful path rather than just throwing together a half-baked script that tries to automatically import the lot and breaks half of the data while doing so.

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