I often promote Codes of Conduct, and I’ll have a private, good faith conversation with any OSMer about that.

You know we have had such conversations - but as said before i have yet to hear any serious moral defense of universal behavior regulation within the OSM community. Since i suspect most conversations along these lines will end up with this as one of the major issues (as it has happened in our previous conversations) i suggest to consider this as a basis if you want to have another chat about it.

By the way i am thinking about what changes i should suggest FOSSGIS to request in the local chapter agreement now that this apparently is turning into a cherry picking competition. Or is that a case of quod licet Iovi, non licet bovi and all local chapters are equal but some are more equal than others?

Very interesting read, thanks.

While this is what i would classify as anecdotal observations of course it is a large volume of them and as such represents an interesting cross section of views from within the community.

Two observations about that

• It should be clear that this cross section is of course in no way representative for either the OSM community as a whole or the active OSMF members or some similar group of people. There is subjectivity in the selection of the people you talked to as well as selectivity in your perception of the conversation. That does not in any way devalue the communication and the ideas and opinions communicated but quantitative assessments in particular - like the ordering of priorities or statements like “Communities outside western Europe generally welcomed…” are of course to be interpreted with that in mind.
• While possibly not everyone will agree with that i think that decisions on matters like the ones you listed in the Top Lines require looking at the merits of the ideas presented and should not just be based on their popularity. In particular it is paramount to think through even very popular ideas beyond the point to which they have been considered by their proponents. For example the old story of “We live in a vast country and just don’t have enough volunteers so we need imports/automated AI mapping/paid mappers/…” is rarely thought through up to the point when it comes to the long term maintenance and updating of the information over decades by those who tell it.

On quite a few of your Top Lines by the way people (yes, including me - but this is not about me) have written down stuff on blogs, diaries and elsewhere that probably contains a lot of meaningful considerations much of which has likely not been in your records of conversations. In oral conversations - and also often in people’s recollection of such conversations - a fairly large focus is often put on what people want and if they are for or against something. But often IMO the more interesting part is the motivation and reasoning why people are in favor of or against a certain idea. This in my experience often becomes clearer when people invest the time and energy to formulate their ideas in writing.

I am happy to see that while during the planning of the F2F meeting it was a widespread opinion that meeting in person is without alternative you have now - after external factors have forced you to try an alternative - made the surprising experience that it works better than expected. This is an important and valuable insight IMO and demonstrates that keeping an open mind and trying out different options can be highly worthwhile.

With regards to the regular remote board meetings however I think you should also keep in mind that these currently serve multiple functions and moving to a different technical basis would affect these functions in different ways.

The main functions from my perspective are:

• deliberation on matters of the board among the board members. For that a larger bandwidth in communication certainly has some potential advantages - while it can also change the social balance within the group - to the better or worse, this is not something i can form a qualified opinion on in this case.
• communication to the OSM community/OSMF membership. For this a higher bandwidth can be also an advantage but a higher bandwidth requirement will also exclude a lot of people who cannot meet these bandwidth requirements. And the option to consume a low bandwidth subchannel (audio only) of a much larger bandwidth communication (assuming this option exists) is not the same as consuming the audio in an audio only communication.
• communication and two way exchange with the OSM community - in the past through the option for guests to ask questions and comment in the end of the meetings. On Mumble this has been a fully symmetric communication while with a video conference system this is either asymmetric (if the guest can participate only audio) or imposes a significant hurdle (if the guest for participating fully needs to be able and willing to share their visual environment).
• motivation and recruitment of potential future board members. The public board meeting are an important opportunity for people to get insights into how the board works and listening in on them has in the past been widely considered an important preparation for candidacy for the board. Having board meetings with video would communicate to potential future board members the additional requirements to (a) be willing to publicly show themselves on a regular basis in board meetings and (b) have the bandwidth in internet connection to do so.

Independent of that you also need to keep in mind the learning curve of a more complex communication system. Mumble is technically quite simple and there are compact instructions available in various languages specifically designed for OSM use. I could not find anything comparable for your suggested video conference system and everything i found was fairly complex and difficult to follow.

Long story short: You are making a choice here with potentially significant effects on communication including both intentional and non-intentional ones. Make sure you have broad awareness of them when making such decision. But on the other hand i applaud your efforts to try out new possibilities.

Do i see it right that there is only one Maxar image layer now although both iD and JOSM still provide separate entries for ‘Standard’ and ‘Premium’? iD seems to use different API keys for them but they are still the same, JOSM adds a ‘foo’ parameter but it does not seem to have an effect.

@apm-wa - i think we might be getting somewhere with your mentioning of the AGG. I already thought of this w.r.t. the UDHR but with the AGG it is much clearer.

The AGG in its scope of application only covers asymmetric relationships like employment, use of administrative services or companies providing public services or selling goods to the general public. It does not apply to person-to-person relationships on equal level. As a private individual i may follow the principle to only talk to men but not to women without violating the AGG. I may also live on the principle to only buy things in shops that are run by women if i want to.

If the OSMF board wants to create regulation that limits/forbids discrimination of individual community volunteers by OSMF institutions, by corporate actors in OSM or even by local chapters (over which otherwise the OSMF should not exercise any authority) i am all game and would actively help defending such measures against critical voices. Provided of course such regulation is designed in a consistent fashion and with a clear, well defined meaning independent of specific language formulations. Note this is not because such regulation would comply with my specific cultural values as the reference to the AGG might imply but because (a) it is clearly within the remit of the OSMF, (b) it is clearly in support of the OSM community’s basic goals and values (and not in conflict with them because those are only covering the individual-to-individual interaction) and (c) i think it is defensible from a standpoint of basic moral principles (although i would be open to arguments where it is not).

@rory - you asked about the meaning of discrimination by wealth. The clearest example for that is capitalism itself. Capitalism is discrimination by wealth in purity. In capitalism all major economic decisions are made by the owners of property and production ability (in other words: wealth) - the capitalist class. They also have the exclusive possibility to derive income from their property (profits and rents) without this reducing their property. OTOH the working class without any property have only their own working ability as capital and this does not provide them with the same powers. Where lies the source of the discrimination you might ask? It lies in the principle of capitalist societies declaring private property as sacrosanct and absolute.

Now OSM internally does not follow capitalist rules but capitalism and the discrimination by wealth it implies still has impact on the project. So for example in any business activity in the project. If a business owner (the capitalist) through their management for example instructs their employee to get active in OSM (as a software developer or mapper for example) they are using their capital (without reducing it, just through the profits and rents) to do that - something the non-capitalist community volunteer cannot do. That is inequality and the source of this is the discrimination by wealth inherent to capitalism.

Note i do not want to pass any moral judgement with that characterization - if capitalism or discrimination by wealth is something morally defensible or not is something people evidently have conflicting opinions on. I do not think it is helpful to discuss that here. What i wanted to point out is (a) that the declaration of non-discrimination as a universal value while explicitly excluding discrimination by wealth is inconsequential and (b) that neither including discrimination by wealth nor excluding it as an undesirable form of discrimination would have consensus within the OSM community.

@apm-wa

It appears we can agree that a diversity statement, this one, or any other, does not affect the organized editing guidelines, or the existing differentiation between volunteer and paid mappers. Those issues fall into the category of “how we map” and that is not in the Board’s remit. Let’s drop that subject and move on.

I don’t think we can since here we seem to have a fundamental conflict here.

If you think the diversity statement means something - like that it does not interfere with or supersede the traditional core values or the organized editing guidelines then you have to be able to demonstrate that based on the text of the statement. If you can’t do that you cannot expect others to read and interpret the statement the same way - hence it does not objectively mean what you think it means.

In my diary entry above i think i demonstrated based on the text various things the text communicates that i find highly problematic. I welcome anyone arguing with those findings and countering my reasoning. But i don’t accept a simple assurance of the text meaning X without X being demonstrated to derive from the text itself.

Well, I just looked at the draft Code of Conduct wiki page and noted it has been pending since 2010, and was last touched in 2018. That’s ten years waiting for a Code of Conduct to be adopted by the community. I don’t intend to wait ten years for a diversity statement to be adopted, or perhaps still have it in “draft”. The “OSM way” in that case hasn’t worked.

Oh boy, you could write a whole book about the history of that can of worms. I will summarize it in this form: The OSM way in that case has worked exactly as it should although a few loud English language voices wholeheartedly dislike the OSM way exactly because of that.

Independent of that - if there is an abandoned draft for something on the OSM wiki that is not an indication for anything.

@apm-wa

You seem to fear among other things that a policy of “non-discrimination” would nullify the organized editing rules and open the door for paid mappers to wreak havoc on the map.

No, the effect i see - and i already explained that in depth - is a political message to the OSM community. There is going to be no practical effect on organized editing because (a) the effect of OSMF regulation on this is rather limited at the moment in the first place and so would any further stripping of said regulation and (b) the OSMF has no effective power over the OSM community without the support from the community so if hobby mappers want to discriminate paid mappers the board cannot stop them. And the DWG would most likely not shoot itself in the foot by trying to punish local hobby mappers for exercizing their local ownership of the map.

And what the political message currently reads as i already explained.

Similarly, if a mapper were to violate the “How We Map” guidelines, that would of course continue to be grounds for discriminatory sanction from the DWG. However, if a community member is from India and not Germany, from Africa and not North America, is female, or transgender, or has darker skin than you and I do, or dyes her hair blue, or professes a particular religion (or no religion), these alone would not be grounds for discrimination and exclusion from the community, and would not be grounds for personal attacks in communications.

If that is what you want to be the meaning then you need to change the statement because as i explained the current text says something very different. If you disagree with my analysis please show me where i am wrong based on the text.

Now, all that said, we do clash, and seriously, on one important point. Your position seems to be that OSM exists for its own sake, and that such a status is sacred. My point is that OSM now has such an impact on the lives of others, it can no longer afford the luxury of selfishness and view the map solely as a means to self indulgence.

I definitely disagree on the characterization of mapping as a social activity without an external purpose as selfishness and self indulgence.

As one of the old-timers told me, “OSM is no longer a Saturday morning mapping club.” He meant by that, that OSM must adapt to new circumstances. You oppose that, and that is what our debate is really about. I believe that we can preserve the community, which is the source of OSM’s strength, and continue to rely on local knowledge, which is why our map is so good, and have lots of fun mapping, while also not shirking that greater responsibility. We may even be able to do it on a continued small budget that avoids financial dependence on outsiders, if that is what the community as a whole wants. But I do not see a way of avoiding the greater responsibility, and do not intend to try.

This is all way too vague and unspecific for me to tell you if i agree or disagree.

My impression is - and this is very close to what i stated before - that you think that the mapping related core values that currently form the fundamental band and constitution holding the project together are not suitable to continue fulfilling this function for the way you think OSM needs to develop in the future. And that you therefore want to substitute them as the base values of the project with an universal non-discrimination principle.

If that is the case i can say that

a) i disagree that the current mapping related core values are unsuitable to carry the project into the future (but that obviously depends on the kind of future you envision) b) i would predict that universal non-discrimination as a new base value is not only incompatible to the current mapping related core values (as explained) but also that it is unsuitable to facilitate any form of self managed cross cultural cooperation. This is of course also not what it is meant to do because it is otherwise deployed together with the whole repertoire of anglo-american organizational culture like professional community managers and behaviour regulation. That would mean more or less the scenario i outlined in osm.org/user/derFred/diary/391636#comment46193.

Under this assumption i would be interested in where exactly you think your envisioned future is incompatible with the current core values.

If that is not the case i frankly don’t see your motivation to push this statement. But i’d guess this lack of understanding is primarily due to a massive difference in understanding of the meaning and effect of said statement - which i think could be cleared up by discussing the specifics of the text and my analysis.

But independent of that i wonder if you realize if we - who have a pretty similar cultural background - have such a massive difference in understanding of the meaning and effect of the diversity statement - what this will mean regarding how it can function as a statement of values for the whole OSM community?

One other thing - the traditional core values i have talked about here were not created and imposed top down when the project was founded. They developed when the project gained international traction out of the practical needs of cross cultural cooperation across language and cilture barriers. Interestingly the time when this mostly took place and where then these values were also at some point written down in the form we now know as “How We Map” was around the same time as when the old guard on the OSMF board stepped down (except for one obviously) and we got a significant push in structural reforms of the OSMF, in particular in terms of transparency and cultural diversity. The board now needs to decide if it wants to continue in that direction after this was essentially stalled for the last few years or if it wants to give in to the strong revisionistic interests which we without doubt have strongly pushing on the board to roll back things and who want the OSMF to retreat into the simplicity of a simple and homogeneous value system where you can easily make the distinction between good and bad, between allies and enemies.

“How We Map” describes just that, how we map, and that includes me, a mapper now for 5 years. However, it does not describe why we map, and further, does not touch at all on uses of the map, or the ecosystem we cannot ignore that has grown up around OSM and now has certain expectations from us mappers.

As i tried to explain How We Map is primarily (but not exclusively) about mapping because OSM as a social project is based on the cooperation in mapping. I don’t think there are any values universally shared among all the OSM community except those. We have no agreement on why we map, every contributor is allowed to map or otherwise contribute for any reason. We have no agreement on the specifics of communication style across different languages beyond the basic ‘assume good faith’. But i would be open to discuss any such supposedly universal value identified by others.

And i don’t mind at all if the OSMF board wants to document the values of software development in the OSM community or in other aspects (and thinking about the iD presets controversy it might actually be good to do so). But it should always be clear that any such values are subordinate to the mapping related core values of the project.

I do not see anything in “How We Map” that is in real conflict with the diversity statement.

This is explained in detail in the diary entry. If there is anything about that which is difficult to understand (in particular in the often not very precise English translation) please say so.

Every time I look for something on the wiki, I am impressed with the sheer scope of what OSM encompasses.

Which is great - but all of this is and should be subordinate to the idea of cooperative mapping based on local knowledge. It does not help anyone in the long term if the OSMF encourages the creation of encapsulated subprojects with their own incompatible value systems which reject our mapping related core values. We already have tendencies in such direction in various fields including the wiki. So at the risk of sounding like a broken record: The basic values of the project deriving from mapping need to be strengthened and not be replaced or downgraded by an universal and absolutistic non-discrimination value.

I must also protest against your statement, “Ich seh das Ganze allerdings in so fern durchaus positiv, dass es potentiell äußerst lehrreich für Alle ist - für die OSM-Community, indem es noch mal allen ganz klar macht, dass man sich keineswegs blind darauf verlassen kann, dass die OSMF im Interesse der OSM-Community handelt.” An accusation that the OSMF Board does not act in the interests of the OSM community is simply false.

I will stick to German here for precision: Ich bleibe bei meiner Aussage, dass dieses “diversity statement” in der jetzigen Form nicht den Konsens über gemeinsame Werte in der globalen OSM-Community wiedergibt und dass die Darstellung als solcher deshalb nicht im Interesse der OSM-Community ist. Ich hab aber auch klar gesagt, dass ich nicht den Eindruck habe, dass hier absichtlich entgegen der Interessen der Community gehandelt wurde, sondern dass der Vorstand nicht erkannt hat, dass es sich nicht einfach um eine harmlose Selbstverständlichkeit, sondern um eine hoch kontroverse Aussage mit weitreichenden Implikationen handelt. Warum das so ist habe ich versucht hier zu erläutern.

Does the Board seek “data perfection”? Of course not.

Please note that as i have explained the citation of that wording is not meant to refer to the exact English language formulation but to the underlying value which this wording means to illustrate. The value in question is not ‘seeking data perfection is bad’, it is that the goal of engaging in egalitarian cross cultural cooperation in mapping as a social activity has precedence over the results of said activity - the data. To put it in a very simple form: If the OSMF board had the choice between saving the mapper community and their willingness and ability to continue mapping and saving the data the choice has to be towards saving the community.

That does not mean improving the data should not be a goal. But in any value statement that mentions it, it should come after and secondary to the goal of egalitarian cooperative mapping based on local knowledge.

With great power comes great responsibility

Like so many American pop culture quotes this is not actually an American invention of course…

We need to accept the responsibility that comes with that power, and to nurture and grow the source of that power, the OSM mappers..

That is a very strange application of that principle i would disagree with. The growth of the OSM community is desirable because OpenStreetMap is a valuable endeavour that brings joy, education and cultural exchange to many thousands of people world wide and allowing more people to participate in that is both beneficial for those who newly join as well as for those who already participate.

In other words: The mapper community should grow for its own sake, not because it provides a source of power for someone.

@Peda - danke. Von Hoffnung hab ich allerdings gar nicht gesprochen, nur von einer kleinen Chance, die sich der Vorstand noch gelassen hat. Natürlich gibt es im Prinzip auch einfach die Möglichkeit, die Entscheidung vom Donnerstag direkt zu revidieren. Aber wie du ja weisst gibt es so gut wie keine Präzedenzfälle, dass der OSMF-Vorstand jemals einen Fehler öffentlich eingestanden hat.

Ich seh das Ganze allerdings in so fern durchaus positiv, dass es potentiell äußerst lehrreich für Alle ist - für die OSM-Community, indem es noch mal allen ganz klar macht, dass man sich keineswegs blind darauf verlassen kann, dass die OSMF im Interesse der OSM-Community handelt. Und für den OSMF-Vorstand, ihm noch mal ganz deutlich zu demonstrieren, wie sehr man sich bei der Policy-Entwicklung verrennen kann, wenn man sich von kritischer Rückmeldung von außen aus der Vielfalt der OSM-Community abschottet und Gruppendenken sowie die schwerpunktmäßige Kommunikation in Filterblasen-Verstärkern wie Twitter die selbstkritische Betrachtung verhindert.

Meine Hoffnung ist eigentlich eher, dass hierdurch die weltweite OSM-Community einen robusteren und selbstbewussteren Umgang mit der OSMF lernt - und insbesondere die großen nicht englischsprachigen Communities mal nicht nur ihr eigenes Süppchen kochen wie bisher, sondern auch mal offensiv die englischsprachige und anglo-amerikanisch kulturelle Dominanz in Frage stellen. Ich hab zwar oben betont, dass der Verriss ein deutschsprachiges Genre ist, aber ich bind mir sicher, dass man diesen Text auch gepflegt auf Französisch oder Russisch zerpflücken könnte.

@apm-wa - I am going to limit my comments here on matters directly related to the diversity statement. Further practical implications like the de facto English language dominance in the OSMF or the practical difficulties of inter-cultural communication are important but given the limitations of the diary comments for structured discussion i don’t want to spread this out here too much.

When i cited How We Map above i did so not to source authoritive policy on OSMs values, i did so to illustrate the actual values thousands of mappers work by every day. How We Map it is the only relatively comprehensive documentation of this kind we have and i regard it therefore as one of the most important texts of the OSM community. It is by no means perfect - no text written in a single language can even hope to ever accomplish that. But it provides a very helpful starting point to any volunteer newly engaging in the project to help them understand what it is about in essence.

None of the other value documents that exist (including the Core Values you cited) is in any way comparable to that. Most of them are political documents which rather than documenting the de facto values of the community, document a view of what the values are supposed to be in the eyes of those having crafted these documents. In case of the Core Values this is a fairly accurate documentation of what were back then considered the main goals of the OSMF in the eyes of those contributing to the discussion but it cannot be in any way considered to be a comprehensive view of the values of the OSM community.

Interestingly How We Map is frequently criticized or dismissed as being mapping centered. That is because OpenStreetMap is mapping centered. The essence of OSM is the cooperation of people across language and culture barriers based on the shared goal of documenting verifiable local knowledge of the geography of the world in a common database. This is what holds OSM together, what enables people who might not understand a word from each other to none the less work together on a common goal. And the data collection aspect of OSM is - to put it bluntly - a means to the end of facilitating this cross cultural cooperation. And day after day mappers in OSM demonstrate again and again that this unique approach of OSM to cross cultural cooperation is working and that no top down imposed values are required for that.

The “community cohesion over data perfection” i cited is simply the verbalization of this basic premise that OSM is primarily a social project and the goal of cooperative collection of local knowledge stands above any goals to assemble a collection of useful data or any culture specific values that exist in different parts of the community. It is not the English language formulation that matters it is the underlying idea and value.

Now what the board primarily communicates with the new diversity statement is that they (a) do not believe in the basic premise that made OSM the world wide cross cultural project it is today and that facilitates cooperation on a daily basis to continue functioning as the fundamental band and constitution holding the project together any more and (b) that they want to replace it with an absolutist non-discrimination principle with all the internal and external contradictions and inconsistencies i outlined. Now i get (and i already acknowledged) that this is not what most of you intended to communicate but you can be certain that this is the communication that is received by many in the OSM community.

And as i have also pointed out the much better and much more supportive thing the OSMF board could have done is strengthening the basic premise and value of cross cultural cooperation of the OSM community and more actively communicating it to the public - something that has been distinctly lacking during the past years. This includes making clear that those who reject these basic principles are not welcome in the OSM community - which is more or less the opposite to what your statement says now.

Now regarding some of your questions:

Or do you realistically expect Board members quickly to master over 100 different languages in order to communicate with the community?

I would like to see you realize, accept and internalize that you cannot communicate with the community in a balanced fashion in English language only - neither directly with the mappers nor indirectly through local chapters. And this is not only the language barrier by the way, this is also the culture barrier.

What you can do and what i try to do as often as possible is using the means available to you to better understand the parts of the community you cannot directly communicate with - by watching videos of conference talks in languages you don’t understand to get an idea of the way people work and communicate. By machine translating mailing list and forum posts. And of course by talking and listening to people who share a language with you and specifically inquire about their experiences in languages and cultures alien to you. But above all by looking at the map and the data and how people in different parts of the world contribute to the common project - how people map tells you so much about them without the need to speak a common language. Long story short: English is not Alternativlos, it for those who speak it however represents a dangerous lure of wishful thinking that it can solve the cross cultural communication problems.

Does not socio-economic status also include wealth as a factor?

Normally not. And as said - if it did the value of universal non-discrimination would massively collide with the capitalist social order.

Why would wealth need to be listed separately?

Well - i don’t think this kind of list or the top down imposition of such an absolutist value system on the community is a good idea at all. But if you do that none the less specifically excluding discrimination for wealth represents an inconsistency while including it represents a conflict with all capitalist societies. Ultimately i think the idea of non-discrimination as an universal value is not compatible with any ethical framework i can think of.

Why would we want to discriminate against a mapper somebody else is paying versus a volunteer mapper?

Any meaningful regulation of organized activities in OSM would require treating paid and hobby mappers differently and therefore represents a discrimination. The need for regulation of organized activities in OSM i have explained in the first English language draft for such a policy written in 2017.

Impressive. This is the first map rendering framework i know of that offers native support for ground unit rendering - even if only in Mercator apparently.

We tried doing something like this in OSM-Carto some time ago but decided against it because of the complexity due to the lack of native support for this in Mapnik/CartoCSS.

You could afterwards stop by in Freiburg on your way back and visit FOSSGIS:

https://www.fossgis-konferenz.de/2020/

This is exceeding the scope of a diary discussion a bit probably but i will try to address a few things quickly none the less:

The OSM Foundation is by law the governing body […]

The OSMF has been by its own self understanding (see here and here) always in a support role only for the OpenStreetMap project. I am not quite sure if you want to indicate you would like to change that (which would likely not only get opposition from large parts of the OSM community but also from the local chapters) or if you want the OSMF to be more serious, better organized and more efficient in its support role (which most including me would very much support).

I do wonder what kind of bias you perceive in the Foundation membership (“OSMF membership…is highly biased in composition”). What is the bias, and how did you measure it?

Regarding regional bias see here. Regarding social bias - the requirement to pay for membership is a significant factor of course. Regarding language bias - the dominance of English in the OSMF is fairly clear, there is no culture of non-English communication within the OSMF, even the membership signup form is available only in English. AFAIK only the CWG and the DWG have a standing tradition in non-English communication with the broader OSM community.

I must also point out that if the Foundation and Board do not act on issues the community believes are important, because a vocal minority insists that Foundation or Board action is “not the OSM way”, well, that is tyranny by a minority of the Foundation’s members, and that is truly “not the OSM way.”

I am with you here - but my view would always be that the opinion of the majority should not supersede reason. Any majority decision should IMO be preceded by a battle of arguments which of the options of the decision is the best for the project.

WRT your comment, “the board members are themselves often invested in specific interests,” Board members are required to recuse themselves from voting on issues in which they face a conflict of interest.

In this context i used the term ‘interests’ more in the sense of characterizing what unites the members of the different factions: common interests. In the past most board members have positioned themselves w.r.t. these factions and the interests they represent - either by statements made or by the way they argued and voted in board meetings. It is admirable and certainly helpful if you want to try raising above that and regard all the different views with equal sympathy and consideration. But ultimately i think the main source of synthesis in policy decision making should be the argumentative discourse about what approach is the best. That is what i had in mind when i wrote about the more parliament like nature of the board right after the last elections.

I would advise against taking the results of this brainstorming directly as a basis for any decision making. To me so far the results of this mostly indicate what the strongest interests are that are articulated in the OSM community and in what direction these interests would like the project to move. Now if you’d condense these interests and use them as a basis for decision making or as a todo list without first having a discussion on the viability and sustainability of these ideas and if the interests they are based on are even compatible with the basic goals and values of the project you would be very likely to clash with the mission of the OSMF.

I agree that there are in a way factions within the OSM community (in particular within the voiceful part of it and within the OSMF membership) - or like i called it above distinct and partly incompatible interests. There are multiple possible approaches to dealing with that:

• making majority decisions. This means favoring the interests with the strongest support. This comes with the problem that the interests with the most support is not necessarily the most legitimate interest and that the OSMF membership (which you indicated to be who would make such decision) is highly biased in composition.
• negotiating a compromise. This comes with the same problem of the negotiation strengths being based on the representation in the negotiation. And it also bears the risk of resulting in bad compromises being counterproductive for the project (we had quite a lot of those in the more recent history of the OSMF).
• evaluating the legitimacy and merit of the interests based on the goals and values of the project and deciding from that. This is the approach i would prefer but it would require at least a broad agreement on the basic goals and values of the project that is specific enough to allow this kind of assessment. And in the past the OSMF board has not been very interested in positioning itself w.r.t. the project’s basic goals and values (my attempt in bringing this up in the board elections a year ago can be found here) - largely because there is no consensus on that within the board because the board members are themselves often invested in specific interests.

To close on a clearly positive note - a lot of interesting ideas in the brainstorming. Even though it starts getting a bit difficult to maintain an overview i think there are perspectives widening the view of the project and how different people see it for everyone.

I don’t think this is a problem of specific communication channels. A proposal in a very similar direction was not successful either:

osm.wiki/Proposed_features/Default_Language_Format

It is simply that this would be a big change that would impact a lot of people and tools both on the mapping and on the data use side and that would mean a higher level of abstraction in how names are recorded. Skepticism regarding this is fairly natural and understandable - which however does not mean it is a bad idea in the long term.

I can feel your pain and your suggestions are sound as far as i can see.

A long time ago i proposed a more radical solution to the whole problem:

http://blog.imagico.de/you-name-it-on-representing-geographic-diversity-in-names/

which unfortunately did not and probably still does not have sufficient support. So you will for the foreseeable future have to try parsing the name tag to try determining which name or what kind of name combination is put there by the mapper to be able to render a consistently labeled map.

Regarding cultural dominance - i don’t want this to sidestep the main topic here, i already explained in my reply to Andy what my main point was meant to be. However i see your arguments more underlining the existing dominance of American business culture in the world wide business world and the dominance of the business world and its values in our societies outside the domain of business itself. I would like to see OSM be an exception from this - hence my concerns.

Regarding the need for a goal being specified - the German wikipedia agrees with me on that, so this might be a cultural thing. In general i think a SWOT analysis tends to say at least as much about the person making the analysis as it objectively says about the project analyzed. And this effect is probably even stronger when no clear goal is specified in advance. In other words: While the manager will probably regard this as an instrument to rationally analyze a project or business a social scientist would probably more look at it as an experiment analyzing both the manager and the project.

@SomeoneElse - i can’t know for sure, Wikipedia says the origins are obscure. It seems certain that the origin under this name is within the English language domain and given the dominance of the US within the ‘free market economy’ part of the world both economically and in terms of economic sciences at the time this came up an American origin seems likely.

Anyway the underlying concept of looking at inside and outside positive and negative factors regarding a project and its goals is a natural way to look at this that can be understood across cultures i think. As long as you don’t give too much weight to the specific terms used (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) which have their culture specific meaning and implication this is all fine. Especially when trying to translate the concept to different languages going with a generic description (internal/external and positive/negative) instead of trying to perform a 1:1 translation of the terms used is probably a good idea.

First the idea of making a risk analysis of the OpenStreetMap project is a good idea, this should be something everyone involved with any kind of decision making in OSM should contemplate and it is good to do such contemplation also collectively.

There are a few things i like to point out regarding the specific form chosen:

• good idea to do it on the wiki - gives people the freedom to articulate their views in the form they find suitable. Anyone who wants to contribute without revealing their identity can create a pseudonymous wiki account and use it for this purpose.
• to get a broad spectrum of views on this it would be important to (a) also ask and invite answers in other languages and (b) not tie this too strictly to the concept of SWOT which is strongly linked to American business culture and kind of implies that OSM is a business project based on American cultural values.
• it would be of advantage if the different opinions on this would be linked across the four categories, for example by having the points signed by those who make them. The reason is what some consider a strength others might consider a weakness. For understanding the different views on this it is important not to look at the points for each category in isolation but being able to connect how they form distinct overall views of the project.
• it is my understanding that the idea behind SWOT is to look at things w.r.t. a specific goal - in the business world often essentially to maximize profits. You have not specified or referenced any specific goals to consider so the answers you get might significantly diverge because people consider the matter w.r.t. very different goals without actually specifying the goals in question.

So overall: Good as a starting point to get people thinking and exchange some spontaneous ideas but more in depth and structured analysis of the situation is required for actually assessing the risks of the project. There is a strong possibility that some people might attempt to just calculate an arithmetic mean or take a vote (as it has been suggested on osmf-talk already) instead of looking at the ideas and see which of them are supported by facts and reason and which might just be wishful thinking or represent special interests (which are possibly in themselves a risk for the project).

In a way the Soviet military maps were a predecessor of OSM in that they were one of the most notable and extensive earlier attempts for recording a detailed cartographic account of the world wide geography to a uniform standard. There were earlier and less extensive attempts at that - like US mapping campaigns during WW2 but nothing to the extent of the Soviet military mapping program. That they have copied information from local maps for that IMO does not really diminish this important innovation.

Even today the cartography of the larger scale maps is an important inspiration for anyone who attempts to display the variety of world wide geography in a common cartographic design. I can recommend studying the map key of the Soviet maps - an early version is available on

https://www.lib.berkeley.edu/EART/pdf/soviet.pdf

Allan, thanks for the comment. Starting from the back - i have not criticized the board for moving too fast and as you correctly said i have in the past criticized the board for failing to move on important issues without a good reason so this would be kind of inconsequential. I have made critical comments on the idea of the board creating a diversity working group top down - in line with the comments made by Tobias in the board meeting which went in a similar direction.

As i have said repeatedly in the past (see for example here i would always welcome a fact based discussion and argument on matters of diversity. But that in my experience needs to start on a pretty fundamental level and only few people are willing/able to look beyond their narrow cultural horizon far enough to do that. We have had some contributions in that direction more recently (like from Frederik, Manfred and a few others) but also a lot of non-helpful noise in the form of self absorbed and intolerant rants.

My advise to the board on the matter of diversity (which is a fairly ill defined term of course) - focus on the OSMF and on improving proportional representation of the active OSM community in the OSMF. This is an extremely tough subject to get to substantial improvements with but there are plenty of potential practical measures that could help a lot in that regard and that the board would have an actual direct influence on - for example the free membership for active community members that is to be introduced now. The good thing is the new board has the best starting conditions for this - it features a larger linguistic diversity than any board of the past i think. And don’t shoot yourselves in the foot by - as said - founding an English language debate club for wannabe diversity engineers and community managers and leaders.

Regarding communication channels - i think a large variety and flexibility is good in that domain. Diaries are a good medium for fairly compact thoughts on things. Before the last board meeting there was also an attempt of using blog.openstreetmap.org to publish the diverse views of the different members on matters together which i - like others - found an interesting idea worth exploring further. The OSM wiki can also be a place for structured idea collection when used wisely. And as i mentioned in the past having a dedicated OSM issue tracker which can be used without selling your private data and attention to a third party corporation would be good.

My personal preferences for community communication channels are

• barrierless public read access
• public and linkable archive of communication
• open communication standard and availability of diverse clients for different platforms
• open source software
• self management of channels by the community
• no third party controlled sign-on
• non-commercial hosting

The first two are fairly absolute for me - which is why i won’t use Slack for example.

And regarding the procedural rules of the board - i think i clearly said that i like the new procedure in many ways. But still i advise sensitivity and caution regarding a possible language and culture bias. Since all of the board members currently speak English quite well this might not be very visible but that does not necessarily mean it cannot be an issue. And since the board meetings are public public perception is - while it should not be a primary concern - something to take into account. The comparison to programming languages and communication protocols is problematic in two ways:

• it kind of implies that a bias towards people with technical skills/talent is all right.
• it overlooks that Latin script is the basis of HTML/python/java in a similar fashion as the English language is the basis of Robert’s Rules of Order. There is a certain bias in that.

As said - i don’t think this is a reason not to use these procedural rules as a starting point but sensitivity to the potential need to adjust these to the circumstances of the project is probably a good idea. But overall i think i am pretty much with you on this matter, clear rules which are actually followed are a good thing - also as i have in the past criticized the board for not consequently sticking to the self given rules of order on several occasions.