What is anti-SEO aktion?

Maybe you’ve seen one of my changeset comments reading “anti-SEO aktion”. Maybe I even reverted your changes in a changeset with that comment. You might be wondering, what does it mean?

Well, I hope “anti-SEO” is clear enough. OpenStreetMap is not a platform for boosting your online presence. Your OpenStreetMap listing, in all likelihood, does very little to improve your rankings. If the marketing agency you hired is improving their listing here, you ought to find one that used more evidence-based SEO practices.

And what of “aktion”? It’s a play on Antifaschistische Aktion, which was an anti-Nazi resistance effort in Weimar Germany. It’s not a political statement, per se. It’s just a bit of fun with changeset comments.

How do I get involved?

Any experienced mapper probably knows what belongs in OpenStreetMap and what doesn’t. For those who don’t, here are the general steps involved in fixing spam within the U.S. While following all of them isn’t necessary, it’s the best way to turn SEO efforts into a real business listing that improves the map.

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Cartography is an artform. Besides being used for art, it is a practice rooted in subjectivity. For most people, it may be only a means of navigation, but any cartographer acknowledges that they make decisions based on their own opinions when making maps. OpenStreetMap is one of the more objective maps out there, but it’s still not always clear how to map things. As a community, we’ve had to make numerous decisions on the “best” way to map something. Sometimes, we don’t have a singular answer. Users of OpenStreetMap data must interpret these decisions as best they can. Tagging is usually what comes to mind when considering what comes into dispute here, but scope is important as well. And this is where privacy comes in.

Privacy status quo

We have some privacy standards. Besides GDPR compliance, the Data Working Group redacts edits that introduce personal information, such as annotations intended for an individual that may link their account to a real person. It generally isn’t acceptable to map features inside private residences either, like rooms or toilets. These may come as common sense to most, but others still could have counterpoints. The level of detail most are comfortable with is what is visible from street level or the sky. I think this is a good standard, but some are still left uncomfortable. There’s the occasional new mapper who deletes driveways leading to single-family homes. It may not even be their own driveway, but some may be unfamiliar with OpenStreetMap’s tagging system that makes it clear when a driveway is private and that it is, indeed, a driveway. One cannot fault a person for wanting privacy; the concern then is about damaging data (digital vandalism). At least where OpenStreetMap is based, there is no law against making a map of someone else’s property. Legal concerns about cartography are a separate matter not related to individual privacy, which is my focus here.

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