I think this is a great example for showing the problems of trying to document non-verifiable information in OSM - as well as how the lack of verifiability often manifests. It also shows well how projects to document a naming practice - like historically Foucauld or today Wikipedia - are not neutral observers documenting the cultural practice but become part of and influence the naming culture themselves - whether they want to or not.

One other thing - the false color images you show to illustrate the location you are writing about gives a bit of a wrong impression of the appearance of the region - especially the relations in color between the different surfaces. Shameless plug for a more consistently colored image:

http://maps.imagico.de/#map=7/24.637/6.746&lang=en&l=sat&ui=0

@CjMalone - what you make of the spread in hourly rates that can be observed is obviously a political question. I am really glad that we do also have applications asking for roughly a realistic market rate for paid work. That means the OSMF will need to position itself in that regard. That is not a very thankful task for the committee of course but it is also one you could see coming given the board, when setting up microgrants program, has specifically allowed paid work as part of the grants without specifying concrete parameters for that.

Since it seems the advise at the end of my previous comment is by some understood differently from how it is meant i will try to clarify by re-stating it in German.

Beim Lesen der Bewerbungen für die Microgrants werden viele vermutlich - bewusst oder unbewusst - geneigt sein, sich auf Grundlage der Bewerbungen ein Bild von den Menschen zu machen, die diese Bewerbungen eingereicht haben. Ich möchte davon abraten. Die Vergabe der OSMF-Microgrants geschieht wie ja alle sehen können im Wettbewerb der Bewerber zueinander. Alle, die sich bewerben, werden versuchen, die eigene Bewerbung so zu gestalten, dass ihre Chancen maximiert werden. Dass hierbei im Vordergrund steht, das eigene Vorhaben in einem besonders gutem Licht erscheinen zu lassen und nicht, dem Leser ein ausgeglichenes Bild von der Person des Bewerbers/der Bewerberin zu vermitteln, dürfte offensichtlich sein. Schlussfolgerungen aus den Bewerbungen über die wirtschaftliche oder persönliche Situation der Bewerber zu ziehen ist nicht ratsam.

No. If i have to guess i’d say our very different views on these things stem largely from very different exposures to cultures and living conditions very different from our own current circumstances.

There is no simple relationship between economic and social privileges and available free time. Not even in a country like the UK or Germany let alone globally.

If you want to get to know people, learn about their life, their hopes, their concerns and their values money is about the worst choice as a catalyst you can think of. Money tends to bring out the worst in people - like greed, fraud and disguise. However you read the microgrants applications, don’t make the mistake of assessing the people personally based on how they write an application to get money from the OSMF.

If you’re going to fall back on “copyright law is long established”

I am not, as said valid moral arguments can be both made for and against copyright - both in general as well as in specific domains like databases. I would be willing to discuss that - not here and not in lieu of the discussion on behavior regulation though - but only if you are seriously interested in deriving decisions from the result of this discussion and not if it is purely an academic exercise.

I’m having trouble parsing this. 😖 Can you rephrase?

What you cited was an illustration. My main question was to you to point me to a single anti-discrimination law that regulates person-to-person interaction on equal level, i.e. not in a hierarchy (like between adults and kids and not between normal people and people with some official function or business operators etc.).

Various rape laws apply to people based on their age, or mental disabilities. Some anti-discrimination laws only apply “in one direction”.

Please be specific. We are talking about legislation that has the purpose to protect human rights according to the UDHR by sanctioning certain person-to-person communication only if it happens in a discriminating fashion but not in general.

Rory, i can completely accept if you don’t want to have a moral argument here but asking me to provide moral justification for arbitrary things feels a bit too much like being asked to jump through hoops just for your amusement. I already mentioned that the moral justification of copyright (and hence the use of copyright to impose and enforce a license) is a separate (and open ended) discussion. But this has absolutely no bearing on the matter of behavior regulation in social interaction and communication.

Data protecition law does prevent me from ”doing whatever I want with any data they contribute to OSM”.

No, as said it restricts what i may contribute to OSM, it does not further restrict what i can do with stuff that i may and do contribute to OSM.

Nearly all anti-discrimination law regulations behavior in person-to-person communication & actions.

I would be eager to see you point me to a single law that does so. As mentioned the AGG explicitly does not. Is there any legislation where i (as a private individual) am forbidden to treat you in a certain way because you are not a woman unless the way i treat you is forbidden per se also if i equally treat everyone this way?

Ah! If you can rely on the Berne Convention, then I’ll reply with the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights. QED. 🙂

Comparing the UDHR as the non-binding declaration of ideals to the Berne Convention as a concrete agreement on binding rules of course done not work.

I also don’t see how the UDHR stipulates behavior regulation of person-to-person communication on equal level beyond what is covered by criminal law typically like slander etc.

As i have pointed out in osm.org/user/imagico/diary/392072#comment46519 practical attempts at implementing the UDHR into law in some form beyond criminal law generally does not apply to person-to-person relationships on equal level. And as said there i would be very much in favor of the OSMF introducing practically meaningful non-discrimination requirements to organizations like itself or companies w.r.t. individual community members.

“Any mapper may do whatever they want with any data they contribute to OSM” doesn’t work with the EU’s Data Protection Directive (& Charter of Fundamental Rights). Can you justify throwing away these privacy rights? (other examples: military bases, copyright, family law report restrictions, defamation/libel, trade secrets)

I think your argument is flawed here. What you cite as moral/legal constraints limits what you may contribute to OSM in the first place, it does not restrict what you can do with data you may contribute to OSM.

I think this is a sidestepping the actual topic of behavior regulation quite a lot but i will indulge for a bit.

can you provide a justification for this rule?

First of all - i don’t have to. This is what the law says, at least in all countries accepting the Berne Convention. Independent of that the moral justification for a person’s right to freely use their own recordings of thoughts and observations in my eyes stems pretty fundamentally from our self image as literate persons. Denying people this right would essentially amount to denying them the right for literacy. Even if you’d question this as a fundamental human right it would be blatantly inconsequential to within OSM - which pretty much requires literacy and the ability to record thoughts and observations from a mapper - to deny them the right for this for their contributions.

Note this is not the same as the moral justification for copyright, which creates an exclusivity for using their own work for the creator. That is something people have different opinions on which you could indeed discuss from a moral perspective. But that is not what you asked and that would also for the most part not be relevant within the context of OSM since the OSM license does make only very limited use of this exclusivity in principle granted by the law.

Moral considerations regarding the data license are mostly concerned with the rights of the mapper attached to their contributions. That is fundamentally different from the moral implications of imposing codified rules on the communication and social interaction between people.

Also the data license also not in any way restrict the mapper in what they may do with their contributions - they are completely free to allow others to use them beyond the scope of the license.

Regarding the need to justify behavior regulation - as an OSMF board member you do not need to justify decisions on that for communication within the OSMF - that is a political decision and you have the mandate from the OSMF members for that. Applying such rules to the whole OSM community however is a different story.

I’m trying to parse this. If we have zero behavior regulation, if we have no floor, no bare minimum, then (for example) OSMers who persistently physically assault OSMers at SotM must not be banned from the project (right?).

I commented on that (the specific case of a physical meeting) at length i think back in 2018

If we have no bare minimum for the whole project, then everything is allowed, right?

If you regard ‘allowed’ as a legal term then no, everyone of us lives in a jurisdiction that permits and forbids certain behavior.

If you look at it from a moral perspective then the answer is equally no - unless you subscribe to a nihilistic view of ethics.

IMO it’s obvious that from a consequentialist view, we should have a global list of unacceptable behaviours.

One of the main problem with consequentialist approaches is that they are practically limited by your imperfection in predicting the consequences. To put it bluntly: If you are sufficiently ignorant you may be able to formulate behavior rules that are universally justifiable under a certain consequentialist framework. This is in particular a problem here because while you will likely be tempted to look only at the immediate consequences the rules you want to impose have, the communicative implications would reach much further than the actual rules. Or put more simply even: If you want to take a consequentialist evaluation of policy seriously you cannot only look at the intentional consequences, you also have to look at the unintentional ones - including those you might be too narrow minded to see. Otherwise you end up with the road to hell being paved with good intentions.

Since we all have our limitations in predicting consequences, in particular in the context of a project as unique and unprecedented as OpenStreetMap, i don’t think a purely consequentialist view is practically useful here. Still i would be interested in hearing what specific rule of behavior (and how it is meant to be imposed practically) you would consider justifiable from a consequentialist view.

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.