Steve

I don’t expect to get your vote, and I’m not trying to convince you otherwise. I’m sorry you feel this way about me, and I’m sorry about how the entire episode went down. I really do want to resolve this and put the relationship between the Board and MWG, and you and me, on much better footing.

But I can’t sit by while you disparage me as a “bully” with a very partial retelling of the situation with the Global Logic. Hot headed and rash, I will take. But I won’t accept such categorizations of my character.

This entire situation was unprecedented. What bent me out of shape was that you set a very short deadline of release of a very extensive report right after the holidays to hold over the head of the Board, in order to goad us into action. You admitted yourself that this was the purpose of the deadline, that you didn’t believe the Board would take action, and would try to bury the report. Basically an ultimatum that undermined the legal structures of the OSMF. There was very little time to read through the report carefully. Mixed in was an assumption of bad faith on my part, because of an entirely false belief that my employer had any kind of business relationship with Global Logic.

Did I go too far by starting a pissing match about governance? Yes. Did you go too far by giving the Board an ultimatum? Yes, I believe so. What I wished had happened is that the MWG approached the Board, giving us time to discuss and give feedback, under structured processes that respect everyone involved. As I state in my candidate manifesto and answers, I will help develop rules of order that describe how the Board and Working Groups, well, work together; that would help immensely.

I do highly value the analytical work you put into the report. It’s pretty amazing. And I know you put in immense hours putting it together. I found issues with other parts of the report, particularly the email “interviews”, some of the cultural assumptions, and the mixing of evidence and conclusion. Nevertheless, your analysis was convincing that it was not a group of individuals registering for OSMF, but an optimized process. I’m happy with how it all got resolved in the end.

I also don’t have reason to think of Guilllaume playing unfair in the election, and I’m glad you were aware of that issue and keeping an eye on things. But I do think it’s not the best judgement to mix working group activities that have a direct impact on election results, while also standing as a candidate. Admittedly, it’s hard to draw a line here on what’s ok or not.

More than anything, I’m personally disappointed that even after our phone conversation, and an open door on my part to talk more, that you continue to harbor such a negative impression of me, and can’t let go of selective statements even when there’s been ample opportunity to clear up the misunderstandings. That door is still open.

Mikel

Guillaume, yes, I think you can find direct abuse, and the acceptance of that from others, on the thread you mentioned https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/osmf-talk/2017-November/004382.html. You can find some explicit examples of unfair treatment and toxicity in that thread based on gender.

I’ve also heard plenty of other stories from women across OSM of both explicit and beneath the surface sexism. A public forum like this is not a great way to explore specific examples of the problem however, since it exposes people to further abuse. I understand what you’re saying that it’s hard to do something about a problem that you can’t see. If you do really want to understand more, I suggest a better start is reaching out for a direct conversation with women in OSM, and then finding good ways to surface the issues.

-Mikel

Felicidades!

Thanks for acknowledging that “abusive relationships” and domestic violence are not akin to what it’s like to develop software in OSM. It’s a horrible analogy. Btw, I complained about this, but not publicly, but directly in a Board internal conversation on this topic.

I do think Board members have more responsibility in discussions like this. We have more awareness and influence in our role. It’s harder work than writing a rant. Yes, you may not individually have had time to contribute to this issue, but writing something like this publicly undermines the efforts of Board members who are.

The criticisms of this post are a lot more fair to you than your reaction lets on. There is plenty of acknowledgement that there are problems in how iD developers communicate – I readily say so. However they do not only “suck at interacting with the community”, since there are plenty of examples of quality interactions as well. I can say that this very diary post is an example of “sucking at interacting with the community”, but I am would not paint everything Frederik does in that vein.

What remains after unpacking all this baggage is an idea to unilaterally hand over deployment choices to a hand picked successor. That’s ill conceived, and focuses only one part of OSM software development that has issues. This is also tightly wound up in the confusion of how tags are developed. There are certainly better ways to manage this, and we should work hard on that, but it’s going to start with a broad discussion of how we can all work together better.

@SimonPoole I think we should all be more careful. This entire thread about an “abusive relationship” is way overheated and distorted. I’d love if we can step back from the fighting, and start thinking about how to help OSM software development work better.

This is a new low in the OSMF poisoning our development environment.

I don’t see how a post like this one does anything to build community and good tools. The problems you point to of poisonous communication channels and antagonistic environment for developers go well beyond iD, and are present all over OSM. There are many people on “all sides” upset with how people behave in OSM. The only reason you point your finger at iD is I think because it nurses your imagination of an evil corporate plot. It’s totally unhelpful to our community.

These accusations of actions by iD developers of “a mandate for more” are particularly distorted.

preferring one tag over another

The developers of iD have very clearly stated they do not want to be arbiters of tagging decisions. The confusion in tagging are fundamental to OpenStreetMap, beyond the scope of iD.

using one channel of communication with the community instead of another “upgrading” the work of other users according to rules set out by the editor developers alone

Huh, what does these mean?

striking deals with commercial validation platforms

Who’s striking a deal?

loading auxiliary data from Facebook without the user’s consent or any previous discussion, and so on

You’re talking about the brand logos? Putting aside whether there was discussion or not, I tend to agree that this issue could be easily solved by something as simple as caching logos on osm.org assets, or making the behavior optional.

Now I certainly don’t agree with all actions taken by the iD developers in regard to how communication is handled. However, I am sympathetic to the pressure they are under. We as the OSMF should not put the responsibility to deal with this kind of all sided criticism. That a member of the OSMF Board should also join in and attack people who are dedicated their work to our main editor is shameful.

We need to have a higher standard of how we help OSM develop. Yes it’s harder work than pointing fingers, but it’s work we need to do. The developers of iD are not enemies of OSM, and I am sure are ready to figure out how to better manage things, given a chance to work together.

@DrishT fascinating process. It definitely felt helpful to be getting hints on the 2 dozen road network gaps in a very dense settlement. The editing experience was great.

Ended up using Bing some, since the imagery was well aligned and looked more clear, in places where needed to look closely if roads went through.

There were also a handful of false positives and paths not identified. Curious to learn how the validation process goes, and if the feedback on what’s used and what’s not is used to further refined the learning model.

In some cases, it was a bit in between – most of the road was correct, but there was a spur that needed to be deleted, or a junction wasn’t quite connected to the network correctly (which was nicely picked up by the iD validator)

Hi @Mateusz Konieczny

This confused me for a minute as well. Physical screen resolution and the coordinate system (called points or density independent pixels) are different. An ok explanation is here. The intention on the part of phone manufactures is to give a similar experience no matter what the pixel density.

For example, my phone has pixel width of 1125, but 375 point width. So there are three pixels per point. The width available to the web browser is still max 375. So while pixel dense, the experienced screen size is still small.

-Mikel

I don’t think you can conclude the election is the primary driver for membership increases. Both this year and last year we held membership drives starting around State of the Map. SotM increases interest in OSM and the membership drive highlights the importance of engaging in OSMF. Maybe we should hold membership drives more often.

Thank you @Christine Karch for taking on the facilitation of SotM 2019 and the SotM WG into the future.

Well, I now understand that it is not a topic for heterosexual men. Yes, I’ve now got that point (sigh).

I’m a heterosexual man, and I’m ready to listen. You individually are free to not participate @alexkemp

Hey men of OpenStreetMap. I also have heard specifically from women and gender minorities in OSM that they have experienced problems. If you’re hearing that gender is an issue for participation in OSM and haven’t directly heard concrete details yourself, don’t cast doubt or trivialize. It’s our duty to be patient and listen, not demand proof before anyone has had a chance to even share their experiences. As @wonderchook said, if that’s your approach, this topic may not be for you. I for one very much look forward to and welcome anyone who’s ready to come forward and talk about what they’ve experienced. My hope is that can be a step to an even more welcoming community.

it would be possible to obtain details of the actual incident from the block(s) associated with it

Something to consider. We could add a category field to blocks, that could capture the general type of issue(s) the block addresses. Would make it easier than trying to parse the text of the block

the user blocks list is not a “list of shame” I have never met someone seeing it this way, except from the OSMF or Working Group environment.

Perhaps simply adjusting the labels to differentiate between zero hour blocks, and more serious blocks, could help. The zero hour blocks could even be separated into a distinct list, with another label and description.

Great fidelity in the stats, on an ongoing basis, would be interesting. Pivot by length of block, who applied the block, parse the text for some indication of the purpose of the block. Would be useful to spot patterns in problems the DWG is dealing with, without placing additional burden on them to report out their activities.

the moment you express anything but positivity and loyalty, you stop being respected. Even by members of The Board. You did well, but words are what matters: you said the wrong words, we don’t respect you any more, please leave.

Oh man, this is getting tiring. You are starting to imagine things – who told you to leave? Are you ok? I said “It’s important to think critically – as I said, I agree with some of the source issues you raise.” I don’t think everything is fine, and I don’t demand loyalty. Get a grip dude.

Zverik you wrote “Since around 2012 OpenStreetMap is headed directly into abyss.” If you want respect and to help OSM grow, maybe try to use some metaphors that inspire people, rather than spreading your personal frustration far and wide.

Finally, I came to despise the “do it yourself or gtfo” attitude, common to open projects, that Mikel’s expressing in his latest comment.

That’s not what I’m expressing at all.

It’s important to think critically – as I said, I agree with some of the source issues you raise. OSM does get plenty of critique, from all directions. But what’s even more important is what you do with those insights. How do you express yourself and what to what directions do you point? Express a vision of where things need to go, that can motivate people to make the changes you want to see.

I’ll admit, I’m having a difficult time showing you respect right now, after you let your frustration with OSM get the best of you. Maybe at best, I can empathize. Yes, you have made a lot of contributions to OSM. And I also know the frustration of things not working out they way you want. There are times I’ve certainly felt like throwing it all away, and writing a post like this. But I cool down, and try to see where I can put energy – hands on or vision – that takes things in the direction I want.

At least, you chose to post on the OSM diaries, and not score points across the Internet by aiming for the top of reddit. So I do appreciate you keeping this within the OSM community.

Hey @imagico, I’m happy to work with you on practicalities of what corporates can bring. Just please don’t demand humility, that’s a contradiction and I would love see more practice of what we preach here.

Seems like you really want recognition of your intellectual value – I will grant you that.

Let’s make room for all, and maybe try to have a level headed discussion, and a reality based grasp of all the people and groups in the room here.

Some constructive suggestions

And being a watchman is hard: in fourteen years the best we could do was OSMCha. Users of which are still complaining about wide, albeit thin, changesets. We’ve successfully lost the author of OWL

I think OSMCha is pretty good. There’s lots more brewing. Integrating OSMCha into History tab is one idea worth pursuing.

You’ll never hear a thanks, but will get a full bag of comments instead.

Get over it and help create the environment there you would like to see. Do the hard work of working through feedback. TomH does hard work reviewing all code. Help there too.

A hope for an “area” data type was faint five years ago, but by now even the most optimistic osmers stopped dreaming of change.

Do some work or put up money.

The main distinction and advantage of OpenStreetMap is a free tagging model. It has grew so enormous, nobody, not even experienced users, can choose correct tags.

Create tools that help us manage the process of designing and integrating tags better.

It’s 2018 outside, and we’ve got no developer environment, no integration tools, no financial support, no strategic plan

There’s a ton to do here. Andy’s work is a great start.

Nobody, not even the Legal Working Group, understands ODbL.

There’s work happening to communicate this better.

Also in response to Christoph

We need a broad and open but ambitious and thoughtful discourse about these kind of topics (in contrast to the cacophony of spontaneous and not well thought through opinions that is all too frequent these days) and this depends on broad education. And to be clear: This is not something you can expect the corporate players in the OSM world to substantially contribute to.

Well that’s uninformed. Corporate players are very interested in this and have a lot to bring to the table.

Ilya

You have some fair points. There are important things to work on that I agree with.

But they are completely buried in lazy negativity, finger pointing, with no creative thought about ways forward. This post is just going to absorb more energy which could have gone towards productive work. We don’t need this.

Also want to say thanks to Andy for his excellent response and amazing work with the website.

Mikel

Incredible work @karitotp and OSM Peru.

I agree both that there was not much more DWG could directly do, and that more could have been done. The redaction code is well designed, and did what was needed, and needs to be run in this kind of situation. More could be done to prepare for the repair before the redaction happens, but the DWG does not have extra time or resources to do that.

Some communities do – and I recommend we allow a bit more time and find ways to be more collaborative to prepare before the redaction starts. Things like extracting tags that are not compromised by private data, and building a service to refer to while repairing the map; Set up metrics to track how close the repair is to prior data coverage; develop tasks and workflows.

I guess it could also be argued that the community wouldn’t have responded so fast unless the data was just deleted. I think with a deadline for preparation of 2-4 weeks, and good documentation on how to prepare, communities could be even more ready for situations like this.