Re: [OSM-talk] Some thoughts against remote mapping
That's a great idea! It could help build community but also make it easier to check edits to make sure they are ok. Maybe this could be built into one of the QA/QC tools? Andrew On Thu, Jun 18, 2015 at 8:29 PM, Russ Nelson nel...@crynwr.com wrote: Andrew Wiseman writes: We talked about this a bit at the HOT Birds of a Feather at State of the Map -- to me it's a great idea. Why not ask some basic (and purely optional) information when people join OSM, with some fields for that info, IMHO, we should allow people to use OSM tools to create polygons of interest. Then, people can choose to get various notifications based on events relative to those polygons. For example, you could send a message to a node or a way, and everyone whose polygons intersected it would get a notification. Or people could get a notification of edits within those polygons. Or of people who created a polygon intersecting their polygon. Basically, give people more tools to communicate with people who are local to them, or local to their interests. -- --my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com Crynwr supports open source software 521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815 Potsdam, NY 13676-3213 | Sheepdog ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk -- 600,000 DC residents don't have a vote in Congress -- http://www.dcvote.org/ http://www.dcvote.org/about/index.cfm ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Some thoughts against remote mapping
On Fri, Jun 19, 2015 at 2:19 PM, Andrew Wiseman awise...@gmail.com wrote: That's a great idea! It could help build community but also make it easier to check edits to make sure they are ok. Maybe this could be built into one of the QA/QC tools? I may be missing something but Who Did It [1] is available to see all changesets in an area. Not polygon, but rectangle area. I use it to monitor an area around where I usually map. Just picked up a user that accidentally removed an entire residential road when he only intended to remove a small segment. [1] http://simon04.dev.openstreetmap.org/whodidit/ -- @osm_seattle osm_seattle.snowandsnow.us OpenStreetMap: Maps with a human touch ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Some thoughts against remote mapping
Andrew Wiseman writes: We talked about this a bit at the HOT Birds of a Feather at State of the Map -- to me it's a great idea. Why not ask some basic (and purely optional) information when people join OSM, with some fields for that info, IMHO, we should allow people to use OSM tools to create polygons of interest. Then, people can choose to get various notifications based on events relative to those polygons. For example, you could send a message to a node or a way, and everyone whose polygons intersected it would get a notification. Or people could get a notification of edits within those polygons. Or of people who created a polygon intersecting their polygon. Basically, give people more tools to communicate with people who are local to them, or local to their interests. -- --my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com Crynwr supports open source software 521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815 Potsdam, NY 13676-3213 | Sheepdog ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Some thoughts against remote mapping
What I've been mulling over is the home location data on the profile. Right now it's close to useless. I'd like to be able to set multiple areas (not points) and rate them can survey / good local knowledge / particularly interested. ^^^ This is an excellent idea and a feature I would definitely use. Agreed! Forgive me if this is a little off topic, but to me related because it's about finding people to make a local community. We talked about this a bit at the HOT Birds of a Feather at State of the Map -- to me it's a great idea. Why not ask some basic (and purely optional) information when people join OSM, with some fields for that info, especially location (with dropdowns and not free text, ideally) and maybe other interest areas (e.g. humanitarian, biking, whatever else) and use that to connect the user with their local group or other some interest group. You live in Country X or ideally City Y, here is the site for the local group there. or You noted you were interested in biking, here is the site for that group. Something like that to help connect them and give them someone to talk to or get involved with. Right now it's all free text that people add themselves after they join, if they choose to do so, which makes it hard to use. To me, once people join, nothing happens. They are basically required to be pro-active and go out and find what they want to do -- which is fine, but not everyone is going to do that. I think some suggestions too would help. It took me quite some time to find Pascal Neis's Who's mapping around me tool, for example.[1] I have no idea what the procedure is for talking about changing the login page, however. Andrew [1] http://resultmaps.neis-one.org/oooc On Wed, Jun 17, 2015 at 2:57 PM, Eleanor Tutt eleanor.t...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, Jun 16, 2015 at 4:07 AM, moltonel 3x Combo molto...@gmail.com wrote: What I've been mulling over is the home location data on the profile. Right now it's close to useless. I'd like to be able to set multiple areas (not points) and rate them can survey / good local knowledge / particularly interested. ^^^ This is an excellent idea and a feature I would definitely use. Also, this thread is of great interest to me, but I'm entering it quite late and many points have already been discussed. I'll just say a few things: 1) I am thankful to Erica Hagen for her original post, as I think these are critical things to think about. 2) Hagen's point that there are degrees of local that we are failing to account for reminds me of many discussions I've had in my own community about what it means to be from a place, whose voices are viewed as representative of a neighborhood, who has access to power, etc. While much of the discussion here has been in the context of international/humanitarian mapping, these same questions play out on a micro scale in cities and neighborhoods. It is worth thinking about who is mapping in your own community and whether you are working to involve neighborhood residents, do offline outreach, etc. at home. Thanks, Eleanor ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk -- 600,000 DC residents don't have a vote in Congress -- http://www.dcvote.org/ http://www.dcvote.org/about/index.cfm ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Some thoughts against remote mapping
On Tue, Jun 16, 2015 at 4:07 AM, moltonel 3x Combo molto...@gmail.com wrote: What I've been mulling over is the home location data on the profile. Right now it's close to useless. I'd like to be able to set multiple areas (not points) and rate them can survey / good local knowledge / particularly interested. ^^^ This is an excellent idea and a feature I would definitely use. Also, this thread is of great interest to me, but I'm entering it quite late and many points have already been discussed. I'll just say a few things: 1) I am thankful to Erica Hagen for her original post, as I think these are critical things to think about. 2) Hagen's point that there are degrees of local that we are failing to account for reminds me of many discussions I've had in my own community about what it means to be from a place, whose voices are viewed as representative of a neighborhood, who has access to power, etc. While much of the discussion here has been in the context of international/humanitarian mapping, these same questions play out on a micro scale in cities and neighborhoods. It is worth thinking about who is mapping in your own community and whether you are working to involve neighborhood residents, do offline outreach, etc. at home. Thanks, Eleanor ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Some thoughts against remote mapping
This Friday night I'm going to close out the quick, three question survey on remote mapping thread. If you haven't answered the survey already, go to https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/TRQYHFP to answer the three questions. Clifford On Tue, Jun 16, 2015 at 8:28 AM, Frederik Ramm frede...@remote.org wrote: Hi, On 06/15/2015 09:55 PM, john whelan wrote: Perhaps we need something like the HOT validation system in OSM more generally but I don't know how it would work. Locally OSM mappers have used a rich range of tags, I'd say about 25% other than highways didn't get rendered for one reason or another when they were initially tagged. On the German forum and mailing lists, occasionally newbies will pop up and say I've mapped this and that, could somebody have a look if everything is correct? Perhaps it could be as easy as setting a changeset tag review=yes please, and then a small web site listing changesets that have this tag and don't yet have a review discussion entry or something, so experienced mappers could look if there's something in need of review in their area. I'd be very careful to make sure this is voluntary; even a hint at a possible *mandatory* review process will immediately have everyone pointing out where this has got Google ;) Bye Frederik -- Frederik Ramm ## eMail frede...@remote.org ## N49°00'09 E008°23'33 ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk -- @osm_seattle osm_seattle.snowandsnow.us OpenStreetMap: Maps with a human touch ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Some thoughts against remote mapping
On Sun, Jun 14, 2015 at 8:51 AM, Mikel Maron mikel.ma...@gmail.com wrote: A map with all the buildings can look done in the standard rendering, but of course we know it's not done. Is there a way to visualize the map to take into account the depth and local knowledge of the data? So that the pride of filling in the blank spot can be felt even when previous work has been done? I'd say that's a design challenge even in well mapped countries, which will need to be maintained and updated for the rest of time! Fully agreed here. Most people find existing map data to build on when they start mapping. Whether it's an import, remotely mapped or your neighbor who you may love or hate - someone was there before you. This is going to be the case even more so as the project matures. I remember from my own experience that it took me ages to see where to jump in in my home town map in Washington DC (and if it had been just TIGER data this would have been a more obvious question to me). There's no doubt that from creating the map there comes a sense of ownership, but as the project matures - how will new mappers get confidence to partake in this ownership? All of that in a huge, multi cultural and global community? I found some fascinating leads for answers to this question in my new colleague's Minh Nguyen's presentation at State of the Map US http://stateofthemap.us/tickling-locals-into-action/ - the upshot is: mappers learn by seeing other mappers do and this rings true to me looking at my own experience. But here's a list of questions and ideas that come to my mind that could all help us collaborate better around the map: - How can we show better where data is stale? - Can we show what's missing? - Better spaces for constructive local conversations - notes and changeset comments are already a huge improvement. Groups? - How can the OSMF be more accessible for non-English speakers? - What else? ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Some thoughts against remote mapping
On Tuesday 16 June 2015, Alex Barth wrote: - How can we show better where data is stale? - Can we show what's missing? Actually these two points well illustrate an important difference - something is missing because someone misses it - this is a subjective criterion. Much of the discussion in this thread revolves around the question of differences between locals missing data and non-locals doing so and what conflicts might arise from this difference. So showing prominently that something is missing from a certain subjective perspective is always touchy, especially if it is the perspective of someone with a broader agenda like a foreign aid organization or a company. The first point on the other hand is probably fairly undisputedly a good idea, i.e. indicating quality issues from an objective perspective. We already have a lot of tools in that area of course, address lists for example that are used to indicate where addresses are missing. But there is a real lot of potential there, like for example rather than importing external data using it to find and indicate differences to what is in OSM. There is much free data out there that could be used to very specifically indicate inaccuracies and errors in OSM data but not a lot of ressources are used at the moment to make use of this. -- Christoph Hormann http://www.imagico.de/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Some thoughts against remote mapping
Hi, On 06/15/2015 09:55 PM, john whelan wrote: Perhaps we need something like the HOT validation system in OSM more generally but I don't know how it would work. Locally OSM mappers have used a rich range of tags, I'd say about 25% other than highways didn't get rendered for one reason or another when they were initially tagged. On the German forum and mailing lists, occasionally newbies will pop up and say I've mapped this and that, could somebody have a look if everything is correct? Perhaps it could be as easy as setting a changeset tag review=yes please, and then a small web site listing changesets that have this tag and don't yet have a review discussion entry or something, so experienced mappers could look if there's something in need of review in their area. I'd be very careful to make sure this is voluntary; even a hint at a possible *mandatory* review process will immediately have everyone pointing out where this has got Google ;) Bye Frederik -- Frederik Ramm ## eMail frede...@remote.org ## N49°00'09 E008°23'33 ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Some thoughts against remote mapping
Please consult all of my previous responses to the previous threads on this identical topic for the responses I would write to the inevitable responses to this thread. On Tue, Jun 16, 2015 at 12:43 PM, Michał Brzozowski www.ha...@gmail.com wrote: I was imagining a new OSM editing program and thought about making provisions in the API for editor programs to wait for edits to be approved (so that it's still posted as the actual user). But it would get too tricky, considering just conflicts for instance. So in this form it's unsuitable. The thing is, we blame noobs often, whereas I see that it's iD's shortcomings. People notoriously add bare names to address points (without a meaningful tag) to add POIs - there are thousands of them just in Poland. Other offenders are opening_hours written in national languages. As someone said, iD editor developers aren't keen on providing warnings to the user. And their logic seems to be out of touch with mapping community. See https://github.com/openstreetmap/iD/issues/2366#issuecomment-57371665 and https://github.com/openstreetmap/iD/issues/2325 ). I don't buy this BS - a name is better than nothing - experienced mapper time is precious, period. We JOSMers often forget that iD is there and it gets neglected. Go and try mapping something, act as a person who knows nothing about OSM: you'll be surprised about how many gotchas there are that are taken for granted, even if you are a theoretical noob with ideal cognitive ability (but who only does what is said to do). For me the essence of making a noob-friendly editor is to have it more task-oriented, data-aware and leaving nothing to chance. There is a simple thing that could massively help: first select feature type, then draw it. It paves way to many improvements and benefits, such as contextual help that isn't obnoxious at all and is likely to be more effective. iD could offer some sort of I want to... (add a building, mark a highway one-way, and much more) oriented mini-tutorials. In these you would tell all these gotchas, like how to place a building properly (not at the roof, but at the base). Allowing regional communities to have a say in iD development is also needed. Different countries have their own conventions on street names, addresses and so on. This is marginalized currently. Oh man, what a hell of an off-topic. Michał On Tue, Jun 16, 2015 at 5:28 PM, Frederik Ramm frede...@remote.org wrote: Hi, On 06/15/2015 09:55 PM, john whelan wrote: Perhaps we need something like the HOT validation system in OSM more generally but I don't know how it would work. Locally OSM mappers have used a rich range of tags, I'd say about 25% other than highways didn't get rendered for one reason or another when they were initially tagged. On the German forum and mailing lists, occasionally newbies will pop up and say I've mapped this and that, could somebody have a look if everything is correct? Perhaps it could be as easy as setting a changeset tag review=yes please, and then a small web site listing changesets that have this tag and don't yet have a review discussion entry or something, so experienced mappers could look if there's something in need of review in their area. I'd be very careful to make sure this is voluntary; even a hint at a possible *mandatory* review process will immediately have everyone pointing out where this has got Google ;) Bye Frederik -- Frederik Ramm ## eMail frede...@remote.org ## N49°00'09 E008°23'33 ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Some thoughts against remote mapping
I was imagining a new OSM editing program and thought about making provisions in the API for editor programs to wait for edits to be approved (so that it's still posted as the actual user). But it would get too tricky, considering just conflicts for instance. So in this form it's unsuitable. The thing is, we blame noobs often, whereas I see that it's iD's shortcomings. People notoriously add bare names to address points (without a meaningful tag) to add POIs - there are thousands of them just in Poland. Other offenders are opening_hours written in national languages. As someone said, iD editor developers aren't keen on providing warnings to the user. And their logic seems to be out of touch with mapping community. See https://github.com/openstreetmap/iD/issues/2366#issuecomment-57371665 and https://github.com/openstreetmap/iD/issues/2325 ). I don't buy this BS - a name is better than nothing - experienced mapper time is precious, period. We JOSMers often forget that iD is there and it gets neglected. Go and try mapping something, act as a person who knows nothing about OSM: you'll be surprised about how many gotchas there are that are taken for granted, even if you are a theoretical noob with ideal cognitive ability (but who only does what is said to do). For me the essence of making a noob-friendly editor is to have it more task-oriented, data-aware and leaving nothing to chance. There is a simple thing that could massively help: first select feature type, then draw it. It paves way to many improvements and benefits, such as contextual help that isn't obnoxious at all and is likely to be more effective. iD could offer some sort of I want to... (add a building, mark a highway one-way, and much more) oriented mini-tutorials. In these you would tell all these gotchas, like how to place a building properly (not at the roof, but at the base). Allowing regional communities to have a say in iD development is also needed. Different countries have their own conventions on street names, addresses and so on. This is marginalized currently. Oh man, what a hell of an off-topic. Michał On Tue, Jun 16, 2015 at 5:28 PM, Frederik Ramm frede...@remote.org wrote: Hi, On 06/15/2015 09:55 PM, john whelan wrote: Perhaps we need something like the HOT validation system in OSM more generally but I don't know how it would work. Locally OSM mappers have used a rich range of tags, I'd say about 25% other than highways didn't get rendered for one reason or another when they were initially tagged. On the German forum and mailing lists, occasionally newbies will pop up and say I've mapped this and that, could somebody have a look if everything is correct? Perhaps it could be as easy as setting a changeset tag review=yes please, and then a small web site listing changesets that have this tag and don't yet have a review discussion entry or something, so experienced mappers could look if there's something in need of review in their area. I'd be very careful to make sure this is voluntary; even a hint at a possible *mandatory* review process will immediately have everyone pointing out where this has got Google ;) Bye Frederik -- Frederik Ramm ## eMail frede...@remote.org ## N49°00'09 E008°23'33 ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Some thoughts against remote mapping
Am 16.06.2015 um 01:40 schrieb Clifford Snow: Following this thread makes me wonder how people feel about some of the issues raised. The link below is quick survey about some of the issues raised in the thread. Please take a minute or two to respond. If I get sufficient answers I will publish the results. Nobody is actually claiming that imports stunt community growth, that's just a contraction of early infrastructure imports stunt community growth. Which is why I tend to be very careful to use the later, unluckily most people aren't, which produces lots of spin doctor fodder (actually it would be even better to be more precise and say ... transportation infrastructure ...). Mature communities normally don't have the need to import transportation infrastructure (aka roads etc) and I doubt if a well done landuse import would directly have a negative effect on a budding one (historically naturally most landuse imports have simply made a big mess of everything, but that is a different topic). Adding roads and similar objects is one of the simplest and fastest things to do in OSM, and typically the one with the most immediate award. It is naturally at the same time the thing to map that you tend to run out of fastest, so by its very nature it will only have an effect early on in a communities history. Now I could imagine if we had access to large complete POI datasets we might be able to see a similar effect later on, but all such imports tend to be topical and only remove a small part of available objects to map. Here, obviously a relative mature community, we've had two larger imports (public transport stops and admin boundaries) that were done by the community and naturally they haven't had an impact on community growth (they do have other import related negative aspects, but that again is a different topic). Simon signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Some thoughts against remote mapping
On 16/06/2015, Andrew Wiseman awise...@gmail.com wrote: Something else semi-related that might be a terrible idea: I wonder if there ought to be some way to show which edits are by remote mappers and by locals? Could you do this automatically via IP address or something by seeing who was nearby and who was not? That's an interesting approach. I don't think IP-based identification would work because of all the false-positives : I spend my time between France and Ireland, and I'm a local in both places even if I edit while in the other country. What I've been mulling over is the home location data on the profile. Right now it's close to useless. I'd like to be able to set multiple areas (not points) and rate them can survey / good local knowledge / particularly interested. The tricky part is creating a UI that isn't overwhelming. Appart from categorising if an edit is local or not, it'd be very helpfull to contact relevant contributors for an area. Pascal Neis's tools are usefull (and have the advantage of not requiring opt-in), but not as good as explicit information would be. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Some thoughts against remote mapping
Hi, Am 2015-06-15 um 22:49 schrieb Pierre Béland: This is the ransom of success for OSM, being exposed to the medias, the international organizations recognizing our significant contribution to such humanitarian responses. OSM might be more in media but which OSM? It is not the OpenStreetMap of the mappers who go out and collect data to make a better and free map. It is a crowd who does remote sensing where a disaster occurred and not recognized as an alternative data source to official maps, Google, TomTom etc. Best regards Michael -- Per E-Mail kommuniziere ich bevorzugt GPG-verschlüsselt. (Mailinglisten ausgenommen) I prefer GPG encryption of emails. (does not apply on mailing lists) signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Some thoughts against remote mapping
On 15/06/2015, Martin Koppenhoefer dieterdre...@gmail.com wrote: Am 15.06.2015 um 01:24 schrieb Warin 61sundow...@gmail.com: There was a humours suggestion to map animal paths, rejected as not something wanted in OSM. For the record: http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/Pascal%20Cuoq/diary/1 who in osm would be able to reject what can be mapped? It's not rejected, it's discussed and argued about. In the link above, the mapper was asking for community opinion to begin with. To some native farmers those paths may be very significant. The rejection reflects a 'western culture'. I plead guilty of westerner bias in my answer in that blog, but the OP was mapping in France, so a westerner POV was needed in this case. And I maintain that animal trails probably should not be mapped in France. farmers or hunters? If something is sufficiently significant to someone (and persistent) to map it and potentially maintain the mapping, he will just do it, not? I agree with that, in France or elsewhere. *IF* the trails are significant, persistent, and OSM-maintainable, they should be mapped. But I think that the conditions are rarely met. Surely there are regions of the world where they are more easily met, and asking the local community will yield a different answer. Hopefully there's a local OSM community there :) ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Some thoughts against remote mapping
On 15/06/15 11:15, Simon Poole wrote: All that is lacking is that other apps go to OSMAND rather than trying to get google maps running ... which only works with a network link? ... We're really getting substantially off topic now. Apps on android in general don't have specific other apps hardwired to perform tasks that they themselves don't handle. They will use a so called intent to indicate that they want to do something, for example display a location on a map, The question started with 'remote mapping', and I see no reason that we can't HELP any other parts of the world. In disaster areas, imagery is made available fairly promptly and updating the on-line mapping is something that can be done away from the scene, allowing those on the ground to get on with the recovery effort, BUT if the local emergency communications network also allows integration so that remote mappers can fine tune the details then that has to be a help? Moving away from the emergency environment, the same tools allow a proper conversation between bodies in the field, and 'back office' bodies who can use higher bandwidth connections to do the heavy grunt? Google may control the platform, but they continue to prove their unsuitability in that role, so there is perhaps a place for a more open framework for both mapping and more general data management? Perhaps managed via f-droid and designed for naive users using simple devices? But of cause OSMAND does not come under that umbrella :( -- Lester Caine - G8HFL - Contact - http://lsces.co.uk/wiki/?page=contact L.S.Caine Electronic Services - http://lsces.co.uk EnquirySolve - http://enquirysolve.com/ Model Engineers Digital Workshop - http://medw.co.uk Rainbow Digital Media - http://rainbowdigitalmedia.co.uk ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Some thoughts against remote mapping
Also many of our paths started out as animal paths. In some areas they may be the only way to get from A to B. Jo 2015-06-15 10:55 GMT+02:00 Martin Koppenhoefer dieterdre...@gmail.com: sent from a phone Am 15.06.2015 um 01:24 schrieb Warin 61sundow...@gmail.com: There was a humours suggestion to map animal paths, rejected as not something wanted in OSM. who in osm would be able to reject what can be mapped? To some native farmers those paths may be very significant. The rejection reflects a 'western culture'. farmers or hunters? If something is sufficiently significant to someone (and persistent) to map it and potentially maintain the mapping, he will just do it, not? cheers Martin ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Some thoughts against remote mapping
On 15/06/15 09:59, moltonel 3x Combo wrote: Do you have any specific ideas on what would make OSM more compeling in India ? I'm thinking along the lines of working better with cheap phones and bad/expensive network coverage.Maybe smarter surveying/editing tools. Maybe a combined Mapillary photo + OSM note app.Maybe offline maps that are cut into smaller pieces.Maybe a smart social media campaing. You think it's only India that has problems with bad/expensive network coverage? I can't drive down the M5 without loosing a data connection, so OSMAND is the only way to work and that works on cheap android devices. I've actually got it running on a £40 tablet for a bigger sat nav display ... All that is lacking is that other apps go to OSMAND rather than trying to get google maps running ... which only works with a network link? -- Lester Caine - G8HFL - Contact - http://lsces.co.uk/wiki/?page=contact L.S.Caine Electronic Services - http://lsces.co.uk EnquirySolve - http://enquirysolve.com/ Model Engineers Digital Workshop - http://medw.co.uk Rainbow Digital Media - http://rainbowdigitalmedia.co.uk ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Some thoughts against remote mapping
Am 15.06.2015 um 11:37 schrieb Lester Caine: ... All that is lacking is that other apps go to OSMAND rather than trying to get google maps running ... which only works with a network link? ... We're really getting substantially off topic now. Apps on android in general don't have specific other apps hardwired to perform tasks that they themselves don't handle. They will use a so called intent to indicate that they want to do something, for example display a location on a map, see https://developer.android.com/guide/components/intents-common.html#Maps the Android system will them either provide the user a selection of the apps that have indicated that they can perform the requested action, or, if the user has indicated the preferred app for a task, use that. The latter can naturally be changed by the user. Both OSMand and Vespucci support geo URIs on android. https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/android/intents lists all the intents that google maps support. I have to say that I haven't tested if all of these can be changed in the above fashion, it is obvious from the documentation that google has made that a bit harder. It would be interesting to see if you could convince android to at least offer the option of starting Mapillary instead of Streetview. Simon signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Some thoughts against remote mapping
sent from a phone Am 15.06.2015 um 01:24 schrieb Warin 61sundow...@gmail.com: There was a humours suggestion to map animal paths, rejected as not something wanted in OSM. who in osm would be able to reject what can be mapped? To some native farmers those paths may be very significant. The rejection reflects a 'western culture'. farmers or hunters? If something is sufficiently significant to someone (and persistent) to map it and potentially maintain the mapping, he will just do it, not? cheers Martin ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Some thoughts against remote mapping
On Sat, Jun 13, 2015 at 4:37 PM, Frederik Ramm frede...@remote.org wrote: I'm known for being critical of armchair mapping by people with no personal connection tho the area being mapped. Whether done for fun, for money, or to help, I think that in most cases it is a bad idea that runs against the spirit of OSM. I wonder what you think of holiday-mapping. Does not have this the same problems as remote mapping ? I'm thinking here of e.g. Overlanders that will map campsites and other tourist information on a otherwise possibly empty map in Africa or Asia. But I also thought that there are other popular holiday destination in e.g. Europe that were mapped by tourists instead a locals. Do you see this as a problem as well ? regards m ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Some thoughts against remote mapping
There is no remote mapper that I know of that believes they can produce a better map than a local can ... Sharing the remote burden all over the world instead of a small local populace, probably with limited internet connectivity, hardware and leisure time - to me that can only be a good thing. Agree. I dont think it should be a hardline stance of local vs remote. There should be balance. For example, remotely mapping roads is useful for us since it provides an initial framework for newbies to add POIs. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Some thoughts against remote mapping
Agree. I dont think it should be a hardline stance of local vs remote. There should be balance. For example, remotely mapping roads is useful for us since it provides an initial framework for newbies to add POIs. Indeed, I've written up the same experience with remote building tracing: http://hotosm.org/updates/2012-09-24_from_remote_tracing_to_field_mapping_in_padang Photo'd: https://twitter.com/iknowjoseph/status/248298952661811201 Cheers, Joseph On 15 June 2015 at 12:40, maning sambale emmanuel.samb...@gmail.com wrote: There is no remote mapper that I know of that believes they can produce a better map than a local can ... Sharing the remote burden all over the world instead of a small local populace, probably with limited internet connectivity, hardware and leisure time - to me that can only be a good thing. Agree. I dont think it should be a hardline stance of local vs remote. There should be balance. For example, remotely mapping roads is useful for us since it provides an initial framework for newbies to add POIs. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Some thoughts against remote mapping
On 15/06/2015, Arun Ganesh arun.plane...@gmail.com wrote: Maps are a relatively new concept in Indian society and is still used only by a small minority in urban areas in daily life. Naturally one cannot expect strong OSM communities at this stage till maps gain wider reach. Remote mapping in cases like this can serve to catalyze the process by making the maps more attractive to use. I happened to talk about a few of these points in my lightning talk at SOTMUS last week which might give more context on mapping in India: https://youtu.be/4fK_cWhCQbE?t=22m1s Devoting more resources to make these maps and tools accessible to the common person would be more fruitful than worrying about colonizing countries by remote mapping. Do you have any specific ideas on what would make OSM more compeling in India ? I'm thinking along the lines of working better with cheap phones and bad/expensive network coverage.Maybe smarter surveying/editing tools. Maybe a combined Mapillary photo + OSM note app.Maybe offline maps that are cut into smaller pieces.Maybe a smart social media campaing. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Some thoughts against remote mapping
Þann 15.6.2015 10:07, skrifaði Marc Gemis: On Sat, Jun 13, 2015 at 4:37 PM, Frederik Ramm frede...@remote.org mailto:frede...@remote.org wrote: I'm known for being critical of armchair mapping by people with no personal connection tho the area being mapped. Whether done for fun, for money, or to help, I think that in most cases it is a bad idea that runs against the spirit of OSM. I wonder what you think of holiday-mapping. Does not have this the same problems as remote mapping ? I'm thinking here of e.g. Overlanders that will map campsites and other tourist information on a otherwise possibly empty map in Africa or Asia. But I also thought that there are other popular holiday destination in e.g. Europe that were mapped by tourists instead a locals. Do you see this as a problem as well ? I'm assuming no. I watch changesets in Iceland and we get a fair number of tourist changesets, which we welcome (and fix if needed - spelling mostly). In 2009 Frederik gave an interview to Steve Coast where he said his biggest fear was that OSM would go towards elitism - that only certain people would be allowed to map. I'm hoping he hasn't changed his mind (although that is of course everyones prerogative). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MN1pjZsL1mA Defining areas to be local and to only be touched by locals and, worse, forming their own unique cultural mapping style (buildings are now lines, roads are areas etc) that would be incompatible with the rest of the map, these things would be a form of elitism, no outsiders allowed. There is no remote mapper that I know of that believes they can produce a better map than a local can, as I've categorized it in my tool then mapping is at least a two phase action, one that can be done remotely and the other locally. Sharing the remote burden all over the world instead of a small local populace, probably with limited internet connectivity, hardware and leisure time - to me that can only be a good thing. No village left behind. --Jói ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Some thoughts against remote mapping
On 15/06/2015, Lester Caine les...@lsces.co.uk wrote: You think it's only India that has problems with bad/expensive network coverage? Not at all. I'm asking a contributor who feels that his local community is not very strong if there's anything specific he thinks could improve things. Since this thread mentions the westerner bias a lot, I prefer to ask to get educated about a particular local community. I can't drive down the M5 without loosing a data connection, Me too, losing network on the go, I hate it. But let's be honest : this pales in comparison to the coverage issues in many countries (presumably like India, but my experience in the matter is getting old). so OSMAND is the only way to work and that works on cheap android devices. I've actually got it running on a £40 tablet for a bigger sat nav display ... All that is lacking is that other apps go to OSMAND rather than trying to get google maps running ... which only works with a network link? I've got a pretty good todo-list of what would improve my European OSM contributor's life, but I was curious about India. It has a huge population, good level of IT skills, offline functionality needs, good-but-not-great Google maps... It ought to be a prime location for OSM to shine, but it isn't (yet). I wonder why. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Some thoughts against remote mapping
Simon, Can you explain to me who the core OSM contributors are? Is the issue that people doubt the usefulness of the remotely mapped data? That we don't really believe in our own success? -Kate On Mon, Jun 15, 2015 at 12:20 AM, Simon Poole si...@poole.ch wrote: Am 15.06.2015 um 04:11 schrieb Robert Banick: ... Remote mapping was easier to set up in the early phases of the project and much more accessible to the Western “core” of OSM contributors, not to mention sympathetic journalists, who wanted to check out and perhaps contribute to the project. As a result the remote component has gotten an outsized amount of attention within the greater OSM community even though it’s only half of the story. ... I had a long diatribe here as a response that I thought better of, but I really did want to point out that the remote part of missing maps has never addressed the core OSM contributors at all. I don't think, even with giving everybody a lot of slack, that it can be seen as anything else than a marketing activity of the involved organisations in which the net result is not of any real concern. And I don't think shifting the blame for the above to the journalists is in any way fair. Simon ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Some thoughts against remote mapping
Interesting thread! And I'm glad it's civil. I think everybody agrees that local mappers are best. But that's obviously easier said than done. Like Robert said, it requires outreach and some big efforts to find and empower those local mappers, as many people would never have seen or thought to use OpenStreetMap for many reasons: maybe it's technology or free time or knowledge about geography or something else that I don't even know about. And maybe they just don't want to, which is perfectly fine, but I think showing people it exists and what is possible is a worthwhile effort. If you don't know something exists you're not going to be interested in it. There are a lot of good efforts already doing that: HOT of course in many places, the American Red Cross does a lot with local Red Crosses in other countries, Missing Maps, the project USAID is doing with a university in Bangladesh, and lots of local communities doing their own projects and finding members and doing more. (Full disclosure, my office at USAID also funded HOT to build two OSM groups in Haiti, but I am talking as a guy who loves OSM.) When I was visiting one of those projects in Haiti I found that the tourist map at a local hotel was basically a print-out of the city in OSM. That's great, and an example of local people using OSM for their own goals (in this case for marketing to tourists, which could be its own discussion, but still it's a locally-generated use.) And I bet there are many more people who would love to use OSM if only they knew about it. It's certainly not an easy problem to crack, but to me there are many ways to start -- technological solutions, training materials in local languages, and so on. And a lot of those are being worked on now. And like Robert said, they require people, not just to map -- people to teach, people to write, people to talk, people to organize, and so on. (And I do not agree that Missing Maps is a marketing ploy. You are free to start your own effort.) Kathmandu Living Labs is a great example of a local group leading the way and serving as a hub -- but they were organized through the Open Cities Project for this purpose.[1] To me that is not a bad thing, or colonialism, or whatever -- a good development project helps local people do something they want to do or find useful that they might not have had the money, time or skillset to do before, and KLL is obviously very successful now. (And psst, they could use some donations. [2]) That's not to say that everybody should go around setting up KLLs, but assistance from afar is not a bad thing per se. Something else semi-related that might be a terrible idea: I wonder if there ought to be some way to show which edits are by remote mappers and by locals? Could you do this automatically via IP address or something by seeing who was nearby and who was not? I do a fair amount of remote mapping but tend not to fix existing things that appear to me to be wrong because maybe a local person added it -- I assume they know better than me, the guy looking at Bing from thousands of miles away. But if I could tell that edit was also by a remote mapper, I would be more likely to fix it or send them a message about it. I know you can do some research by looking at the user's profile and the How Do You Contribute tools,[3] but that takes some time and can be inconclusive. That's not to say there should be tiers of edits, but maybe some more metadata about the edits would be helpful, especially since people are not very diligent about changeset comments or other such things. Just a thought. Thanks, Andrew [1] http://www.opencitiesproject.org/cities/kathmandu/ [2] http://kathmandulivinglabs.org/ [3] http://hdyc.neis-one.org/ On Mon, Jun 15, 2015 at 7:40 PM, Clifford Snow cliff...@snowandsnow.us wrote: Following this thread makes me wonder how people feel about some of the issues raised. The link below is quick survey about some of the issues raised in the thread. Please take a minute or two to respond. If I get sufficient answers I will publish the results. https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/TRQYHFP Clifford On Mon, Jun 15, 2015 at 3:56 PM, Sarah Hoffmann lon...@denofr.de wrote: On Mon, Jun 15, 2015 at 06:11:50PM +, Eros, Emily wrote: Hi all, In the midst of the discussion about remote mapping, I couldn¹t help but notice this comment from Sarah: In my experience, the issue is not that OSM is not welcoming for woman but simply that it is not interesting enough for them. I was surprised to see this and I have to say that I disagree. I find it hard to believe that half the population isn¹t interested in mapping just because they are female; the active engagement of so many women in the OSM community certainly suggests otherwise. This is naturally slippery ground and involves more guessing than solid research but let me try to explain a bit more what I meant. The people who drove OSM in the early stages of development were
Re: [OSM-talk] Some thoughts against remote mapping
Hi all, In the midst of the discussion about remote mapping, I couldn¹t help but notice this comment from Sarah: In my experience, the issue is not that OSM is not welcoming for woman but simply that it is not interesting enough for them. I was surprised to see this and I have to say that I disagree. I find it hard to believe that half the population isn¹t interested in mapping just because they are female; the active engagement of so many women in the OSM community certainly suggests otherwise. Maybe I am misreading the intent of that comment? If so, please disregard. If not, and I¹m reading this correctly, then may I suggest looking deeper to see if there are other factors (beyond pure lack of interest) preventing the women you know from taking an interest in OSM? Maybe there¹s a different engagement strategy you could consider? #InterestedEnoughToMap, Emily From: Sarah Hoffmann lon...@denofr.de To: Kate Chapman k...@maploser.com Cc: Talk Openstreetmap talk@openstreetmap.org Subject: Re: [OSM-talk] Some thoughts against remote mapping Message-ID: 20150614083150.ga20...@denofr.de Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Diversity to me has never just been gender. Though it has been shown that if you make a place welcoming to women it also makes it more inviting for other underrepresented groups. Intersectional feminism is about equality for everyone. This argument still has a sour taste to me. In my experience, the issue is not that OSM is not welcoming for woman but simply that it is not interesting enough for them. The outcome is the same but the actions to take are vastly different. I do agree with you though, that finding a solution to attract more woman will also show a way to attract other underrepresented groups. After all, it is exactly the same argument as above: the interests of the map makers and the potential map users don't match. Sarah ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Some thoughts against remote mapping
Hi all: I have read all the emails of this thread, and found some of the views about remote/local mapping as well as imports quite interesting. Anyway, I have to say that, although this conversation can lead to some people to enrich/modify their views about this subject, it won't lead to real changes on the OSM mapping rules. It is amusing for me thinking on the OSM community deciding to restrict the remote mapping or banning imports in any way whatsoever. It would be a seriously destructive move, and I would strongly oppose any such moves. About remote vs. local mapping and import-yes vs. import-not, my opinion is quite clear: If you make me have to choose, I will tell you that I find local on-the-ground mapping better than remote mapping. We should encourage local mapping by local people (and growing local, active OSM communities), but that doesn't mean that remote mapping by non-locals is bad. I find remote mapping by non-local people very good and positive, and we should also encourage people to map remotely as well as locally, teaching them how to do that and what the limits are for both approaches. I have mapped more than a million objects in the last 6 years in 84 countries, and I am ***very proud and happy*** of my remote mapping, whether I knew the area on the ground or not. Needless to say, when you map an area you don't know on the ground, you will apply a more conservative approach. But that's it. Apart from that, I repeat, we should not only say that remote mapping is a good thing, but in fact teach/encourage people to join. And I will go on happy-remote-mapping as I did up to now. And proudly. My opinion about imports is similar. In a perfect world, we would map everything from scratch, but we don't live in that mapping Paradise. Importing data is a very good thing, and many of the data we have now in OSM come from imported datasets. So, again, we should encourage and welcome non-importing mapping, but we should also help and encourage, as I do, those people who have data that want to import it to OSM and make it a better geo-database. We use Imports Guidelines to assure any import is done properly. I honestly find that discouraging users on remotely mapping or on importing data is destructive/negative for the growth and health of the OSM community. But it's up to everyone of us to promote certain ways of mapping and discourage others. We are a free community with freedom of speech, aren't we? Cheers, Rafael. (edvac) On 13/06/15 16:37, Frederik Ramm wrote: Hi, I'm known for being critical of armchair mapping by people with no personal connection tho the area being mapped. Whether done for fun, for money, or to help, I think that in most cases it is a bad idea that runs against the spirit of OSM. (I'm willing to concede that there are exceptions, and that sometimes doing something that's against the spirit may still be useful. But these are individual cases, to be carefully justified, and remote mapping should never become anyone's standard mode of contribution.) Until now I thought that the main exception, one that even I would have to accept, is mapping for humanitarian purposes. I was all the more surprised - positively surprised - to read this thoughtful essay by Erica Hagen, who founded Map Kibera: http://groundtruth.in/2015/06/05/osm-mapping-power-to-the-people/ I'd encourage everyone to read that. It questions some rarely questioned assumptions; it even says that mapping by locals doesn't really count if those locals are just doing it for the money (a sentiment that I've always felt but rarely dared to express, because who can expect locals in the poorest parts of the world to map for fun like privileged westerners do?). It also says that local isn't local if the locals from the wealthy city map the slum in their midst. I've tended to routinely associate the call for more diversity in OSM as mainly being one for levelling the gender playing field but this article goes much further. In some parts the article echoes a rather more acerbic posting written last month by Gwilym Eades, a university lecturer in London: http://place-memes.blogspot.de/2015/05/the-hubris-of-proactive-disaster-mapping.html which essentially accused humanitarian mapping (and as I would add, any remote mapping really) of homogenising, westernising, and colonising the map. I don't agree with everything written in these postings but they certainly deserve some wider audience, and that's why I am writing this here - since neither author is on these lists and I haven't seen their messages mentioned or quoted anywhere. I think the tl;dr of both these postings could be: Whenever you give someone a map by remote mapping, you also take something away from them. Bye Frederik -- Twitter: http://twitter.com/ravilacoya Por favor, non me envíe documentos con extensións .doc, .docx, .xls, .xlsx, .ppt, .pptx, aínda
Re: [OSM-talk] Some thoughts against remote mapping
2015-06-15 20:22 GMT+02:00 Rafael Avila Coya ravilac...@gmail.com: Hi all: I have read all the emails of this thread, and found some of the views about remote/local mapping as well as imports quite interesting. Anyway, I have to say that, although this conversation can lead to some people to enrich/modify their views about this subject, it won't lead to real changes on the OSM mapping rules. It is amusing for me thinking on the OSM community deciding to restrict the remote mapping or banning imports in any way whatsoever. It would be a seriously destructive move, and I would strongly oppose any such moves. Except for rules the DWG applies on bad edits I'm not aware of a decision making process within OSM which can restrict remote mapping or banning imports. So this thread will not lead to a decision, unless Frederik wants to change the rules the DWG applies. Cheers, Johan ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Some thoughts against remote mapping
Not at all. I'm asking a contributor who feels that his local community is not very strong if there's anything specific he thinks could improve things. The very simple answer is that most people who know English and can afford a smartphone already use Google maps which work reasonably well in India. OSM is atleast 10 years behind in coverage and there is just a handful like me who have the luxury of free time who can see the long term benefits of contributing to open source. To the rest, they already have working maps, so why bother. What is changing the scenario is some popular classified services switching to OSM, but they do this at a big risk, because the data is really poor. Another is the recent open source policy approved by the government which makes gives localized open source software the preference in new e-governance applications. Also the education system is looking at mapping as an activity for learning about computers and the environment. Change is happening, but its going to take a few years till there is visible traction in community growth. -- (planemad) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Planemad http://j.mp/ArunGanesh ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Some thoughts against remote mapping
Kate I could go in to great lengths to define what the core mappers are, perhaps the 5% that provide 95% of the data or the 10'000 that could easily map the equivalent of a MM-mapping party on their own in an afternoon and so on. But that is not the point, Robert was claiming that the remote part of MM was designed to address 'the Western core of OSM contributors'. His words, not mine, and clearly, from the first events on, that was not the case, regardless of definition. Everything is geared towards churning through newbies and generating as much as possible media coverage, not fast, efficient and quality coverage of the areas in question. It may have not been intended so from the very start, but that is definitely what it has turned out to be. I'm sure it is a big boon for the involved organisations in any case. Everybody can do more or less do what they please in OSM which naturally includes MM, but just so I don't have to like everything and I do reserve myself the right to call a spade a spade. To end on a positive note: the team from HOT working on the activations in the wake of the Nepal earthquake had to come to grips with the reality that using disasters as a newbie recruiting events is perhaps not such a good idea and after a considerable number of issues labelled a lot of the tasks explicitly for experienced mappers which is likely the way it should be. Simon Am 15.06.2015 um 17:33 schrieb Kate Chapman: Simon, Can you explain to me who the core OSM contributors are? Is the issue that people doubt the usefulness of the remotely mapped data? That we don't really believe in our own success? -Kate On Mon, Jun 15, 2015 at 12:20 AM, Simon Poole si...@poole.ch mailto:si...@poole.ch wrote: Am 15.06.2015 um 04:11 schrieb Robert Banick: ... Remote mapping was easier to set up in the early phases of the project and much more accessible to the Western “core” of OSM contributors, not to mention sympathetic journalists, who wanted to check out and perhaps contribute to the project. As a result the remote component has gotten an outsized amount of attention within the greater OSM community even though it’s only half of the story. ... I had a long diatribe here as a response that I thought better of, but I really did want to point out that the remote part of missing maps has never addressed the core OSM contributors at all. I don't think, even with giving everybody a lot of slack, that it can be seen as anything else than a marketing activity of the involved organisations in which the net result is not of any real concern. And I don't think shifting the blame for the above to the journalists is in any way fair. Simon ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org mailto:talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Some thoughts against remote mapping
Everything is geared towards churning through newbies and generating as much as possible media coverage, not fast, efficient and quality coverage of the areas in question. It may have not been intended so from the very start, but that is definitely what it has turned out to be. I tend to validate in HOT more than map these days and one comment I'd make is I've seen new mappers come into Nepal and later transfer into other HOT projects, their mapping skills are improving as well. Once they get going with JOSM their productivity tends to go up so they're getting close to the 5% core. Quite a number of projects have benefited from the Nepal newbies and whilst they might be new to OSM at least two are better than I at picking out details or knowing what to look for. I think one comment was its much the same as their normal work when they were looking at the flooding in the UK. Perhaps we need something like the HOT validation system in OSM more generally but I don't know how it would work. Locally OSM mappers have used a rich range of tags, I'd say about 25% other than highways didn't get rendered for one reason or another when they were initially tagged. Cheerio John On 15 June 2015 at 15:39, Simon Poole si...@poole.ch wrote: Kate I could go in to great lengths to define what the core mappers are, perhaps the 5% that provide 95% of the data or the 10'000 that could easily map the equivalent of a MM-mapping party on their own in an afternoon and so on. But that is not the point, Robert was claiming that the remote part of MM was designed to address 'the Western core of OSM contributors'. His words, not mine, and clearly, from the first events on, that was not the case, regardless of definition. Everything is geared towards churning through newbies and generating as much as possible media coverage, not fast, efficient and quality coverage of the areas in question. It may have not been intended so from the very start, but that is definitely what it has turned out to be. I'm sure it is a big boon for the involved organisations in any case. Everybody can do more or less do what they please in OSM which naturally includes MM, but just so I don't have to like everything and I do reserve myself the right to call a spade a spade. To end on a positive note: the team from HOT working on the activations in the wake of the Nepal earthquake had to come to grips with the reality that using disasters as a newbie recruiting events is perhaps not such a good idea and after a considerable number of issues labelled a lot of the tasks explicitly for experienced mappers which is likely the way it should be. Simon Am 15.06.2015 um 17:33 schrieb Kate Chapman: Simon, Can you explain to me who the core OSM contributors are? Is the issue that people doubt the usefulness of the remotely mapped data? That we don't really believe in our own success? -Kate On Mon, Jun 15, 2015 at 12:20 AM, Simon Poole si...@poole.ch mailto:si...@poole.ch wrote: Am 15.06.2015 um 04:11 schrieb Robert Banick: ... Remote mapping was easier to set up in the early phases of the project and much more accessible to the Western “core” of OSM contributors, not to mention sympathetic journalists, who wanted to check out and perhaps contribute to the project. As a result the remote component has gotten an outsized amount of attention within the greater OSM community even though it’s only half of the story. ... I had a long diatribe here as a response that I thought better of, but I really did want to point out that the remote part of missing maps has never addressed the core OSM contributors at all. I don't think, even with giving everybody a lot of slack, that it can be seen as anything else than a marketing activity of the involved organisations in which the net result is not of any real concern. And I don't think shifting the blame for the above to the journalists is in any way fair. Simon ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org mailto:talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Some thoughts against remote mapping
Hi, Eros: Yes, this was another subject that arose during this conversation. And I agree totally with what you say. I have been always interested/worried about the low numbers of women involved in free software/free knowledge projects. The situation in OSM is far from being healthy in what respects to genre equality, and there have been several talks about this issue in some of the SOTM's. I've been teaching for many years in secondary schools, so I can assure you that girls aren't less interested in computing than boys, and in the several activities I did with OSM, girls numbers were actually bigger than boys. Believe me: I didn't see any difference in students, as far as you take inclusive measures to avoid discrimination of any kind. Apart from the links given by Kate, I can recall a very interesting keynote of Alyssa Wright about this subject in the SOTM 2013 [1] (only slides). Cheers, Rafael. [1] http://web.archive.org/web/20150328164447/http://www.slideshare.net/apw217/changing-the-ratio On 15/06/15 20:11, Eros, Emily wrote: Hi all, In the midst of the discussion about remote mapping, I couldn¹t help but notice this comment from Sarah: In my experience, the issue is not that OSM is not welcoming for woman but simply that it is not interesting enough for them. I was surprised to see this and I have to say that I disagree. I find it hard to believe that half the population isn¹t interested in mapping just because they are female; the active engagement of so many women in the OSM community certainly suggests otherwise. Maybe I am misreading the intent of that comment? If so, please disregard. If not, and I¹m reading this correctly, then may I suggest looking deeper to see if there are other factors (beyond pure lack of interest) preventing the women you know from taking an interest in OSM? Maybe there¹s a different engagement strategy you could consider? #InterestedEnoughToMap, Emily From: Sarah Hoffmann lon...@denofr.de To: Kate Chapman k...@maploser.com Cc: Talk Openstreetmap talk@openstreetmap.org Subject: Re: [OSM-talk] Some thoughts against remote mapping Message-ID: 20150614083150.ga20...@denofr.de Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Diversity to me has never just been gender. Though it has been shown that if you make a place welcoming to women it also makes it more inviting for other underrepresented groups. Intersectional feminism is about equality for everyone. This argument still has a sour taste to me. In my experience, the issue is not that OSM is not welcoming for woman but simply that it is not interesting enough for them. The outcome is the same but the actions to take are vastly different. I do agree with you though, that finding a solution to attract more woman will also show a way to attract other underrepresented groups. After all, it is exactly the same argument as above: the interests of the map makers and the potential map users don't match. Sarah ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk -- Twitter: http://twitter.com/ravilacoya Por favor, non me envíe documentos con extensións .doc, .docx, .xls, .xlsx, .ppt, .pptx, aínda podendoo facer, non os abro. Atendendo á lexislación vixente, empregue formatos estándares e abertos. http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDocument#Tipos_de_ficheros ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Some thoughts against remote mapping
Hi Simon There are projects that can contribute in various ways to the development of OpenStreetMap. Any of these add a piece and contribute to make a complete, accurate map. Imports are important to provide structured informations like boundaries, place names, etc. Surely not something to neglect. The same with the remote mapping. This help cover large areas, adding roads and buildings. But this does not either make a complete map. This is what I call the black and white map. And yes local knowledge is adding color to the map. This is essential to develop better maps. But should we accept statements saying that this is colonialism, western views to contribute to map in development countries? This is not my perception coordinating over the last years to the various OSM responses including Hayian/Philippines, Ebola, Nepal and many others. At the same time, some of us have developped expertise and are supporting the local communities. We are a global community exchanging through internet and it is important to develop the thrust, to learn how to work together. With the humanitarian responses, we have the opportunity to work together and develop this thrust and learn how to work together. I was pleased to see for the Nepal Earthquake response that I could co-lead with the Kathmandu Living Labs folks. They where working in quite difficult context and surely needed help. We have organized rapidly various working groups to deal with imagery, imports, validations, etc. plus interfacing with the international community. Manning Sambale from Philippines has also given back after we helped his community for the Hayian cyclone in 2013. Our colleagues from Africa, India, south America and surely elsewhere also contributed organizing various mapathons. As you pointed out, we had to adjust for the Nepal response to the massive contribution of new contributors in a few weeks. We have never seen that. There was more then 7,000 contributors and 17 million objects in 7 weeks. This is more then for the West Africa Ebola over a year. The first week, there was an average of 1,000 contributors a day. This is the ransom of success for OSM, being exposed to the medias, the international organizations recognizing our significant contribution to such humanitarian responses. The answer to this is global. We should surely not let each community alone. The global OSM community needs to offer expertise to the national communities, to support them, help them manage for their contry adding significant informations to the map. Crowdsourcing is an OpenStreetMap reality. There is not only the mapathons. Anybody can open an account and contribute, whatever are there skills. We like to say that we have more then 2 million contributors. But yes, a lot contribute only once. How can we assure that their experience will be fun and that they will come for a second day? Operations like for Nepal help see where we should improve collectively to produce better maps. The Tasking manager offers ways to coordinate the remote mapping. But we realize that we need to adapt it to the less experienced contributors. Reserving tasks for more experienced contributors for Nepal was not enough since any new contributor can select these tasks anyway. We are looking at ways to improve that, to assure that new contributors are better oriented to adapted learning material and easier tasks. We could also pursue this reflexion with our Editors. Are they sufficiently adapted, the learning material easily accessible and adapted for the first contributors, the presets simplified, all of this assuring the new contributors will come back a second day? And this either for remote mapping or local mapping! regard Pierre De : Simon Poole si...@poole.ch À : Kate Chapman k...@maploser.com Cc : osm talk@openstreetmap.org Envoyé le : Lundi 15 juin 2015 15h39 Objet : Re: [OSM-talk] Some thoughts against remote mapping Kate I could go in to great lengths to define what the core mappers are, perhaps the 5% that provide 95% of the data or the 10'000 that could easily map the equivalent of a MM-mapping party on their own in an afternoon and so on. But that is not the point, Robert was claiming that the remote part of MM was designed to address 'the Western core of OSM contributors'. His words, not mine, and clearly, from the first events on, that was not the case, regardless of definition. Everything is geared towards churning through newbies and generating as much as possible media coverage, not fast, efficient and quality coverage of the areas in question. It may have not been intended so from the very start, but that is definitely what it has turned out to be. I'm sure it is a big boon for the involved organisations in any case. Everybody can do more or less do what they please in OSM which naturally includes MM, but just so I don't have to like everything and I do reserve myself the right to call
Re: [OSM-talk] Some thoughts against remote mapping
I'm unsure if we have a good way to compare, but most people introduced to OSM generally don't stick with it. Are the Missing Maps attrition rates any different than people who find out about OSM in other ways? On Mon, Jun 15, 2015 at 12:55 PM, john whelan jwhelan0...@gmail.com wrote: Everything is geared towards churning through newbies and generating as much as possible media coverage, not fast, efficient and quality coverage of the areas in question. It may have not been intended so from the very start, but that is definitely what it has turned out to be. I tend to validate in HOT more than map these days and one comment I'd make is I've seen new mappers come into Nepal and later transfer into other HOT projects, their mapping skills are improving as well. Once they get going with JOSM their productivity tends to go up so they're getting close to the 5% core. Quite a number of projects have benefited from the Nepal newbies and whilst they might be new to OSM at least two are better than I at picking out details or knowing what to look for. I think one comment was its much the same as their normal work when they were looking at the flooding in the UK. Perhaps we need something like the HOT validation system in OSM more generally but I don't know how it would work. Locally OSM mappers have used a rich range of tags, I'd say about 25% other than highways didn't get rendered for one reason or another when they were initially tagged. Cheerio John On 15 June 2015 at 15:39, Simon Poole si...@poole.ch wrote: Kate I could go in to great lengths to define what the core mappers are, perhaps the 5% that provide 95% of the data or the 10'000 that could easily map the equivalent of a MM-mapping party on their own in an afternoon and so on. But that is not the point, Robert was claiming that the remote part of MM was designed to address 'the Western core of OSM contributors'. His words, not mine, and clearly, from the first events on, that was not the case, regardless of definition. Everything is geared towards churning through newbies and generating as much as possible media coverage, not fast, efficient and quality coverage of the areas in question. It may have not been intended so from the very start, but that is definitely what it has turned out to be. I'm sure it is a big boon for the involved organisations in any case. Everybody can do more or less do what they please in OSM which naturally includes MM, but just so I don't have to like everything and I do reserve myself the right to call a spade a spade. To end on a positive note: the team from HOT working on the activations in the wake of the Nepal earthquake had to come to grips with the reality that using disasters as a newbie recruiting events is perhaps not such a good idea and after a considerable number of issues labelled a lot of the tasks explicitly for experienced mappers which is likely the way it should be. Simon Am 15.06.2015 um 17:33 schrieb Kate Chapman: Simon, Can you explain to me who the core OSM contributors are? Is the issue that people doubt the usefulness of the remotely mapped data? That we don't really believe in our own success? -Kate On Mon, Jun 15, 2015 at 12:20 AM, Simon Poole si...@poole.ch mailto:si...@poole.ch wrote: Am 15.06.2015 um 04:11 schrieb Robert Banick: ... Remote mapping was easier to set up in the early phases of the project and much more accessible to the Western “core” of OSM contributors, not to mention sympathetic journalists, who wanted to check out and perhaps contribute to the project. As a result the remote component has gotten an outsized amount of attention within the greater OSM community even though it’s only half of the story. ... I had a long diatribe here as a response that I thought better of, but I really did want to point out that the remote part of missing maps has never addressed the core OSM contributors at all. I don't think, even with giving everybody a lot of slack, that it can be seen as anything else than a marketing activity of the involved organisations in which the net result is not of any real concern. And I don't think shifting the blame for the above to the journalists is in any way fair. Simon ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org mailto:talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Some thoughts against remote mapping
Am 15.06.2015 um 22:18 schrieb Arun Ganesh: Not at all. I'm asking a contributor who feels that his local community is not very strong if there's anything specific he thinks could improve things. The very simple answer is that most people who know English and can afford a smartphone already use Google maps which work reasonably well in India. OSM is atleast 10 years behind in coverage and there is just a handful like me who have the luxury of free time who can see the long term benefits of contributing to open source. To the rest, they already have working maps, so why bother. ... I would just want to point out that that the last point is not vastly different in Western Europe and a lot of other regions. I suspect the key to success is to find the itch that OSM can scratch that currently isn't well served by google or other map providers. In Europe early on (and still) it was cyclists. In full realisation that the economic constraints are very different and this is a very cultural dependent thing. What worked for region X is unlikely to work for Y. ... Change is happening, but its going to take a few years till there is visible traction in community growth. I see no problem with that, I liken OSM to the tortoise in the fable.* Simon * I have at other times shown https://youtu.be/TdUsyXQ8Wrs as a introduction particularly when competition has been present :-). signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Some thoughts against remote mapping
On 15/06/2015, Arun Ganesh arun.plane...@gmail.com wrote: Not at all. I'm asking a contributor who feels that his local community is not very strong if there's anything specific he thinks could improve things. The very simple answer is that most people who know English and can afford a smartphone already use Google maps which work reasonably well in India. OSM is atleast 10 years behind in coverage and there is just a handful like me who have the luxury of free time who can see the long term benefits of contributing to open source. To the rest, they already have working maps, so why bother. Fair enough. Although a quick mapcompare session shows that GM has nowhere near the quality that it has in Europe/America, so it should be less work for OSM to overtake GM in India than it took in Europe (I know, if the community is tiny, less overall work is still way more work for each individual). You point out an interesting bit of information though: GM is for English speakers. Do you render a Hindi (and other languages) slippymap ? Provide Hindi OSMand and Garmin maps ? That might catch the attention of many users. In Ireland we have an all-Gaelic map (http://maps.openstreetmap.ie/?zoom=9layers=00BFFlat=52.92847lon=-7.65252) that attracts people from outside OSM. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Some thoughts against remote mapping
Following this thread makes me wonder how people feel about some of the issues raised. The link below is quick survey about some of the issues raised in the thread. Please take a minute or two to respond. If I get sufficient answers I will publish the results. https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/TRQYHFP Clifford On Mon, Jun 15, 2015 at 3:56 PM, Sarah Hoffmann lon...@denofr.de wrote: On Mon, Jun 15, 2015 at 06:11:50PM +, Eros, Emily wrote: Hi all, In the midst of the discussion about remote mapping, I couldn¹t help but notice this comment from Sarah: In my experience, the issue is not that OSM is not welcoming for woman but simply that it is not interesting enough for them. I was surprised to see this and I have to say that I disagree. I find it hard to believe that half the population isn¹t interested in mapping just because they are female; the active engagement of so many women in the OSM community certainly suggests otherwise. This is naturally slippery ground and involves more guessing than solid research but let me try to explain a bit more what I meant. The people who drove OSM in the early stages of development were almost exclusively people who mapped for the sake of creating a map. The actual use of the data was secondary. The satisfaction of showing that it can be done was enough. In fact, the core of OSM contributors (the ones Simon was eluding to) is still made up of this group. Without wanting to speculate what the reasons are, numbers suggest that this kind of motivation mainly appeals to men. Women think differently. They seem more interested that the outcome of their labour is put to good use. The vast majority of woman in OSM that I know is contributing for a very specific purpose: they are professionals in GIS, humanitarian workers, researchers or involved in a community project that requires maps. Note that it doesn't mean that other women are less skilled or capable. It is a simple question on where you invest your time and energy and for a majority of woman, creating a map just to have something pretty to look at at the screen does not seem sufficient. That's what I meant with lack of interest. As it happens, HOT is a good example on how to do it right in that sense. Humanitarian mapping has a very clear goal and the perceived outcome of helping other people is obviously worth the time of more women than completely mapping a neighbourhood. A volunteer projects stands and falls with the motivation of its members. We've successfully tapped into the source of people that is motivated by data contribution. To create diversity, it's worth to look more into the source of people motivated by data use. The tried and true way to do that is creating and promoting products for these people. openchildcaremap.org, any takers? Kind regards Sarah ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk -- @osm_seattle osm_seattle.snowandsnow.us OpenStreetMap: Maps with a human touch ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Some thoughts against remote mapping
Am 15.06.2015 um 04:11 schrieb Robert Banick: ... Remote mapping was easier to set up in the early phases of the project and much more accessible to the Western “core” of OSM contributors, not to mention sympathetic journalists, who wanted to check out and perhaps contribute to the project. As a result the remote component has gotten an outsized amount of attention within the greater OSM community even though it’s only half of the story. ... I had a long diatribe here as a response that I thought better of, but I really did want to point out that the remote part of missing maps has never addressed the core OSM contributors at all. I don't think, even with giving everybody a lot of slack, that it can be seen as anything else than a marketing activity of the involved organisations in which the net result is not of any real concern. And I don't think shifting the blame for the above to the journalists is in any way fair. Simon signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Some thoughts against remote mapping
On Mon, Jun 15, 2015 at 06:11:50PM +, Eros, Emily wrote: Hi all, In the midst of the discussion about remote mapping, I couldn¹t help but notice this comment from Sarah: In my experience, the issue is not that OSM is not welcoming for woman but simply that it is not interesting enough for them. I was surprised to see this and I have to say that I disagree. I find it hard to believe that half the population isn¹t interested in mapping just because they are female; the active engagement of so many women in the OSM community certainly suggests otherwise. This is naturally slippery ground and involves more guessing than solid research but let me try to explain a bit more what I meant. The people who drove OSM in the early stages of development were almost exclusively people who mapped for the sake of creating a map. The actual use of the data was secondary. The satisfaction of showing that it can be done was enough. In fact, the core of OSM contributors (the ones Simon was eluding to) is still made up of this group. Without wanting to speculate what the reasons are, numbers suggest that this kind of motivation mainly appeals to men. Women think differently. They seem more interested that the outcome of their labour is put to good use. The vast majority of woman in OSM that I know is contributing for a very specific purpose: they are professionals in GIS, humanitarian workers, researchers or involved in a community project that requires maps. Note that it doesn't mean that other women are less skilled or capable. It is a simple question on where you invest your time and energy and for a majority of woman, creating a map just to have something pretty to look at at the screen does not seem sufficient. That's what I meant with lack of interest. As it happens, HOT is a good example on how to do it right in that sense. Humanitarian mapping has a very clear goal and the perceived outcome of helping other people is obviously worth the time of more women than completely mapping a neighbourhood. A volunteer projects stands and falls with the motivation of its members. We've successfully tapped into the source of people that is motivated by data contribution. To create diversity, it's worth to look more into the source of people motivated by data use. The tried and true way to do that is creating and promoting products for these people. openchildcaremap.org, any takers? Kind regards Sarah ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Some thoughts against remote mapping
2015-06-13 16:37 GMT+02:00 Frederik Ramm frede...@remote.org: Hi, I'm known for being critical of armchair mapping by people with no personal connection tho the area being mapped. Whether done for fun, for money, or to help, I think that in most cases it is a bad idea that runs against the spirit of OSM. (I'm willing to concede that there are exceptions, and that sometimes doing something that's against the spirit may still be useful. But these are individual cases, to be carefully justified, and remote mapping should never become anyone's standard mode of contribution.) It's well within the spirit of OSM to map remotely from an armchair, as long as it represents actual on-the-ground data. This means that (satellite) photo's, gps tracks, local knowledge, datasets etc. can all be used for mapping. Of course considering licensing, quality of the photo's/data, ageing of photo's/data. Until now I thought that the main exception, one that even I would have to accept, is mapping for humanitarian purposes. I was all the more surprised - positively surprised - to read this thoughtful essay by Erica Hagen, who founded Map Kibera: http://groundtruth.in/2015/06/05/osm-mapping-power-to-the-people/ I'd encourage everyone to read that. It questions some rarely questioned assumptions; it even says that mapping by locals doesn't really count if those locals are just doing it for the money (a sentiment that I've always felt but rarely dared to express, because who can expect locals in the poorest parts of the world to map for fun like privileged westerners do?). It also says that local isn't local if the locals from the wealthy city map the slum in their midst. I've tended to routinely associate the call for more diversity in OSM as mainly being one for levelling the gender playing field but this article goes much further. In some parts the article echoes a rather more acerbic posting written last month by Gwilym Eades, a university lecturer in London: http://place-memes.blogspot.de/2015/05/the-hubris-of-proactive-disaster-mapping.html which essentially accused humanitarian mapping (and as I would add, any remote mapping really) of homogenising, westernising, and colonising the map. Some comments on statements by Erica: Mapping, on the other hand, is an activity that is inherently the other way around — best and most accurately done by residents of a place. It's true that locals have local knowledge which can enrich a map. Though Google shows that it's possible to create maps with high quality without using locals. By just having some cars with GPSses and photos driving around, buying datasets, extracting information from websites and the Android users Google has created a map which is being used massively. Possibly mainly to keep maintaining cost low Google accepts input from locals. Having dealt with these challenges nearly from day one of Map Kibera, I’m particularly sensitive to the question “How does a map help the people living in the place represented?” Great 'what' question. People can live for years without a map of their local community, so why should they start filling in a blank map after all? I've searched her article for an answer to her question, but can't find it. Though there are two clues in her article: 1. 'the real target of any development-oriented data effort — actual improvements in the lives of the world’s poor and marginalized.' 2. '...to solve this problem of invisibility bestowed by poverty.' Do we, the westerners, want actual improvements in the lives of the world's poor and marginalized, or are it these people themselves who want this? And is it true that the poor are invisible (on a map) and that they have that problem? Or should it be a westerner telling them they have a problem (ah, I didn't know I had that problem) which then can be solved by mapping projects engaging locals? I can only see one clear reason to help the poor people from a westerners view: in case of a disaster, NGO's can help people by providing food, clothes, housing. In order to reach them, maps are a lifesaver. Luckily OSM has the possibility of remote mapping (Google forbids it) using up-to-date satellite imagery which helps these lifesaving efforts. Other than disaster mapping, it's fine to me when locals don't want their blank map being filled in at all. And if they do want a blank map being filled, they can do it themselves by the standard tools. The poor can do without mapping projects organized by non-locals. It's enough for non-locals to be there when locals ask for support. Cheers, Johan I don't agree with everything written in these postings but they certainly deserve some wider audience, and that's why I am writing this here - since neither author is on these lists and I haven't seen their messages mentioned or quoted anywhere. I think the tl;dr of both these postings could be: Whenever you give someone a map by remote mapping, you also take
Re: [OSM-talk] Some thoughts against remote mapping
And i think there are a lot of other areas in OSM that represent at least as efficient (and therefore damaging) means of cultural imperialism as remote mapping. Acting as devil's advocate, I have a quick question - are you 100% sure that you are not overthinking stuff? I see discussion after discussion which delve into grand topics like diversity, freedom from proprietary software/services, freedom from corporations, now this thing with remote mappers robbing local people of something deep and profound... Don't you think you're over-analyzing everything a bit too much recently? I mean, wouldn't the energy be better spent? Just checking. I may be wrong, in which case, please do carry on... Paweł On Sat, Jun 13, 2015, at 19:09, Christoph Hormann wrote: On Saturday 13 June 2015, Frederik Ramm wrote: [...] I don't agree with everything written in these postings but they certainly deserve some wider audience, and that's why I am writing this here - since neither author is on these lists and I haven't seen their messages mentioned or quoted anywhere. I think the tl;dr of both these postings could be: Whenever you give someone a map by remote mapping, you also take something away from them. Thanks for pointing to these texts, very interesting reading. I fear though that critical discussion of the matter will most likely be difficult since the perceived need for humanitarian mapping in events of crisis and the perceived prominence of altruistic motives in those activities is so large making even the basic notion that something good does not justify something bad seems unimportant. Critical reflection on your activities in such a context is very difficult. One important point where i think Gwilym is wrong is the idea that proactive humanitarian mapping will lead to a true homogenization of the map. First of all none of the organized mapping activities focusses on those areas that are worst mapped in OSM so they increase differences rather than reducing them. Efforts in true homogenization would only have a chance on a much longer time horizon (i.e. decades) and none of the organizations involved in humanitarian mapping think on that time scale. But more importantly the colonalization, control and power over space is already there in the form of global coverage high resolution imagery. Remote mapping essentailly makes this information more accessible. If this is a good or a bad thing can of course be discussed but OSM is not really the best address to blame here in any case. This is not meant to say remote mapping in OSM is generally a good thing, many of the arguments against it have a lot of merit. But the main question should be if and how this hampers development of true grassroots mapping by locals when performed within OSM and thereby conteracts the primary purpose of the project and not if remote mapping itself, i.e. extracting semantic information from remotely sensed data that exists anyway is morally questionable in general (which is fairly frivolous IMO). And i think there are a lot of other areas in OSM that represent at least as efficient (and therefore damaging) means of cultural imperialism as remote mapping. My favorite example is always map rendering, there is a real lot of more or less subtle cultural bias in that. OSM does not only need more mappers with diverse cultural backgrounds, it also need more diverse input in development and design and the barriers for those are much higher than for mapping. -- Christoph Hormann http://www.imagico.de/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Some thoughts against remote mapping
On 14/06/2015 6:31 PM, Sarah Hoffmann wrote: The One Map we currently show caters mainly to the overrepresented tech population (or, in the case of the HOT map, to NGOs) and that gives the impression that the same is true for our data (which isn't). So maybe both, the diversity movement and humanitarian efforts should focus less on data collection and more on the data representation, i.e. make specialised maps. Unfortunately some people in OSM don't want diversity - they see it as a special case and they don't want that in OSM! This can be seen in the opposition to some new tags being introduced. I say the more data the better. The number of tags should reflect the diversity of features, grouping them is something of a problem, but that should not stop the introduction of new tags. The 'one map we show' .. is that not intended for checking of data? Not for producing a map? Presently there are many OSM derived maps available, with lots of variation between them in how they present the data and what data they do present. It 'would be nice' to have a 'user configurable map' .. that may come as time passes. But it would still rely on OSM data, and that needs to include a lot of diverse things. Some won't be of use in one map, but may be very important in another map. Lots of them. Invest in technologies that allow every community to make exactly the map they need. Because this really is the resource intensive part of OSM which most people cannot efford. Data collection is easy and cheap in comparision. The local communities will eventually mangage to do it on their own, once they see what the benefits are for themselves. Sarah Good data collection in remote areas is neither easy or cheap. The more remote the area the more it costs to get there, stay there and then transmit the data back. - I use 'remote mapping' methods even close to home, as well as far away. When used close to home I have cultural knowledge that help in determining things. For clarification I can always go and visit. Far away I am less certain and have to take a more conservative approach. That can lead to errors - I try to make those have as little impact as possible. If, for example, a highway classification is needed than I'll demote the classification rather than be too optimistic about it. Some group of buildings might be a small village .. or a group of farm buildings .. I'll leave that alone. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Some thoughts against remote mapping
Hi, On 06/14/2015 02:12 PM, Jóhannes Birgir Jensson wrote: I find this point of view to be astounding in its arrogance and indeed blatant colonialistic spirit. Harsh words. In the final paragraph of your blog post, you write: In addition the locals are not the only people who will need to use a map. Tourists, passers-by, people moving their goods or offering their services also need maps of places where they go. Everyone needs a map even if not everyone wants to make it or use it. But this is exactly the criticism we're facing - bluntly put: Westerners need maps of places so they can conquer them by selling their products and services. Bye Frederik -- Frederik Ramm ## eMail frede...@remote.org ## N49°00'09 E008°23'33 ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Some thoughts against remote mapping
On Sunday 14 June 2015, Sarah Hoffmann wrote: The One Map we currently show caters mainly to the overrepresented tech population (or, in the case of the HOT map, to NGOs) and that gives the impression that the same is true for our data (which isn't). So maybe both, the diversity movement and humanitarian efforts should focus less on data collection and more on the data representation, i.e. make specialised maps. Lots of them. Yes, it is remarkable that we have all kinds of specialized, often local maps for certain purposes - hiking, sports of all kinds etc. covering subjects popular in 'developed' countries despite the fact that the main map already well addresses the needs of people there but hardly any maps that specifically target the needs of locals elsewhere. It is certainly much more difficult to teach people to create their own custom design maps in a self-determined way than it is to enable them to do mapping, it requires a much more abstract view both in terms of dealing with data and in terms of human perception in maps reading. This is also something that came through in the talk you linked to i think. What i would really like to see is developers and map designers getting to listen to and communicate with people with a more diverse cultural background. This is going to be hard though - getting a productive communication between a map designer and an average map user from for example Europe is already tough, working around wrong preconceptions, dealing with the problems of technical language etc. But doing this across significant cultural and geographical barriers is a whole other story. -- Christoph Hormann http://www.imagico.de/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Some thoughts against remote mapping
I find this point of view to be astounding in its arrogance and indeed blatant colonialistic spirit. The noble savages should not be influenced by us, the decadent Westerners. A sickening insular attitude that I have not found in similar projects like Project Gutenberg and Wikipedia. When do I stop being a local, when I cross my street, when I cross into the next neighborhood, when I cross into the next settlement, next region, next country? Where is the limit of local? There is nothing taken away by remote mapping, indeed what is given is very valuable, time and commitment to building a base map upon which it is easier for locals to add their own flavour. I've written some thoughts on this myself, and indeed find this to be an opportune time to point at my project Askja, on how to make mapping remotely even easier and more focused. My thoughts are found here: http://joi.betra.is/?p=1769 The TL;DR is, we are building a map of the world and we need more people to do more work on more places, remotely or not. Remote mapping - lets do more Þann 13.6.2015 14:37, skrifaði Frederik Ramm: Hi, I'm known for being critical of armchair mapping by people with no personal connection tho the area being mapped. Whether done for fun, for money, or to help, I think that in most cases it is a bad idea that runs against the spirit of OSM. (I'm willing to concede that there are exceptions, and that sometimes doing something that's against the spirit may still be useful. But these are individual cases, to be carefully justified, and remote mapping should never become anyone's standard mode of contribution.) Until now I thought that the main exception, one that even I would have to accept, is mapping for humanitarian purposes. I was all the more surprised - positively surprised - to read this thoughtful essay by Erica Hagen, who founded Map Kibera: http://groundtruth.in/2015/06/05/osm-mapping-power-to-the-people/ I'd encourage everyone to read that. It questions some rarely questioned assumptions; it even says that mapping by locals doesn't really count if those locals are just doing it for the money (a sentiment that I've always felt but rarely dared to express, because who can expect locals in the poorest parts of the world to map for fun like privileged westerners do?). It also says that local isn't local if the locals from the wealthy city map the slum in their midst. I've tended to routinely associate the call for more diversity in OSM as mainly being one for levelling the gender playing field but this article goes much further. In some parts the article echoes a rather more acerbic posting written last month by Gwilym Eades, a university lecturer in London: http://place-memes.blogspot.de/2015/05/the-hubris-of-proactive-disaster-mapping.html which essentially accused humanitarian mapping (and as I would add, any remote mapping really) of homogenising, westernising, and colonising the map. I don't agree with everything written in these postings but they certainly deserve some wider audience, and that's why I am writing this here - since neither author is on these lists and I haven't seen their messages mentioned or quoted anywhere. I think the tl;dr of both these postings could be: Whenever you give someone a map by remote mapping, you also take something away from them. Bye Frederik ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Some thoughts against remote mapping
Þann 14.6.2015 12:57, skrifaði Frederik Ramm: Hi, On 06/14/2015 02:12 PM, Jóhannes Birgir Jensson wrote: I find this point of view to be astounding in its arrogance and indeed blatant colonialistic spirit. Harsh words. In the final paragraph of your blog post, you write: In addition the locals are not the only people who will need to use a map. Tourists, passers-by, people moving their goods or offering their services also need maps of places where they go. Everyone needs a map even if not everyone wants to make it or use it. But this is exactly the criticism we're facing - bluntly put: Westerners need maps of places so they can conquer them by selling their products and services. Who said anything about Westerners? Projects like mapping entire Botswana and Lesotho is not for HOT issues, acute distress. It is for making it easier for the local economies to grow, to use maps like the Western world does to great effect. My words were harsh because the original premise was harsh, that by mapping remote places we are colonising them. We are not and to think I was referring to Westerners when I referred to who could use the map just show that the viewpoint is still misguided. I'm thinking of the people that take their produce to market, using SMS they get prices from places and using offline OSM maps they can plot a route to the destination, even if it is in a nearby town they haven't been before - it allows them to calculate the travel time so they can see if it is cost effective to go a longer route for a small gain in sale price. They are using bicycles, scooters or they can band together and several of them buy a bigger vehicle that makes it more cost effective for several farmers to find a better market. I've never been to Botswana and I'll probably never go to Botswana and I'm not starting a business in Botswana nor am I involved with a company doing business there. Once we get enough locals interested and contributing I'll gladly stop contributing there and find another area that needs a helping hand. --Remote mapping from 10.000 km away ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Some thoughts against remote mapping
On 6/14/2015 2:57 PM, Frederik Ramm wrote: But this is exactly the criticism we're facing - bluntly put: Westerners need maps of places so they can conquer them by selling their products and services. One thing to keep in mind is that often time the people who want to colonize or exploit places and people are already very well funded and _already have_ all the map and geographic information they need to exploit a place and its people. It is disparity in access to data that helps the exploiters. It is through efforts like OPENStreetMap that we can try and counter their advantage by doing what we can to help the local community create their own maps and geo data so they can be on more even footing with those who take advantage of the lack of data available to local communities now. Regards, Blake ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Some thoughts against remote mapping
Hi, On 06/14/2015 11:02 AM, Hans De Kryger wrote: Isn't the point of remote mapping the ability to pull a large amount of people from all parts of life together and map an area of need in a short period of time? That (disaster mapping) is *one* case, but not the only one; on the humanitarian side there's also mapping outside of acute disasters intended to improve the administration of development aid and/or a response in potential future disasters. On the commercial side there's remote mapping to improve the map in areas that your clients are interested in (where your client might actually even be an NGO administering aid), and on the hobbyist side there's the sheer joy of a blank slate to map on. Bye Frederik -- Frederik Ramm ## eMail frede...@remote.org ## N49°00'09 E008°23'33 ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Some thoughts against remote mapping
A few points Full disclosure. The post that touched off this thread was written by my wife and partner in Map Kibera. All the points on this thread are very good points to keep in mind with any mapping project, but there's no universal rule in my experience. Don't forget that mappers are everywhere and that amazing connections take place that don't fit our usual conception of remote mapping, like https://twitter.com/uscgjerusalem/status/523473404532645888 I have seen the amazing pride that comes from residents themselves creating the map from a blank spot. I've also seen the same from a very well filled map, selectively and carefully updated with local knowledge. And I've seen incredible, life saving work from remote mapping, that locals are not only incredibly grateful for, but value as a connection to the global community. The key in my opinion is understanding the transformative pride of mapping (as we all know well, that's why we're here), and designing for it. Our design challenge for OpenStreetMap constantly changes, and much of our tools are still oriented towards filling in the blank map. A map with all the buildings can look done in the standard rendering, but of course we know it's not done. Is there a way to visualize the map to take into account the depth and local knowledge of the data? So that the pride of filling in the blank spot can be felt even when previous work has been done? I'd say that's a design challenge even in well mapped countries, which will need to be maintained and updated for the rest of time! -Mikel * Mikel Maron * +14152835207 @mikel s:mikelmaron On Saturday, June 13, 2015 1:52 PM, Tom Lee t...@mapbox.com wrote: These critiques seem to be beginning to develop themes explored more fully and famously by James Scott in _Seeing Like A State_. In it, he explores the implications of government efforts at systematization, including the original French cadastre and some German forest management projects. I'm afraid the news is worse than you might think, Frederik: Scott makes a compelling case that the *very act of mapping itself* snuffs out locally adapted systems of property management, social support and cultural exchange. It is a troubling critique and one that bears serious consideration. (It also carries vast and unwieldy intellectual coattails, including a deep connection to the failed anarchist project of the early twentieth century.) For my part, the value of being able to deliver emergency services, economic development and competent governance seem overwhelmingly worth the cultural costs that accompany efforts to rationalize the world. It seems to me that the verdict is in and we're all building a global society (and global map!). I'm skeptical that OSM should or can be a meaningful bulwark against this process. Local mapping is preferable not because it escapes the intellectual hegemony of mapping practices -- there is no escape from them at all if you are making a unified map -- but because it delivers a better map. And some map is better than no map: Does every building address need to be mapped? If not, it just seems like an easy win — why not collect everything? One reason not to is because later when you find you need local buy-in, even OSM may be viewed as an outsider project meant to dominate a neighborhood, a city, especially in sensitive neighborhoods where this has indeed been a primary use of maps. I wonder if people will one day want to create “our map” separately from OSM. A different global map wiki which is geared toward self-determination, perhaps? That would be a major loss for the OSM community. This struck me as shortsighted. The author is suggesting that leaving the map blank is preferable because someone might fill it in later, and that person might feel intimidated by the presence of existing data. I will gently submit that needing a blank slate is not even close to the most off-putting thing about OSM for new mappers. More to the point, even if you take an *extremely* rosy view of the extent to which the act of mapping enhances self-determination, the loss to the OSM community seems vastly less important than the losses to everyone who could be using the map to facilitate their businesses, recreation, or government. Every day that a part of the map remains unusably empty is a day that those people lose benefits they might have had -- or a day in which they become more reliant on closed data that has already gotten the job done. Tom ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Some thoughts against remote mapping
Hi, On Sat, Jun 13, 2015 at 07:52:49PM -0700, Kate Chapman wrote: What about in the situations where locals would like to make their own map but this is not financially feasible? If we are creating truly a free map of the entire world it is important to figure out how not to just make a map of the privileged. Should lack of access to internet and technology be a reason someone can't contribute to this map? This is what humanitarian mapping truely should be about, about enabling people to use mapping technology. It should not be about giving them prefabricated maps. For a truely inspiring example, I recommend a talk from last years SOTM: https://vimeo.com/115410141 The map examples shown are truely beautiful and are much more representive of the region than anything a remote mapper could have done. I've worked with groups where we did on the ground mapping both through our own digitizing or through that of others. Honestly in most cases people were happy to not have to trace every building themselves. They could then simply put in the names/address information. Though we should think about what types of features and how we do our tagging where culture/experience can come in. For example what someone might think if as a track in their experience may be a secondary road in others. Exactly. Large scale remote mapping projects like the HOT activations or the Missing Maps projects are essentially foreigners creating maps for foreigners (the NGOs) or their employees. It is no doubt very useful for them but it creates a precedence that will shape the region forever. We've essentially seen the same thing with imports in the western world. The map of the US is essentially shaped by the TIGER imports, the French map by Cadastre etc. The difference is that in these cases, it was the local community that made the conscious decision to import this data and now has to live with it for better or worse. In the case of remote mapping it is somebody else who decides the fate of the map. What I particularly liked about the talk above is that they started out with letting people decide on their own what a map is. Such a bottom-up approach might be useful in other cases, too. Start with creating a map that is completely independent of the global community and once it is sufficiently developped, look into integrating it in the global map by mapping the features to our tagging schema. It would also be easier to make a case for new features to be rendered this way. Diversity to me has never just been gender. Though it has been shown that if you make a place welcoming to women it also makes it more inviting for other underrepresented groups. Intersectional feminism is about equality for everyone. This argument still has a sour taste to me. In my experience, the issue is not that OSM is not welcoming for woman but simply that it is not interesting enough for them. The outcome is the same but the actions to take are vastly different. I do agree with you though, that finding a solution to attract more woman will also show a way to attract other underrepresented groups. After all, it is exactly the same argument as above: the interests of the map makers and the potential map users don't match. I actually agree with Christoph here. In the end it always comes back to the argument of the power of rendering. The One Map we currently show caters mainly to the overrepresented tech population (or, in the case of the HOT map, to NGOs) and that gives the impression that the same is true for our data (which isn't). So maybe both, the diversity movement and humanitarian efforts should focus less on data collection and more on the data representation, i.e. make specialised maps. Lots of them. Invest in technologies that allow every community to make exactly the map they need. Because this really is the resource intensive part of OSM which most people cannot efford. Data collection is easy and cheap in comparision. The local communities will eventually mangage to do it on their own, once they see what the benefits are for themselves. Sarah ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Some thoughts against remote mapping
Isn't the point of remote mapping the ability to pull a large amount of people from all parts of life together and map an area of need in a short period of time? That simply can't be done in area's affected by a disaster due to the fact they are themselves are recovering from the impact of said disaster. Asking locals for helps seems not possible. On Jun 13, 2015 9:46 PM, maning sambale emmanuel.samb...@gmail.com wrote: Sometimes I wonder whether remote/armchair mapping has similar effects as imports to the growth of the local community. I think we have recognized that imports has a place in osm provided it follows community principles and guidelines. Maybe its time to discuss similar principles and guidelines to remote/armchair mapping? cheers, Maning Sambale (mobile) ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Some thoughts against remote mapping
The claim that the maps are only for the benefit of Westerners implies that non-Western people never travel to or trade with areas beyond their immediate neighborhoods. -- John F. Eldredge -- j...@jfeldredge.com Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. -- Martin Luther King, Jr. On June 14, 2015 07:58:51 Frederik Ramm frede...@remote.org wrote: Hi, On 06/14/2015 02:12 PM, Jóhannes Birgir Jensson wrote: I find this point of view to be astounding in its arrogance and indeed blatant colonialistic spirit. Harsh words. In the final paragraph of your blog post, you write: In addition the locals are not the only people who will need to use a map. Tourists, passers-by, people moving their goods or offering their services also need maps of places where they go. Everyone needs a map even if not everyone wants to make it or use it. But this is exactly the criticism we're facing - bluntly put: Westerners need maps of places so they can conquer them by selling their products and services. Bye Frederik -- Frederik Ramm ## eMail frede...@remote.org ## N49°00'09 E008°23'33 ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Some thoughts against remote mapping
Le 14 juin 2015 à 14:57, Frederik Ramm frede...@remote.org a écrit : But this is exactly the criticism we're facing - bluntly put: Westerners need maps of places so they can conquer them by selling their products and services. Yes, if you put the History aside, not admitting the constant reinventions and recuperations. Three century ago the best maps were made by the military for their own purposes. Nowadays, more and more people can make that. Fearing a country ill-mapped (Western mode mapped) is more a stage before catching and customizing the technics. In a broader sense, one can hear a familiar music : Western World civilization is haram. Christian R. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Some thoughts against remote mapping
On Sun, Jun 14, 2015 at 9:26 AM, Simon Poole si...@poole.ch wrote: Am 14.06.2015 um 17:21 schrieb Kate Chapman: Further we have additional material in the early simulations that Matt Amos did that indicate that this is not unexpected given some assumptions about editor motivation. This sort of work has not really been updated recently however. The community has grown and changed over the years. I think if we were to look at motivations today vs. years ago they would likely be different. As OSM is used on larger and larger platforms it is possible that people have begun mapping to see their edits on Foursquare or Craigslist rather than previously where people might be mapping to make their own map. I should point out that none of the above is in any way new, just conveniently ignored. Not ignored, I'm just not sure it is solid enough evidence to justify for or against imports worldwide. -Kate Simon ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Some thoughts against remote mapping
Am 14.06.2015 um 17:21 schrieb Kate Chapman: Possibly, but we cite as fact that imports stunt community growth. I don't think that has ever been proven in a way that cuts across cultures, geographies or the quality of the data being imported. People usually point to the TIGER import in the US. I don't think we can purely blame an import, there is much more going on than simply there was data already there. I'd love to see a broader, academically sound study of this. While I can't offer an academically sound study on this, simply because it is not possible, particularly at this late date, to set up a controlled experiment that could provide some more insight. I don't even think that TIGER is particularly good example BTW, because it has the added complexity of extremely questionable data being imported which is not the case in such a What we can do is compare areas which have seen early large imports of basic infrastructure to areas that have that are roughly the same cultural background and population density with nearby areas that haven't. We have numerous cases where this is possible (not for the USA), big and small, for example the Netherlands and the Canton of Solothurn. All of the cases I've looked at in such comparison indicate a weaker local community than comparable regions which didn't have such imports. Further we have additional material in the early simulations that Matt Amos did that indicate that this is not unexpected given some assumptions about editor motivation. So while there is no completely conclusive proof that large infrastructure imports early in the development of a community have a negative impact, it is not unexpected and the body of evidence clearly supports it. I should point out that none of the above is in any way new, just conveniently ignored. Simon signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Some thoughts against remote mapping
On Sat, Jun 13, 2015 at 7:52 PM, Kate Chapman k...@maploser.com wrote: What about in the situations where locals would like to make their own map but this is not financially feasible? If we are creating truly a free map of the entire world it is important to figure out how not to just make a map of the privileged. Should lack of access to internet and technology be a reason someone can't contribute to this map? So what about supporting efforts like one laptop per child, to seed technology that would never be developed locally. And with those tools, see what people create. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Some thoughts against remote mapping
Possibly, but we cite as fact that imports stunt community growth. I don't think that has ever been proven in a way that cuts across cultures, geographies or the quality of the data being imported. People usually point to the TIGER import in the US. I don't think we can purely blame an import, there is much more going on than simply there was data already there. I'd love to see a broader, academically sound study of this. On Sat, Jun 13, 2015 at 9:44 PM, maning sambale emmanuel.samb...@gmail.com wrote: Sometimes I wonder whether remote/armchair mapping has similar effects as imports to the growth of the local community. I think we have recognized that imports has a place in osm provided it follows community principles and guidelines. Maybe its time to discuss similar principles and guidelines to remote/armchair mapping? cheers, Maning Sambale (mobile) ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Some thoughts against remote mapping
On Sun, Jun 14, 2015 at 6:12 AM, Jóhannes Birgir Jensson j...@betra.is wrote: Who said anything about Westerners? Projects like mapping entire Botswana and Lesotho is not for HOT issues, acute distress. It is for making it easier for the local economies to grow, to use maps like the Western world does to great effect. Do you -- or anyone -- have any evidence at all as to who *reads* and *uses* the OSM maps in these areas? Is there any evidence at all it's local people. Or is it all western aid agencies? Are the OSM maps even in a format that local people or local businesspeople find useful? ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Some thoughts against remote mapping
We need to encourage local mapping, but large-scale disasters create a need for immediate maps, which, in some cases, means outside help is needed. -- John F. Eldredge -- j...@jfeldredge.com Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. -- Martin Luther King, Jr. On June 14, 2015 13:35:09 Bryce Nesbitt bry...@obviously.com wrote: On Sat, Jun 13, 2015 at 7:52 PM, Kate Chapman k...@maploser.com wrote: What about in the situations where locals would like to make their own map but this is not financially feasible? If we are creating truly a free map of the entire world it is important to figure out how not to just make a map of the privileged. Should lack of access to internet and technology be a reason someone can't contribute to this map? So what about supporting efforts like one laptop per child, to seed technology that would never be developed locally. And with those tools, see what people create. -- ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Some thoughts against remote mapping
I think little can be said against careful, respectful mapping of base infrastructure (aka major road and other transportation facilities), as far as possible with input from the local inhabitants, particularly in the case of emergencies, by harnessing the combined prowess of OSM mappers. As had been said by others it has the potential to provide a useful framework for adding further details and it scratches our particular itch, for whatever reasons, to have a working map in such regions. As long as the respect includes thinking about what can really be usefully done remotely, I think we are net better with than without. In any case it requires experience with OSM to make reasonable decisions and less is very often more in these situations. On the other hand a lot can be said against using empty spaces on the map for marketing purposes, using newbies to doodle on the map where we have the most vulnerable regions in the world, and leaving wastelands of junk in the data which will completely overwhelm any budding local community. I could go on to point out that the later has a negative impact on the rest of OSM and does a disservice to the people participating in such activities however well intentioned they may be, but I'll leave that for an other day. Simon signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Some thoughts against remote mapping
Am 14.06.2015 um 19:33 schrieb Kate Chapman: I should point out that none of the above is in any way new, just conveniently ignored. Not ignored, I'm just not sure it is solid enough evidence to justify for or against imports worldwide. If we can't extrapolate from the past we will obviously never be able to provide enough solid evidence: tomorrow OSM is different than today. The likelihood that we will ever again have large infrastructure imports as we have had in the past is low, as a result it is very unlikely that we will ever get new data and be able to settle this argument. As said the body of evidence points one way and more can't really be said. Simon signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Some thoughts against remote mapping
An app developer in Botswana I've been in contact with has made the first app made in Botswana that uses OSM, Kabby Cab for the entrepreneurial Kabby system (independent mini buses) in Gaborone and he's working on expanding it into an app for ordering taxis and more. As anyone knows getting something like this off the ground requires willing participation from everyone else, but now they have the tools to start working towards it. The app is at https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.keneilwe.kabbycab I'll let your insight work on finding out the beneficiaries of such locally made apps for local services. Astounding to have to argue for better maps, simply astonishing. As for the blank slate is the only way to get dedicated mapping community then we are doing great aren't we? 10 years old and we have millions of small active mapping communities... or do we. Building infrastructure happens in many places, not just for map data but also in all the meta data around that data, workflows, feedback and more. All things that are being worked on in various ways and many of which are designed to give people better feedback and encourage them to contribute more. The blank slate has had a decade and its done well in many areas, but I for one don't see it as feasible to give it another two decades to see if the theory, based on gut feeling, works in the rest of the map. --JBJ Þann 14.6.2015 18:36, skrifaði Bryce Nesbitt: On Sun, Jun 14, 2015 at 6:12 AM, Jóhannes Birgir Jensson j...@betra.is mailto:j...@betra.is wrote: Who said anything about Westerners? Projects like mapping entire Botswana and Lesotho is not for HOT issues, acute distress. It is for making it easier for the local economies to grow, to use maps like the Western world does to great effect. Do you -- or anyone -- have any evidence at all as to who /reads/ and /uses/ the OSM maps in these areas? Is there any evidence at all it's local people. Or is it all western aid agencies? Are the OSM maps even in a format that local people or local businesspeople find useful? ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Some thoughts against remote mapping
El 14/06/2015 3:46 am, Paweł Paprota escribió: And i think there are a lot of other areas in OSM that represent at least as efficient (and therefore damaging) means of cultural imperialism as remote mapping. Acting as devil's advocate, I have a quick question - are you 100% sure that you are not overthinking stuff? I see discussion after discussion which delve into grand topics like diversity, freedom from proprietary software/services, freedom from corporations, now this thing with remote mappers robbing local people of something deep and profound... Don't you think you're over-analyzing everything a bit too much recently? I mean, wouldn't the energy be better spent? I'm glad to see I'm not the only one who thinks so. Let's leave this discussion to philosophers and head back map. Eduardo ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Some thoughts against remote mapping
While OSM is not a politically motivated and controlled project, some of what has been discussed needs a fuller discussion. It's the poor areas of the map that need the most help and those of us with the tools to do so should ... On 14/06/15 13:18, Johan C wrote: I've searched her article for an answer to her question, but can't find it. Though there are two clues in her article: 1. 'the real target of any development-oriented data effort — actual improvements in the lives of the world’s poor and marginalized.' 2. '...to solve this problem of invisibility bestowed by poverty.' Do we, the westerners, want actual improvements in the lives of the world's poor and marginalized, or are it these people themselves who want this? And is it true that the poor are invisible (on a map) and that they have that problem? Or should it be a westerner telling them they have a problem (ah, I didn't know I had that problem) which then can be solved by mapping projects engaging locals? At the current time there is an unending flow of bodies from those poor and marginalized areas, and so perhaps the ONLY way to curb that flow is to establish just what resources are available to keep locals in their locality. Rather than spending millions 'saving them', that money would be better spent supporting local projects and not lining the pockets of the empowered few in those areas. I can only see one clear reason to help the poor people from a westerners view: in case of a disaster, NGO's can help people by providing food, clothes, housing. In order to reach them, maps are a lifesaver. Luckily OSM has the possibility of remote mapping (Google forbids it) using up-to-date satellite imagery which helps these lifesaving efforts. It amazes me that mobile phones seem to be so prevalent in these areas, so perhaps that resource should be used as an input to provide mapping data that can't easily be provided by satellite imagery such as the location of problems on the ground? Although that technology gets better support than feeding the rest of the population does seem somewhat perverse? Other than disaster mapping, it's fine to me when locals don't want their blank map being filled in at all. And if they do want a blank map being filled, they can do it themselves by the standard tools. The poor can do without mapping projects organized by non-locals. It's enough for non-locals to be there when locals ask for support. And how much of that is ACTUALLY that those who hold power in those areas simply don't want their populous to have access to that information? The whole of Africa is a disaster area and that fact needs to be properly documented and mapped, and it's ONLY a freely accessible project like OSM that can provide that service? -- Lester Caine - G8HFL - Contact - http://lsces.co.uk/wiki/?page=contact L.S.Caine Electronic Services - http://lsces.co.uk EnquirySolve - http://enquirysolve.com/ Model Engineers Digital Workshop - http://medw.co.uk Rainbow Digital Media - http://rainbowdigitalmedia.co.uk ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Some thoughts against remote mapping
On 13 June 2015 15:37:22 GMT+01:00, Frederik Ramm frede...@remote.org wrote: http://groundtruth.in/2015/06/05/osm-mapping-power-to-the-people/ I really liked that article, but to me it doesn't argues *against remote mapping* as much as it argues *for local mapping*. I think everybody already agreed that local trumps remote, and the article is enlightening about how important that is and even how to define local. But that doesn't mean that remote mapping is a bad thing. To me, remote and local are two necessary tools in the box. OSM wouldn't be hafl as good as it is today without that combinaison of multiple mapper profiles who contribute to a given area. If remote mapping slows local community growth (I have my doubts), or if a New Yorker newbie makes a mess of african highway classification, the way to treat this is to get more contributors, locals spread everywhere, real strong diversity, better tools and documentation. etc. The solution of holding off remote editing, letting the map linger in a not-very-usable state for a potentially very long time, does not sound very sensible to me. frede...@remote.org Starting a thread arguing against remote mapping from an @remote.org email address ? Love it :p ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Some thoughts against remote mapping
On 15/06/2015 2:29 AM, John Eldredge wrote: The claim that the maps are only for the benefit of Westerners implies that non-Western people never travel to or trade with areas beyond their immediate neighborhoods. There was a humours suggestion to map animal paths, rejected as not something wanted in OSM. To some native farmers those paths may be very significant. The rejection reflects a 'western culture'. The Australian Treasure was recently criticised for saying poor people don't drive cars Poor people in some countries don't have cars. More 'western culture'. --- Do these 'non western' people want/need/know of OSM? Probably not, their culture has existed without OSM for some time, introducing OSM in any form will change their culture, so do 'we' leave them encased in a cage to 'keep out western culture'? I think that is not our choice. It should be their choice. -- Now ... back to mapping. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Some thoughts against remote mapping
On 14/06/2015, Kate Chapman k...@maploser.com wrote: On Sun, Jun 14, 2015 at 9:26 AM, Simon Poole si...@poole.ch wrote: Further we have additional material in the early simulations that Matt Amos did that indicate that this is not unexpected given some assumptions about editor motivation. This sort of work has not really been updated recently however. The community has grown and changed over the years. I think if we were to look at motivations today vs. years ago they would likely be different. As OSM is used on larger and larger platforms it is possible that people have begun mapping to see their edits on Foursquare or Craigslist rather than previously where people might be mapping to make their own map. Another aspect I see is that in the western world, proprietary maps were already pretty decent when OSM started. In that context, the fun of mapping a whole town is a important factor of community building. Because otherwise, pragmatism entice people to contribute to the proprietary map that they already use instead. But if you're in an area of the world where government and commercial maps are bad, and a HOT task suddenly propels OSM to being very obviously the best map available for the region, then pragmatism brings contributors to OSM instead. Compounding this effect, if you live in these areas, chances are that life is hard and the you don't have much time for editing or much mood for fun town drawing. In that context, you're more likely to contribute if you can add a street name here and a POI there than if you need to trace the basic road network first. You can take these musings with a grain of salt since I bring no study to show how important these effects are, but I'd be really surprised if the criterias that drive community-building of Nepal or Liberia were the same criterias as for the USA or Netherlands. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Some thoughts against remote mapping
Kate Chapman writes: Possibly, but we cite as fact that imports stunt community growth. I don't think that has ever been proven in a way that cuts across cultures, geographies or the quality of the data being imported. People usually point to the TIGER import in the US. I don't think we can purely blame an import, there is much more going on than simply there was data already there. Agreed. The TIGER import is not necessarily the reason for a community growing only slowly. Pit against that the public domain USGS maps (unlike, say, the OS Landranger maps), the very public-domain TIGER data that we imported, or the various mapping services like Google Maps. In order for the armchair as import idea to hold water, it must first be shown that armchair maps are even positively correlated with a failure for a community to arise. This whole discussion started with Frederick Ramm's speculation that remote mapping is bad. I haven't seen any evidence that it is bad. -- --my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com Crynwr supports open source software 521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815 Potsdam, NY 13676-3213 | Sheepdog ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Some thoughts against remote mapping
Some thoughts from a developing country - India. Maps have had a controversial role to play in the modern history of much of the Indian subcontinent, as a tool created and controlled by those who came ashore from the west. OSM has made it possible for the first time in history for the common citizen to control their map. The right to access, create and modify this map equally among everyone is what is most important. Someone from the west has every right to trace some Indian town just as someone from India has to update a new development in well mapped Europe. Unfortunately there is still great inequality in the ability to access this map. In India there is no fledging OSM community mainly because priorities in life are different. One does not get the leisure time here to contribute to the map and make it a social hobby like in Europe. Moreover the project is almost unknown because the maps are empty compared to Google and has very few users and fewer contributors. Over many years, I have remotely traced major road networks of Indian cities and towns which I now see has road details slowly coming in form local and tourist mappers. Rural areas are yet to see any local activity. Maps are a relatively new concept in Indian society and is still used only by a small minority in urban areas in daily life. Naturally one cannot expect strong OSM communities at this stage till maps gain wider reach. Remote mapping in cases like this can serve to catalyze the process by making the maps more attractive to use. I happened to talk about a few of these points in my lightning talk at SOTMUS last week which might give more context on mapping in India: https://youtu.be/4fK_cWhCQbE?t=22m1s Devoting more resources to make these maps and tools accessible to the common person would be more fruitful than worrying about colonizing countries by remote mapping. -- (planemad) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Planemad http://j.mp/ArunGanesh ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Some thoughts against remote mapping
Hi All, First off, let me say that I’ve really enjoyed this discussion. I admire the mixture of passion and overall civility on a really difficult topic. I’ve honestly learned some things reading all your replies. I have a lot of thoughts about remote mapping vs. on the ground mapping but don’t have good words to pull them all together, so I won’t try here. I actually wanted to talk about Missing Maps, since I helped set it up at the Red Cross and think Erica’s article misunderstands it a little. Missing Maps is meant to be a union of remote mapping and local mapping. 50/50, even split, each with a role to play in the overall “project”. We put a lot of effort into involving, supporting and where necessary creating local mapping communities in the developing world to do the on-the-ground side of Missing Maps work. If you want to know more about that check out the video from Drishtie Patel’s presentation at State of the Map US. She tells that story better than I can here. Remote mapping was easier to set up in the early phases of the project and much more accessible to the Western “core” of OSM contributors, not to mention sympathetic journalists, who wanted to check out and perhaps contribute to the project. As a result the remote component has gotten an outsized amount of attention within the greater OSM community even though it’s only half of the story. Regarding the charges of using the map for disaster and development purposes instead of being driven by “purer” entirely local mapping objectives: guilty as charged (sort of). The Red Cross ([1]) has some long standing mechanisms to make sure the work we do responds to genuine community concerns ([2]). We try hard to be sincere about that and incorporate our newer, relatively flashier OSM work into those longstanding mechanisms. We also make sure that wherever possible, the Red Cross volunteers working on Missing Maps projects come from the communities we’re mapping themselves. But it’s true that we focus on humanitarian and development objectives, because well, we’re the Red Cross and that’s our mission. Missing Maps was set up by genuine OSM lovers who wanted to link their passion for humanitarian work with their passion for OSM. We’ve pushed the Red Cross really hard not just to use OSM data but contribute back and be responsible members of the OSM community. But we’re never going to escape our humanitarian / development focus because of who we are and we have to accept that. Transitioning this a little, let me say this about local vs. remote mapping: I strongly feel that if we want to encourage local mapping in the “purest” sense then we need to do more than wring our hands about remote mapping and imports, put local communities on pedestals and hope for the best. I think the OpenStreetMap Foundation needs to step up, organize itself and find ways to make it easier to be an OSM enthusiast throughout the world. That means helping to fund State of the Maps and scholarships to attend, holding workshops, building (much) easier to use tools, and scaling its infrastructure to handle the next 10 million contributors. People should join OSM because they want to and are passionate about it, not because some Westerners came and told them it’s important — but we can do a lot more to make those passions possible. The “deliberately weak” OSMF model does no favors to the growth of local OSM communities, especially in parts of the world where organizing communities is a pretty tough task to begin with. HOT does a lot of these things but it was set up with humanitarian objectives and has to be true to those. HOT shouldn’t be the “OSM outside of the West” institution and it’s bad for HOT and OSM both to treat it as such. Thanks for all the brilliant thoughts so far. Looking forward to the brilliant replies. - Robert [1] Doctors Without Borders / Medicines Sans Frontieres works significantly differently and I won’t pretend to speak for them. [2] Among others: http://www.ifrc.org/vca — Sent from Mailbox On Sun, Jun 14, 2015 at 7:34 PM, moltonel 3x Combo molto...@gmail.com wrote: On 13 June 2015 15:37:22 GMT+01:00, Frederik Ramm frede...@remote.org wrote: http://groundtruth.in/2015/06/05/osm-mapping-power-to-the-people/ I really liked that article, but to me it doesn't argues *against remote mapping* as much as it argues *for local mapping*. I think everybody already agreed that local trumps remote, and the article is enlightening about how important that is and even how to define local. But that doesn't mean that remote mapping is a bad thing. To me, remote and local are two necessary tools in the box. OSM wouldn't be hafl as good as it is today without that combinaison of multiple mapper profiles who contribute to a given area. If remote mapping slows local community growth (I have my doubts), or if a New Yorker newbie makes a mess of african highway
Re: [OSM-talk] Some thoughts against remote mapping
Hi Russ, On Sat, Jun 13, 2015 at 2:01 PM, Russ Nelson nel...@crynwr.com wrote: Frederik Ramm writes: I think the tl;dr of both these postings could be: Whenever you give someone a map by remote mapping, you also take something away from them. Western aid has a bad history of mostly aiding westerners. The one simple trick for avoiding that is to ask the locals How can I help? And if the locals say We need a better map for where we live, then that addresses your concern. What about in the situations where locals would like to make their own map but this is not financially feasible? If we are creating truly a free map of the entire world it is important to figure out how not to just make a map of the privileged. Should lack of access to internet and technology be a reason someone can't contribute to this map? I've worked with groups where we did on the ground mapping both through our own digitizing or through that of others. Honestly in most cases people were happy to not have to trace every building themselves. They could then simply put in the names/address information. Though we should think about what types of features and how we do our tagging where culture/experience can come in. For example what someone might think if as a track in their experience may be a secondary road in others. Frederik, Diversity to me has never just been gender. Though it has been shown that if you make a place welcoming to women it also makes it more inviting for other underrepresented groups. Intersectional feminism is about equality for everyone. For those that missed it Kathleen Danielson gave an excellent talk about some of these issues at SotM-US last week: http://stateofthemap.us/improving-diversity-in-osm/ -Kate ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Some thoughts against remote mapping
Sometimes I wonder whether remote/armchair mapping has similar effects as imports to the growth of the local community. I think we have recognized that imports has a place in osm provided it follows community principles and guidelines. Maybe its time to discuss similar principles and guidelines to remote/armchair mapping? cheers, Maning Sambale (mobile) ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Some thoughts against remote mapping
I think you could extend this to saying we should let people live their own lives and not allow them access to things such as mobile phones until they have enough education to design their own. In Canada we have native people and the debate is always what services should you provide them with and what laws should apply. Realistically HOT mapping helps the NGOs and others to provide things such as Polio inoculations. I understand that some people on religious grounds feel that all inoculations should be banned. I personally don't subscribe to this view. I note that one article questions whether or not mapping buildings is of any value. The question has been raised in HOT circles and it depends on the project and the purpose of the project and whom the client is and what their requirements are. I think these days project managers are sensitive to the fact that asking for a million buildings to get mapped may mean the project is never completed or not completed within a reasonable time frame, we have HOT projects still uncompleted some years after they were first started that request buildings. The other thing of note is that often when an area is mapped multiple AID / NGO groups will use the map data. On balance I think that the HOT part of OSM provides value, the locals do not need to use the maps. The maps are much better when locals are involved but then you bring up the whole issue of how reliable is an OSM map? Often something is better than nothing. Cheerio John On 13 June 2015 at 10:37, Frederik Ramm frede...@remote.org wrote: Hi, I'm known for being critical of armchair mapping by people with no personal connection tho the area being mapped. Whether done for fun, for money, or to help, I think that in most cases it is a bad idea that runs against the spirit of OSM. (I'm willing to concede that there are exceptions, and that sometimes doing something that's against the spirit may still be useful. But these are individual cases, to be carefully justified, and remote mapping should never become anyone's standard mode of contribution.) Until now I thought that the main exception, one that even I would have to accept, is mapping for humanitarian purposes. I was all the more surprised - positively surprised - to read this thoughtful essay by Erica Hagen, who founded Map Kibera: http://groundtruth.in/2015/06/05/osm-mapping-power-to-the-people/ I'd encourage everyone to read that. It questions some rarely questioned assumptions; it even says that mapping by locals doesn't really count if those locals are just doing it for the money (a sentiment that I've always felt but rarely dared to express, because who can expect locals in the poorest parts of the world to map for fun like privileged westerners do?). It also says that local isn't local if the locals from the wealthy city map the slum in their midst. I've tended to routinely associate the call for more diversity in OSM as mainly being one for levelling the gender playing field but this article goes much further. In some parts the article echoes a rather more acerbic posting written last month by Gwilym Eades, a university lecturer in London: http://place-memes.blogspot.de/2015/05/the-hubris-of-proactive-disaster-mapping.html which essentially accused humanitarian mapping (and as I would add, any remote mapping really) of homogenising, westernising, and colonising the map. I don't agree with everything written in these postings but they certainly deserve some wider audience, and that's why I am writing this here - since neither author is on these lists and I haven't seen their messages mentioned or quoted anywhere. I think the tl;dr of both these postings could be: Whenever you give someone a map by remote mapping, you also take something away from them. Bye Frederik -- Frederik Ramm ## eMail frede...@remote.org ## N49°00'09 E008°23'33 ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Some thoughts against remote mapping
Hi, On 06/13/2015 05:00 PM, john whelan wrote: I think you could extend this to saying we should let people live their own lives and not allow them access to things such as mobile phones until they have enough education to design their own. Or perhaps even break that down to individual people... I'd probably have to relinquish my use of a computer then because I can't design one ;) Jokes aside, yes what you say is echoed in an acerbic comment under the acerbic post of Eades, where the commenter writes: It was far more fun when MSF volunteers had to guess where the latest poor sufferer was brought in from - at least any sketched map on a piece of scrap paper they had was a bottom-up sketched map and free from western hegemonic tyranny! Realistically HOT mapping helps the NGOs and others to provide things such as Polio inoculations. I understand that some people on religious grounds feel that all inoculations should be banned. I personally don't subscribe to this view. I guess one could make the point that the map is part of the aid, and withholding the map means withholding aid. But Erica Hagens's post can certainly not be reduced to the question of should religious beliefs be allowed to interfere with aid, it is much more nuanced than that. Bye Frederik -- Frederik Ramm ## eMail frede...@remote.org ## N49°00'09 E008°23'33 ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Some thoughts against remote mapping
This is a very intersting discussion and something worth talking about. This should happen more. I think we should distinguish between remote mapping, or armchair mapping, and putting 'color' on the map. Most remote mappers will just trace basic stuff like buildings, roads or other features that can be easily recognized. I think this ethical dilemma should be more about the actual stuff that matters. For example, what name has an area, what name does a street have, what kind of shops have we mapped,... in other words the local communities should decide what's on the map but basically roads and buildings will have to traced anyway and the result will most likely be exactly the same. In my opinion locals should always have the last word on what's on the map. You could also argue that some communities don't want to be mapped for various kinds of reasons. That's something we should probably think about a little more in HOT. But I'm afraid there is very little we can do about it too. Any military operation, that's most likely very questionable when looking at the good it will do for locals, can use use OSM too. To summarize, I think a HOT activation does more good than bad because the 'color' of the map is the most important part but we should be carefull about specific cases because maybe someone out there has a bad experience after we traced their home and suddenly everybody can see there are people living there. Cheers, Ben ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Some thoughts against remote mapping
These critiques seem to be beginning to develop themes explored more fully and famously by James Scott in _Seeing Like A State_. In it, he explores the implications of government efforts at systematization, including the original French cadastre and some German forest management projects. I'm afraid the news is worse than you might think, Frederik: Scott makes a compelling case that the *very act of mapping itself* snuffs out locally adapted systems of property management, social support and cultural exchange. It is a troubling critique and one that bears serious consideration. (It also carries vast and unwieldy intellectual coattails, including a deep connection to the failed anarchist project of the early twentieth century.) For my part, the value of being able to deliver emergency services, economic development and competent governance seem overwhelmingly worth the cultural costs that accompany efforts to rationalize the world. It seems to me that the verdict is in and we're all building a global society (and global map!). I'm skeptical that OSM should or can be a meaningful bulwark against this process. Local mapping is preferable not because it escapes the intellectual hegemony of mapping practices -- there is no escape from them at all if you are making a unified map -- but because it delivers a better map. And some map is better than no map: Does every building address need to be mapped? If not, it just seems like an easy win — why not collect everything? One reason not to is because later when you find you need local buy-in, even OSM may be viewed as an outsider project meant to dominate a neighborhood, a city, especially in sensitive neighborhoods where this has indeed been a primary use of maps. I wonder if people will one day want to create “our map” separately from OSM. A different global map wiki which is geared toward self-determination, perhaps? That would be a major loss for the OSM community. This struck me as shortsighted. The author is suggesting that leaving the map blank is preferable because someone might fill it in later, and that person might feel intimidated by the presence of existing data. I will gently submit that needing a blank slate is not even close to the most off-putting thing about OSM for new mappers. More to the point, even if you take an *extremely* rosy view of the extent to which the act of mapping enhances self-determination, the loss to the OSM community seems vastly less important than the losses to everyone who could be using the map to facilitate their businesses, recreation, or government. Every day that a part of the map remains unusably empty is a day that those people lose benefits they might have had -- or a day in which they become more reliant on closed data that has already gotten the job done. Tom ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Some thoughts against remote mapping
On Saturday 13 June 2015, Frederik Ramm wrote: [...] I don't agree with everything written in these postings but they certainly deserve some wider audience, and that's why I am writing this here - since neither author is on these lists and I haven't seen their messages mentioned or quoted anywhere. I think the tl;dr of both these postings could be: Whenever you give someone a map by remote mapping, you also take something away from them. Thanks for pointing to these texts, very interesting reading. I fear though that critical discussion of the matter will most likely be difficult since the perceived need for humanitarian mapping in events of crisis and the perceived prominence of altruistic motives in those activities is so large making even the basic notion that something good does not justify something bad seems unimportant. Critical reflection on your activities in such a context is very difficult. One important point where i think Gwilym is wrong is the idea that proactive humanitarian mapping will lead to a true homogenization of the map. First of all none of the organized mapping activities focusses on those areas that are worst mapped in OSM so they increase differences rather than reducing them. Efforts in true homogenization would only have a chance on a much longer time horizon (i.e. decades) and none of the organizations involved in humanitarian mapping think on that time scale. But more importantly the colonalization, control and power over space is already there in the form of global coverage high resolution imagery. Remote mapping essentailly makes this information more accessible. If this is a good or a bad thing can of course be discussed but OSM is not really the best address to blame here in any case. This is not meant to say remote mapping in OSM is generally a good thing, many of the arguments against it have a lot of merit. But the main question should be if and how this hampers development of true grassroots mapping by locals when performed within OSM and thereby conteracts the primary purpose of the project and not if remote mapping itself, i.e. extracting semantic information from remotely sensed data that exists anyway is morally questionable in general (which is fairly frivolous IMO). And i think there are a lot of other areas in OSM that represent at least as efficient (and therefore damaging) means of cultural imperialism as remote mapping. My favorite example is always map rendering, there is a real lot of more or less subtle cultural bias in that. OSM does not only need more mappers with diverse cultural backgrounds, it also need more diverse input in development and design and the barriers for those are much higher than for mapping. -- Christoph Hormann http://www.imagico.de/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Some thoughts against remote mapping
Frederik Ramm writes: I think the tl;dr of both these postings could be: Whenever you give someone a map by remote mapping, you also take something away from them. Western aid has a bad history of mostly aiding westerners. The one simple trick for avoiding that is to ask the locals How can I help? And if the locals say We need a better map for where we live, then that addresses your concern. -- --my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com Crynwr supports open source software 521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815 Potsdam, NY 13676-3213 | Sheepdog ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Some thoughts against remote mapping
Western aid has a bad history of mostly aiding westerners. The one simple trick for avoiding that is to ask the locals How can I help? And if the locals say We need a better map for where we live, then that addresses your concern. Unfortunately the world isn't quite so simple. If we look at the ongoing Ebola outbreak for example. Many health teams were met with rocks and a strong negative reaction. Should the west have done nothing and let Ebola spread? How do you know what the locals want? At the department of Indian and Northern Affairs Canada one of the problems is there is half a million status Indians which means roughly half a million different points of view. You don't mention the NGOs and others who consume our maps, are they not legitimate clients? Global Open Data for Agriculture and Nutrition (GODAN) works hard using Open Data to improve the quality of life for many. They make extensive use of OSM especially in the HOT areas. The locals may recognise GODAN's efforts and use their information without recognising the value of OSM underneath. They aren't the only ones using the data. Even quite small AID groups doing nothing more than providing access to clean water use OSM to work out where the wells should go. I think recently the World Bank noted that the cost of building a highway in an African country when they were involved is about twice as high as one where they aren't involved. They think that corruption plays a part in this. There are a number of issues involved in giving aid, for example some US food aid must be carried in US registered ships I believe but the HOT mapping delivers some value to the population often indirectly without some of the problems of other types of aid. Cheerio John On 13 June 2015 at 17:01, Russ Nelson nel...@crynwr.com wrote: Frederik Ramm writes: I think the tl;dr of both these postings could be: Whenever you give someone a map by remote mapping, you also take something away from them. Western aid has a bad history of mostly aiding westerners. The one simple trick for avoiding that is to ask the locals How can I help? And if the locals say We need a better map for where we live, then that addresses your concern. -- --my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com Crynwr supports open source software 521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815 Potsdam, NY 13676-3213 | Sheepdog ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
