Re: [OSM-talk] Problems with the wiki (was Why OSM and not another collaborative mapping service?)
On Saturday 09 May 2015, Frederik Ramm wrote: Yes, as far as I can see many people have tried to influence Xxzme's behaviour over the last half year and none have succeeded; as things are my impression is we have a choice of accepting them like they are or asking them to leave. Yes it would be desirable to keep their good edits and drop only the controversial ones, and somehow convince them to respect other voices, but short of a miracle I don't see that happening. And if I balance the positive and negative things they do, at least in my opinion the negatives outweigh the positives. That mostly also summarizes my view of the matter. I have looked at quite a few of Xxzme's edits and interactions with others and had the experience of such interaction myself [1]. There seems to be an intelligent person behind this (or several - that is not really clear to me) with - despite deficits in English language - significant rhetorical skills. But there clearly is no willingness or ability to use these qualifications to the benefit of the OSM community. The problem is not exclusively Xxzme's attitude but also the combination with the dominance of his/her/their edits due to the large amount of energy and time spent. This is also emphasized by the fact that normal community activity on the wiki is relatively low these days compared to the volume of work that exists there - in other words: much of the wiki is undermaintained by the community. This gives someone like Xxzme a lot of room - both to the good and the bad. You could of course argue that this is not Xxzme's fault - however i also think that from someone dominanting the editing activities to this extent you can expect basic social skills and the ability to interact on a basic social level with others - even if we do not require this equally from others who do only make the occasional change. If there are examples of Xxzme productively interacting with the community this would be good to see, otherwise i strongly concur that the current situation is not working out for the vast majority of wiki contributors and a significant and sustained change to that is required to keep the wiki a place where OSM community members feel welcome. Maybe the whole issue could serve as an incentive for the OSM community, esp. mappers, to get more involved in what is ultimately their wiki. And the troubles caused by Xxzme might make those very active on the wiki and sometimes overly protective of the current state appreciate contributions from newbies even if they are sometimes clumsy as long as they come with the willingness to listen to and interact with others. [1] http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Talk:Environment -- Christoph Hormann http://www.imagico.de/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Problems with the wiki (was Why OSM and not another collaborative mapping service?)
On 09.05.2015 10:08, Christoph Hormann wrote: The problem is not exclusively Xxzme's attitude but also the combination with the dominance of his/her/their edits due to the large amount of energy and time spent. I fully agree with that. Xxzme is not the first wiki user who has tried to push through unpopular edits or who has engaged in edit wars, but they are doing so at an unprecedented scale. For a long time, I have tried to encourage them to improve their behaviour, to give reasons for their changes, to respond to criticism, to take care not to break links and to seek feedback before engaging in huge edits across the wiki, but it simply doesn't work. Following their own vision of cleaning up the wiki seems to trump everything else. Considering the countless hours spent on dealing with them, and the loss of valuable wiki contributors, their presence on the wiki is a net negative. Unfortunately, the warning shot (i.e. the 1 month ban) didn't really improve the situation, except giving everyone else a much-needed breather. Tobias ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Problems with the wiki (was Why OSM and not another collaborative mapping service?)
The wiki's decreasing level of edit energy, combined with it's increasing reach is a problem. Wiki text now appears directly in dozens of automated editing and QA tools. With JOSM style presets, there's a filter between activity on the wiki and what gets wider coverage. With iD style automatic import, the wiki becomes the documentation. That combined with a rouge user driving others away from the wiki really sets up a bad situation. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Problems with the wiki (was Why OSM and not another collaborative mapping service?)
There's another problem page at OpenStreetMap is a social activity. Sigh. Lots of good cleanup edits. Lots of blundering elephant edits. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Problems with the wiki (was Why OSM and not another collaborative mapping service?)
More on this issue at: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Talk:OpenStreetMap_is_a_social_activity#Deletion ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Problems with the wiki (was Why OSM and not another collaborative mapping service?)
On 9/05/2015 7:57 AM, Frederik Ramm wrote: Hi, On 05/08/2015 08:00 AM, Bryce Nesbitt wrote: There's another problem page at OpenStreetMap is a social activity. Sigh. Lots of good cleanup edits. Lots of blundering elephant edits. Yes, it doesn't feel good to point fingers at individuals but I, too, have the impression that Xxzme's overbearing control of the Wiki is not for the best. I seems to me that they're genuinely trying to help, and investing quite some time, but from interactions with others I can see that they tend to be intimidating and have a very stubborn sense of what is right and what is wrong. The relentless renaming and re-organising of content may feel to them like a necessary move to organize content properly but I think these unannounced and undiscussed edits have the potential to alienate other users of the Wiki who should have an equal voice, but are too often harshly overruled by Xxzme. This is compounded by Xxzme, unlike most other contributors to the Wiki, not caring to share any personal information about them - not their real name, not where they live or what they like. This is not a condition for participation on a normal scale, but with Xxzme making a significant portion of edits to the Wiki it feels like the Wiki has been taken over by someone that nobody knows at all and who doesn't want to be known. There is no requirement for personal details of a contributor to be know/public. And there should be no requirement for this!!! And it is not the problem. It doesn't really feel like a community effort. I think that is the core problem. My small edits of the wiki I hope have been beneficial for all ... There needs to be more 'meeting in the middle' rather than 'my way' or 'no way'? Personal dominance will only last some decades .. in the longer term a community will overcome. Thus it is better to persuade a community to 'good' ideas rather than beat them over the head. I appreciate that Xxzme has spent a lot of time trying to make the Wiki better and I believe they did manage to make improvements, but looking at the complete picture I would politely ask Xxzme to find another occupation, and stop editing on the OSM wiki altogether. This community would loose possibly valuable contributions from him if this were to occur. A better outcome would be a more conciliatory attitude? How to get that is difficult. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Problems with the wiki (was Why OSM and not another collaborative mapping service?)
If you look at the edit history, there's evidence of more than one user ID showing a supporting pattern of edits. This too is concerning. -- The irony is a non-social editor creating a page about OpenStreetMap is a social activity. At this point it's an edit war, one that user Xxzme seems to intend to win. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Problems with the wiki (was Why OSM and not another collaborative mapping service?)
This community would loose possibly valuable contributions from him if this were to occur. But at the same time, other wiki editors are leaving because of their stressful time in the wiki (I know at least two... it's not an exaggeration). A better outcome would be a more conciliatory attitude? How to get that is difficult. As a wiki editor accompanying the situation since the start (over half a year ago), I can tell you: we try (for more info, see his talk page). -- View this message in context: http://gis.19327.n5.nabble.com/Re-Tagging-Wiki-Talk-Why-OSM-and-not-another-collaborative-mapping-service-tp5843652p5843807.html Sent from the General Discussion mailing list archive at Nabble.com.___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Problems with the wiki (was Why OSM and not another collaborative mapping service?)
On Fri, May 8, 2015 at 3:48 PM, Frederik Ramm frede...@remote.org wrote: I think that interacting with so many members of the community on such a scale as Xxzme does is at least *difficult* and prone to more friction if all you're willing to give away is a user name. It's harder to be part of a community that way. It is very difficult to make large scale edits without friction. It is difficult to make valuable cleanup efforts, in part because even an overwhelmingly positive effort can be objected to by one loud person. This applies to wiki, tag cleanup and more. That said Xxzme does not appear to try to work in community at all. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Problems with the wiki (was Why OSM and not another collaborative mapping service?)
On 8 May 2015 at 23:27, Warin 61sundow...@gmail.com wrote: On 9/05/2015 7:57 AM, Frederik Ramm wrote: Hi, I appreciate that Xxzme has spent a lot of time trying to make the Wiki better and I believe they did manage to make improvements, but looking at the complete picture I would politely ask Xxzme to find another occupation, and stop editing on the OSM wiki altogether. This community would loose possibly valuable contributions from him if this were to occur. A better outcome would be a more conciliatory attitude? How to get that is difficult. +1 There's not an easy answer - any restraint on enthusiasm can have a detrimental effect. Guidance is the best way forward. -- Mike. @millomweb https://sites.google.com/site/millomweb/index/introduction - For all your info on Millom and South Copeland via *the area's premier website - * *currently unavailable due to ongoing harassment of me, my family, property pets* TCs https://sites.google.com/site/pmailkeey/e-mail ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Problems with the wiki (was Why OSM and not another collaborative mapping service?)
Hi, On 05/08/2015 08:00 AM, Bryce Nesbitt wrote: There's another problem page at OpenStreetMap is a social activity. Sigh. Lots of good cleanup edits. Lots of blundering elephant edits. Yes, it doesn't feel good to point fingers at individuals but I, too, have the impression that Xxzme's overbearing control of the Wiki is not for the best. I seems to me that they're genuinely trying to help, and investing quite some time, but from interactions with others I can see that they tend to be intimidating and have a very stubborn sense of what is right and what is wrong. The relentless renaming and re-organising of content may feel to them like a necessary move to organize content properly but I think these unannounced and undiscussed edits have the potential to alienate other users of the Wiki who should have an equal voice, but are too often harshly overruled by Xxzme. This is compounded by Xxzme, unlike most other contributors to the Wiki, not caring to share any personal information about them - not their real name, not where they live or what they like. This is not a condition for participation on a normal scale, but with Xxzme making a significant portion of edits to the Wiki it feels like the Wiki has been taken over by someone that nobody knows at all and who doesn't want to be known. It doesn't really feel like a community effort. I appreciate that Xxzme has spent a lot of time trying to make the Wiki better and I believe they did manage to make improvements, but looking at the complete picture I would politely ask Xxzme to find another occupation, and stop editing on the OSM wiki altogether. 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] Problems with the wiki (was Why OSM and not another collaborative mapping service?)
Hi, On 05/09/2015 12:27 AM, Warin wrote: This is compounded by Xxzme, unlike most other contributors to the Wiki, not caring to share any personal information about them - not their real name, not where they live or what they like. This is not a condition for participation on a normal scale, but with Xxzme making a significant portion of edits to the Wiki it feels like the Wiki has been taken over by someone that nobody knows at all and who doesn't want to be known. There is no requirement for personal details of a contributor to be know/public. And there should be no requirement for this!!! And it is not the problem. I think that interacting with so many members of the community on such a scale as Xxzme does is at least *difficult* and prone to more friction if all you're willing to give away is a user name. It's harder to be part of a community that way. I appreciate that Xxzme has spent a lot of time trying to make the Wiki better and I believe they did manage to make improvements, but looking at the complete picture I would politely ask Xxzme to find another occupation, and stop editing on the OSM wiki altogether. This community would loose possibly valuable contributions from him if this were to occur. A better outcome would be a more conciliatory attitude? How to get that is difficult. Yes, as far as I can see many people have tried to influence Xxzme's behaviour over the last half year and none have succeeded; as things are my impression is we have a choice of accepting them like they are or asking them to leave. Yes it would be desirable to keep their good edits and drop only the controversial ones, and somehow convince them to respect other voices, but short of a miracle I don't see that happening. And if I balance the positive and negative things they do, at least in my opinion the negatives outweigh the positives. 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] Problems with the wiki (was Why OSM and not another collaborative mapping service?)
Warning: The email below is a rant. If you don't want to get stressed, don't read it. Like SomeoneElse, I'm not too happy with the state of the wiki right now. Right now in the wiki, there is an elephant in the room... He is actively editing the wiki for close to an year, has strong opinions and apparently lots of free time, regularly engages in edit wars, and has an history of issues collaborating with the community (inside wiki or not). Verdy_p and Tordanik communicate well (and I agree with them) about the latest issues on the wiki in his talk page: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/User_talk:Xxzme#Mass_category_changes (this and the next section) I'm sure the wiki admin (Harry Wood) is a busy person, but I would be grateful if these issues could be brought to a quicker resolution. The current circumstances have already lead a few wiki users to leave the wiki. John -- View this message in context: http://gis.19327.n5.nabble.com/Re-Tagging-Wiki-Talk-Why-OSM-and-not-another-collaborative-mapping-service-tp5843652p5843726.html Sent from the General Discussion mailing list archive at Nabble.com. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
[OSM-talk] Problems with the wiki (was Why OSM and not another collaborative mapping service?)
On 07/05/2015 12:03, Simon Poole wrote: I'm really not sure what this discussion is doing on tagging and have redirected follow ups to talk (it has in the matter of a few mails already gone substantially off-topic though). The page in question is actually a fork of http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Google_Map_Maker which was written as a response to the introduction of MM. I personally consider it dangerous to base such a comparison on anything but general principles. On the one hand you are always in danger of being out of date and at least in a legal grey zone if not already out side of it, on the other hand it tends to degenerate in to political/point of view material, are all commercial companies actually evil as Xxzme version seems to imply? This page is an excellent example of what can go wrong with the OSM wiki. It's a personal POV page, written by a user with views that are, shall we say, not shared by all, and who seems to have issues with any form of collaboration (a temporary wiki ban was used before to address some previous issues). Where the wiki works well it's a collaborative documentation of How We Map*. It does contain some effective opinion pieces (e.g. http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/w/index.php?title=Duck_taggingoldid=603101 )** , but they are clearly labelled as such and don't attempt to misdocument how people in OSM map things. If random edits like this are allowed to continue*** it'll devalue the wiki even more as a resource. I'm not a wiki admin, but I'm sure that those who are are well aware of this problem and I would hope they are already considering what to do here. Cheers, Andy PS: Although I'm a member of the DWG, this was written in an entirely personal capacity as an ordinary mapper who tries to use the wiki for documentation. * incidentally that's another page that has had this user happen to it: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/w/index.php?title=How_We_Mapaction=history ** yes, and that's another one: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/w/index.php?title=Duck_taggingaction=history *** https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Xxzme ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Problems with the wiki (was Why OSM and not another collaborative mapping service?)
On 2015-05-07 14:58, Richard Z. wrote: Do we really need http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/w/index.php?title=POI:Loblawsredirect=no Please no. That should be discouraged. One issue that I have - http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Special:RecentChanges displays only the changes for the last few minutes and I don't see any setting to change that? The options for that are at the start of the page (Recent changes options). You can select to show the ast x changes in the last y days. 500 changes is the maximum you can select, but there is no stopping you from editting the url. http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/w/index.php?title=Special:RecentChangeslimit=5000 will give you a very long list of changes. Maarten ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Problems with the wiki (was Why OSM and not another collaborative mapping service?)
On Thu, May 07, 2015 at 12:49:40PM +0100, SomeoneElse wrote: This page is an excellent example of what can go wrong with the OSM wiki. Yet another example why the wiki needs some love. If random edits like this are allowed to continue*** it'll devalue the wiki even more as a resource. I'm not a wiki admin, but I'm sure that those who are are well aware of this problem and I would hope they are already considering what to do here. Random edits should be allowed. Maybe edits without summary should be forbidden and deliberately misleading comments punished. More people should watch new pages, http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Special:NewPages is not exactly obvious to find. If it does not help it could be mandatory for new pages to have some categories which would help people to watch what they are interested in. Do we really need http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/w/index.php?title=POI:Loblawsredirect=no One issue that I have - http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Special:RecentChanges displays only the changes for the last few minutes and I don't see any setting to change that? Richard ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
