Hello everyone! This is Nick Bolten with the OpenSidewalks group. By some oversight, I wasn't subscribed to talk-us, and since the system is based on mailing lists (in 2018) that means I can't jump into the previous thread to help clear things up, so I'm making a new post.
First, the title: Frederik Ramm noticed that 9 ways, representing a total of 18 nodes, in Austin, Texas were untagged, and they should've been tagged as sidewalks (footways). I fixed them. It took less than two minutes as I also cleaned up the area a bit to add some crossings, curb ramps, and fixmes. Those edits were made by a collaborator of mine, and I'll look into why we didn't see the changeset comments to fix the data errors earlier. If in doubt, you can always contact me about these issues, but I know that's not going to be widely advertised and is a bit of a hassle - so we'll fix our end. As for the rest of the comments: I am very confused as to why a fairly small number of data errors (ignoring the massive data contributions) seems to result in an existential crisis on OSM mailing lists. I don't mean that noticing and pointing out data errors is bad, just that the response is completely disproportionate, full of contempt for others, and leads to pointless infighting. As a community project that depends on volunteer efforts, these forums should be much more welcoming and seek to build consensus with constructive feedback. All I need to know is that there was a data error and I'll fix it / have someone fix it. Specifically, I unfortunately feel I must address Frederik directly: this is not the first time you've addressed the OpenSidewalks project with open contempt. In fact, receiving baseless and speculative contempt from Frederik was one of our very first experiences reaching out to the community. Luckily, our team was and is invested in creating high-quality pedestrian data in OpenStreetMap, and this did not impact the project itself - though it did make about half the team upset for half a day. I'm addressing you specifically, Frederik, not because I want to pick on you or create yet more email drama, but because your type of feedback in these situations is both uncalled for, completely unproductive, and leads to these massive wastes of time, and it would be good for everyone if it stopped. Examples of comments that waste time, are needlessly negative and speculative, or both: > I really wonder what the purpose of this is. At least they're all tagged with "project=OpenSidewalks" which makes it easier to delete them once the project has run out... > What pisses me off is when bumbling newbiedom goes hand in hand with bigmouthed web sites about how the so-and-so project is making the world a better place, and then I look at what the project with the cool "store front" actually does in OSM and see rubbish. > So my impression is, there's a project here that has invested a significant part of their time into convincing third parties that they're doing a great thing (maybe even convincing third parties that they're worth funding), but they treat OSM with much less diligence than they spend on their store front. > If OSM was anything valuable to them, anything worth caring for, and not just a vehicle to piggyback their project on, then they would provide better training and supervision to their students so that mistakes like the ones I randomly stumbled across either do not happen, or are corrected. I'd like to remind everyone reading that this is in response to ways using a total of 18 nodes that I fixed in less than two minutes. I'd also like to interject and point to the thousands and thousands of high-quality pedestrian ways that we've added, certainly to the Seattle, Washington region, an area I've mapped large portions of by hand. Frederik is not familiar with our work, nor has he done the research to understand it, nor has he reached out to us: he is being speculative (frankly, dishonest) and demeaning. So, Frederik, in the future, please try to take more care with what you write, and how you address contributors and others. As an American who speaks German and has many German friends, I know this is neither a language nor cultural issue, and is a matter of individual tact. Please take this under advisement in future conversations. Best, Nick
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