On Thursday 19 June 2014, Frederik Ramm wrote: <The discussion has been led here on talk and on osmf-talk. A statement by Emilie Laffray on osmf-talk best summarizes the idea:
"Ultimately, map data is pretty much fact and whether it exists or not is a binary statement. Now, could someone slip "advertisement" like places of all shops of a specific brand? Yes! Do we care? No, as long as the data is factual. I don't care if someone is being paid to put data in OpenStreetMap as long as this data is correct and valid..."> <All these are judgment calls where we trust our mappers to make the right decision. All these are a far cry from the "binary statement" and the easy fact checking that people often ascribe to OSM.> <But this should not make ourselves blind to the fact that there's also quite a lot of stuff in our database that is not as easy to fact-check. I believe there is ample room to "interpret" reality in a way that is not outright wrong, but has a "spin" on it - in OSM as in Wikipedia.> At SOTM Birmingham a workshop was aimed at mappers who wanted to share their dreams for OSM in, say, 2020. Results can be found here: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Future/Dreams On the aspect of technique, editing, tools some dreams were: - Easy for non-techies to add data - Consistent tagging format or rules (described) - No federated tagging / worldwide consistency / no federational mappers - Ability to move on from poor initial tagging conventions In my work I have to deal with guidelines involving ultimately some billions of euros per year. As a professor I spoke about them wisely said: "you should always try to limit interpretation by improving the guidelines, but there will always remain room for interpretation no matter how strict the guidelines are". I think this combination can also work for OSM: continuously keep on improving the map features (as stated in the dreams), which are applicable to any mapper, paid or unpaid. Sometimes that leads to easy black-and-white situations: a motorway should not be mapped as a footway. But indeed, to a certain extent grey situations will remain. And the grey situations need interpretation. As a core value, respect will also mean mappers communicating about the reasons for their interpretation. Cheers, Johan 2014-06-19 12:06 GMT+02:00 Frederik Ramm <[email protected]>: > Hi, > > this is an offspring from the discussion about whether or not we are > well advised to follow Wikimedia's example of requiring the disclosure > of paid contributions. > > The discussion has been led here on talk and on osmf-talk. A statement > by Emilie Laffray on osmf-talk best summarizes the idea: > > "Ultimately, map data is pretty much fact and whether it exists or not > is a binary statement. Now, could someone slip "advertisement" like > places of all shops of a specific brand? Yes! Do we care? No, as long as > the data is factual. I don't care if someone is being paid to put data > in OpenStreetMap as long as this data is correct and valid..." > > Let us go back in time to when Wikipedia was started. I wasn't there > then but I am pretty sure that there would have been many at the time > who naively said something like: "An encyclopedia is a collection of > facts and knowledge. We can argue how the facts are organised and > presented but the content is verifiable and clear." > > I would probably have agreed. Where and when a composer was born and > what their most famous work is - clearly a fact, no? > > Fast-forward to the present. Wikipedia has learned the hard way that > there is much less fact and much more open to interpretation than > initially believed. Meanwhile in OSM, people say: "We don't have the > same kind of problems as Wikipedia because ours is effectively a > database of verifiable facts."... > > This is undoubtedly true for a number of things in our database - but > the number of exceptions is much higher than you would naively expect. > > Firstly, there are cultural issues mostly to do with names. We have edit > wars about name tags (most recently, disputed islands in South East Asia > and territories between Ukraine and Russia) - what is the "name on the > ground" in an area with active movement of troops? > > Another very recent example is a long discussion-cum-edit-war in Germany > about whether or not something really *has* a German name X > ("name:de=X") or if that is a thing of past occupation > ("old_name:de=X"). This is not a fact that you can simply check, it is > something that requires research and brings us quite far into the > "[citation needed]" terrain already. > > But there are other and much less obscure issues, starting with the > highway classification. There are no hard and fast rules about what is, > for example, a primary or a secondary road; this is mainly a distinction > that we leave to the local mapping community, and yes, there are edit > wars about that too, and there is potential for edits with an ulterior > motive (someone who lives on a street might downgrade it from primary to > secondary to have less vehicles routed there, or to make his property > look more attractive to a potential buyer). > > We have many other situations in which we trust the mapper to do the > right thing without being 100% verifiable. Track types are an example, > or indeed the infamous "smoothness" tag. When we map which areas are > "residential" and which "commercial", there's quite a bit of leeway > there as well - you can gloss over a supermarket in a residential area, > or you can cut a hole in the area and mark it differently; you can map > the whole supermarket parking lot as a parking lot or you can map the > trees and the little bushes between the rows of cars and make it look > almost like a park. > > Is something just a stream or already a river? Is something just a town > or already a city? Does the office of a private music teacher count as a > music school, thereby increasing the quarter's school density? > > All these are judgment calls where we trust our mappers to make the > right decision. All these are a far cry from the "binary statement" and > the easy fact checking that people often ascribe to OSM. > > I believe that it is still true that most of what we collect *is* facts, > and as long as we stick to the facts we're in the green. It may be > disputable whether something is tracktype=grade1 or tracktype=grade2 but > the fact that there is some kind of track in that location is not up for > discussion. > > But this should not make ourselves blind to the fact that there's also > quite a lot of stuff in our database that is not as easy to fact-check. > I believe there is ample room to "interpret" reality in a way that is > not outright wrong, but has a "spin" on it - in OSM as in Wikipedia. > > Bye > Frederik > > -- > Frederik Ramm ## eMail [email protected] ## N49°00'09" E008°23'33" > > _______________________________________________ > talk mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk >
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