3 ms·

Trying to piece together what the actual concerns are: * Mapping is not purely factual, some things can be mapped in different ways and corporations might map

Trying to piece together what the actual concerns are: * Mapping is not purely factual, some things can be mapped in different ways and corporations might map things that conflict with how normal people see them. Maybe an example would be deleting a commonly used path through cooperate headquarters that was made for staff/visitors. * Too much data in niche areas like driveways overwork volunteers and steers attention away from citizen areas of work * Governance model, fears corporations will get too much control through sponsorships I see these as valid issues but I think they can be worked through. For me it has been extremely nice to have a free and open data source for projects and the OSM data model is really easy to use I think. I feel the benefits outweigh the problems but I am only a user looking from the outside.

fennecfoxen 6y ago
> Maybe an example would be deleting a commonly used path through cooperate headquarters that was made for staff/visitors. I cannot believe that this example represents a meaningful source of conflict.
Doctor_Fegg 6y ago
As a long-time OSM contributor, 1 is the only one that bothers me. We've had a bit of an issue in the UK with Amazon Logistics mappers blatting away some of the nuance in rights-of-way mapping (which is quite a complex subject in UK law) as they map driveways for their own use. That's not a massive problem in itself - OSM has reasonably good communication mechanisms (particularly changeset comments), and there's a clear Organised Edit Policy which most of the big guys follow. It's just a challenge because of scale: it's hard for part-time, unpaid volunteers to spend hours chasing after the countless Amazon contractors who are sitting editing OSM all day. I know we've lost a few individual contributors because of this, though more in the US than in Europe. But this is mostly growing pains. With goodwill from all sides I don't see any reason it won't be resolved.
lucb1e 6y ago
For the first one: > deleting a commonly used path through cooperate headquarters that was made for staff/visitors That would be vandalism. The correct action is adding the tag: access=private https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag%3Aaccess%3Dprivate https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag%3Aaccess%3Dprivate OSM has a rather straightforward way of mapping things: if it's there, we map it. If the USA claims to own Poland, then we do nothing. If the USA actually occupies parts of Poland, then we change the tags to reflect that reality. Not to indicate that they own it, perhaps, but at least to indicate that it's stably under their control. Conflicts (I'm a moderator in an OSM chat, it can get very heated) mostly arise from people who don't like reality and want it to be shown differently. But their issue is with the renderer, e.g. OsmAnd, for showing it as belonging to what they perceive to be really theirs and unfairly occupied. But that doesn't change what the underlying data should show: reality. I'm having a hard time thinking of what would create a true conflict without clear solution.
- lucb1e 6y ago
  Re-reading this in the morning, just to be clear, this will actually steer routing engines away and is not just something for humans to read. Routing engines take the access tag into consideration and it can also be specific to certain kinds of traffic (e.g. no cycling allowed here, no trucks, no pedestrians...).

fennecfoxen 6y ago

> Maybe an example would be deleting a commonly used path through cooperate headquarters that was made for staff/visitors. I cannot believe that this example represents a meaningful source of conflict.

Doctor_Fegg 6y ago

As a long-time OSM contributor, 1 is the only one that bothers me. We've had a bit of an issue in the UK with Amazon Logistics mappers blatting away some of the nuance in rights-of-way mapping (which is quite a complex subject in UK law) as they map driveways for their own use. That's not a massive problem in itself - OSM has reasonably good communication mechanisms (particularly changeset comments), and there's a clear Organised Edit Policy which most of the big guys follow. It's just a challenge because of scale: it's hard for part-time, unpaid volunteers to spend hours chasing after the countless Amazon contractors who are sitting editing OSM all day. I know we've lost a few individual contributors because of this, though more in the US than in Europe. But this is mostly growing pains. With goodwill from all sides I don't see any reason it won't be resolved.

lucb1e 6y ago

For the first one: > deleting a commonly used path through cooperate headquarters that was made for staff/visitors That would be vandalism. The correct action is adding the tag: access=private https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag%3Aaccess%3Dprivate https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag%3Aaccess%3Dprivate OSM has a rather straightforward way of mapping things: if it's there, we map it. If the USA claims to own Poland, then we do nothing. If the USA actually occupies parts of Poland, then we change the tags to reflect that reality. Not to indicate that they own it, perhaps, but at least to indicate that it's stably under their control. Conflicts (I'm a moderator in an OSM chat, it can get very heated) mostly arise from people who don't like reality and want it to be shown differently. But their issue is with the renderer, e.g. OsmAnd, for showing it as belonging to what they perceive to be really theirs and unfairly occupied. But that doesn't change what the underlying data should show: reality. I'm having a hard time thinking of what would create a true conflict without clear solution.

lucb1e 6y ago
Re-reading this in the morning, just to be clear, this will actually steer routing engines away and is not just something for humans to read. Routing engines take the access tag into consideration and it can also be specific to certain kinds of traffic (e.g. no cycling allowed here, no trucks, no pedestrians...).