OpenStreetMap
I rarely visit the forums these days. Between real-life issues, activism, studying and work, on the case when I have a few minutes to map I do exactly that. Silent mapping. Probably what many of us do.
Apparently, this was not meant to last.
Recent events with bans of Ukrainian users seem to clearly violate the Ban Policy, and from what I’ve seen, DWG can’t (or doesn’t want to) provide a reasonable explanation. It remains a “closed circle” with zero transparency. Usually I’m fine with that. I can’t fix all the things in the world, so it’s about priorities. However, this particular case seems serious enough to break my seclusion.
I could present it as bias or discrimination (as I probably should), but as the discussion about the issue in our Ukrainian community progresses, I came to understand it had more serious implications than merely suppressing people from a certain group.
From what it currently looks, DWG is currently trying to play thought police and persecute people for the content of their OSM profiles based on personal opinions of DWG members. In doing so, DWG is overstepping their borders and misusing their power.
We came to think that OSM is community driven, and all the overarching structures are in place for our convenience. However, if anyone can be expelled and permabanned (to be more precise, banned for 10 years) from the platform without clear ramifications and rules of dispensing these bans, it is the beginning of the end. This threatens the future of OSM project as a whole, a tangled community I am fond of.
I will try my best to spare time and go into details as we struggle with finding a reasonable solution that will benefit OSM and hopefully prevent any future issue of this kind from happening. I will also try to avoid calling names at this time as I’m still studying the situation. I am hesitant to point fingers unless having solid understanding first.
Discussion
Comment from SomeoneElse on 10 July 2021 at 15:48
To be clear - that’s not actually true. A number of Ukrainian mappers wrote to the DWG last night, and on behalf of the DWG I replied to them all (since I’ve not been involved in this particular dispute until now). It wasn’t what I had planned for a Friday evening, but there you go. Some pertinent points of those replies are paraphrased below, and my comments for the benefit of people not familiar with the issue are in square brackets:
For the avoidance of doubt - and I’m quoting from the block message here - a DWG member wrote “I will block your account until you remove it from your profile”. That makes it very clear that this isn’t a “block for 10 years” - it is a “block until the text is removed from the user profile”.
[Subsequent to me writing that message, user profiles were changed and blocks were removed].
[the next part refers to the user profile message itself, which was threatening to burn people of a different political persuasion to the writers]
Moving on to the text itself, it can be difficult to decide where to draw the line between what is satirical and what is offensive. However, wanting to burn anyone or anything is clearly not OK, even when the thing you want to burn is a cartoonish representation of someone with a particular political point of view.
https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Etiquette was adopted some time ago by the board as the way that people within OpenStreetMap should try to interact with one another, even when they hold conflicting views (political and otherwise). In the DWG we understand that, especially in the case of political disputes, this can be difficult, but as members of the OSM community we all owe everyone else within the community a fair hearing.
[extracts end]
To summarise, hate speech in OSM is never OK. It isn’t excused by the fact that the people writing it are from a country that has been partly annexed by another; OSM is one worldwide project. Everyone understands that it is difficult, but we have to try and find a way to work together.
If you think that there’s something that the DWG should do that it isn’t doing then please let us know (either to data@osmfoundation.org or directly to me if you prefer).
Best Regards,
Andy Townsend, on behalf of OSM’s Data Working Group.
Comment from Kilkenni on 10 July 2021 at 18:29
@SomeoneElse That was exactly what I’ve meant by “not providing reasonable explanation”. The “explanation” Frederik provided is problematic on several occasions, so I’m confused about where to start. 1. It is clearly based on his own opinion - he specifically says that “he considers is hate speech”, not that it actually is one. 2. He breached DWG Ban Policy several times by a) interfering with something that isn’t meant to be policed by DWG. DWG is a Data Working Group, its sphere of competence is clearly described in the same ban policy: preventing vandalism and edit wars. As such, he clearly abuses his powers. b) not trying to contact the user beforehand (although he should be involved in the matter to begin with, see a) c) applying a 10 yr ban (a clearly exclusive punishment) without ensuring consensus from the entire DWG first, as the policy demands. You have just confirmed this since you are both DWG members and you wrote “I’ve not been involved in this particular dispute until now”. A ban accompanied by a demand is still a ban. I encourage you to try and prove me wrong though. d) providing an explanation which has little to nothing to do with the actual meaning of the phrase - he implies that the phrase somehow praises burning people. Since he’s German afaik, that is understandable. He may not know English very well. Still, I can’t understand where did he get this notion of “burning people”, when in the original phrase there was no mention of people (and he clearly misunderstood the meaning of burning). What prevented him from asking first, shooting later is currently beyond me. I have my theories but I prefer to keep them to myself for now.
There’s one thing I can agree on: burning people is not OK in my book. But that’s not the point here.
Considering etiquette, I can see its benefits for the community and do not question its validity. But I can’t see how is it related to user pages.
Comment from Kilkenni on 10 July 2021 at 18:35
To sum up my points, my current concern is not that
you’re not doing something you should do.
On the contrary, I believe you do something you shouldn’t.