OpenStreetMap
Unfortunately, OSM community may dislike at times - Proposal Process
Posted by Ewrt1 on 26 February 2024 in English.I recently got this comment on my Proposal on Forum. https://community.openstreetmap.org/t/rfc-feature-proposal-deprecating-demolished-railway-tags-cancelled-proposal/109757/2
This undoubtedly hurt my feelings. Since, well, I have been trying to make OSM better in tagging.
As a result, ‘'’I have paused proposal-making for this moment.’’’ Don’t know if this is temporary or permanent, but I have to. Users have undoubtedly hurt how me, as a mapper and pretty much a proposer of lots of proposals, try to improve OSM tagging.
Sorry, if user reads this, it hurt your feelings. I just need to make sure everyone knows.
Discussion
Comment from Yury Yatsynovich on 27 February 2024 at 14:43
Don’t take it personal – we all make mistakes and that criticism was about the proposal, not you. But, looking at your history, you’ve been mapping just for 2 months and you’re already coming up with proposals – that’s bold!
Comment from Kovoschiz on 27 February 2024 at 16:22
Sorry that it comes out like that. At least I tried to explain what it should have. It doesn’t look different from what you received elsewhere. https://www.mail-archive.com/tagging@openstreetmap.org/msg59283.html Making a proposal is usually challenging. But it doesn’t help to add confusion and distractions to the already long debate that surely most don’t read fully. The standard is the same whether you are new or old.
Comment from Kovoschiz on 27 February 2024 at 16:25
Also I usually don’t use thumbs-down. That obviously might be perceived as harsher. https://community.openstreetmap.org/t/proposal-to-add-the-emoji-as-a-reaction/107167/3
Comment from stevea on 2 March 2024 at 10:22
Ewrt: It’s true that to make a proposal after a couple of months of mapping is indeed bold. Many of the histories of how and why the tagging has evolved to what it is today are fairly complex and have emerged with a great deal of back-and-forth negotiation between many OSM Contributors in the process of forging consensus. I can easily agree that this makes them difficult to understand for a newcomer.
Again, while you may be experiencing hurt feelings — and that is perfectly understandable — the processes OSM takes to “improve ourselves” (our map, really, maybe only tangentially “us as people”) are sometimes lengthy, sometimes complex and greatly benefit by a long view of the histories of many kinds of taggings: it can take some time to get up to speed as to “why things are the way they are.” But please take heart, nobody here means to “attack YOU.” We do wish to educate you that our ecosystem does hold together, with sensibilities running rather high most of the time, but on occasion there are sticky points (even after years) and things-which-easily-confuse-many.
What we do about this is to keep talking amongst ourselves, with open minds (and open hearts) and no ill will towards one another. OSM is an education process, and we are all constantly learning here, every single one of us. Keep reading (wiki, discussion forums…), keep asking (us, here, no question is too silly), keep mapping your very best. If/as something goes wrong, we hope that the way that we correct each other is gentle enough to be effective, but not so brutal that we (needlessly) hurt the feelings of others, that is not our intention.