Talk:Directed Editing Policy/Imagico Draft

What about MapRoulette and HOT?

After reading "Who does this policy apply to?" I'm not sure if these two examples are subject to this policy?

Are they? Is this pretty clear or is this borderline/in a grey area?

https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/MapRoulette http://maproulette.org/

https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Humanitarian_OSM_Team http://tasks.hotosm.org/

This policy draft is meant to define its scope through objectively verifiable criteria, specifically including or excluding certain organizations and organization tools in general would not serve this purpose. In principle i would think that both Maproulette and the HOT tasking manager can be used in ways that fall under this policy but also in ways that do not.

Specifically what is discussed in [1] quite definitely would be covered by this policy but many other Maproulette challenges which are set up by individual mappers based on tagging inconsistencies, fixme tags or similar to be worked on by other individual mappers based on their free decision would probably not.

The key is the following formulation in the text: This policy does not apply to mapping suggestions that are openly communicated within the OSM community and where all participants take part and perform their edits under their free and independent decision.. The matter of free and independent decision could be further clarified by the question Does the organizer in a significant way control what is mapped where and in what way?

In case of HOT tasks the fact that there are specific instructions on what to map and how to map it, people register to work on this and their work is verified to be completed following the specific instructions and often the tasks are set up to cater the interests of a specific external organization (the Requesting Org) would speak for considering them to fall under the policy. By the way several of the rules set by the policy are to some extent already implicitly followed by the HOT tasking manager (like the need to define a contact person) while others (like the need to put up specific instructions given to scrutiny by the OSM community) would be very important to add.

On the other hand if tools like the HOT tasking manager are merely used to help mappers not step on each others' feet when mapping in an area at the same time, i.e. the instructions are just generally improving mapping in a naturally defined area and the task grid is just used to allow mappers working on the same area in parallel to coordinate with each other this could be different. I remember having seen tasks that go more in this direction.

--Imagico (talk) 13:33, 27 April 2017 (UTC)