Changeset/Governance
Changeset Governance (Draft)
Spirit of Changeset Governance: Basically it introduces a way to distinguish a changeset e.g. made during a survey from a changeset made during armchair mapping using information received from imagery or external data. In the spirit of more professional Quality Assurance a way for us and the performers to identify valid changesets and to better understand the circumstances under which a changeset was made.
Definitions
(Local) Survey: being there on the streets and facing the reality of what is there and what not and then sharing this information with OSM.
Armchair mapping: Using just knowledge received by external data like from imagery, research or external databases.
Quality assurance: The process of reviewing changes made to the OpenStreetMap database carefully and - if necessary - correcting/reverting changes in order to help OSM to be a more reliable source.
Changeset Governance: Guideline for dealing with changesets and how to create them in a way that aims to be helpful for the community and Quality Assurance folks.
Prolog
In inspiration to https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk/2020-March/084325.html (start of overall topic: https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk/2020-March/084322.html) it was thought it would be time to take more control of changesets and to introduce a system that allows identifying the circumstances under which a changeset was made so decisions by QA folks can be made more precisely: e.g. In OpenStreetMap we generally heigh changesets made during local surveys more than the ones made by armchair mapping using external databases or imagery. (survey > imagery/external database). The community generally thinks: Local experience counts more than just knowledge received by external data like from imagery or research. In the spirit of a more professional quality assurance as performed by companies or mapper groups the community needs to find ways to make QA activities even less error-prone. This wiki page tries that and is currently Draft only.
Question of the "How"
As always they are more than just one way towards the same goal which ideally supplement each other. This is not different for Changeset Governance. This wiki page aims to provide guidelines for changeset creation in the spirit of Changeset Governance. And it does not only serve for just one kind of circumstances under which a changeset was made.
As of now this wiki page is a stub and more needs to be done to raise it to a specification.
1. Differencing between survey and armchair mapping
In order to be able to difference a changeset from being made during a survey or during armchair mapping, it might be of a good spirit to follow the guidelines here:
Someone creates a changeset during a local survey:
- Changeset Comment: "Describing your change in one of the many human friendly languages e.g. in English and not in Java"
- Changeset Source: survey
Someone creates a changeset during armchair mapping:
- Changeset Comment: "Describing your change in one of the many human friendly languages e.g. in English and not in Java"
- Changeset Hashtags: #armchair
- Changeset Source: "The source you have the information from e.g. ESRI imagery, Bing imagery, an Open Data Database
You can also differentiate between the different armchair styles
| Hashtag | Description of armchair mapping style |
|---|---|
| #country-armchair | I don't know the place but I know the norms the country's community agreed on |
| #local-armchair | I don't know the place but I know the norms the local's community agreed on. Just use this hashtag in cases where a local community established an own tagging norm because the place's norms are a little bit different from the country's norm. |
| #aftersurvey | I have been at the place recently but I am mapping it after the completion of my survey. I took notes, pictures I use for mapping etc. or map from memory. |
2. A mapper working for a company
In case the mapper works for a company, they need to also add:
- Changeset Hashtags: #companyname
- The name of the hashtag needs to be defined by the company or the community and it is not allowed to change it afterwards. The name of it needs to be known for both sites. Each individual mapper working for the company needs to include the hashtag in its changesets the company is obligated to use.
Suggestions for the name of the hashtag ( #companyname ):
| Company's name | Hashtag to use in each changeset |
|---|---|
| Apple | #apple |
| Microsoft | #microsoft |