Foundation/AGM2022/Election to Board/Answers and manifestos/Q13 Conflict, Etiquette and Etiquette Guidelines

From OpenStreetMap Wiki
Jump to navigation Jump to search

Conflict, Etiquette and Etiquette Guidelines

OpenStreetMap depends on courteous participation and cooperation by global and very diverse folks for its very existence. Contributor's abusive or uncooperative behaviour in community spaces discourages participation. What are your thoughts?:

  • Is this enough? What is the OSMF role in making the community more accessible to newcomers and marginalised groups?
  • There have sometimes been complaints about people posting excessively on contact channels. How would you ensure that other voices aren’t drowned out?
  • Helps the community to resolve conflicts is part of the OSMF mission statement. Are you willing to get involved and do you have a favourite conflict management method?

Daniela Waltersdorfer J. - Q13 Conflict, Etiquette and Etiquette Guidelines

I support having an Etiquette Guideline document and a corresponding Process for Moderation. It's imperative to track, flag, and respond to offensive and inappropriate behavior in order to maintain our community welcoming for all. As for making the OSMF more welcoming, we'll we have to work on representation. Representation matters. I think the pool of candidates for the Board this year is great and should hopefully lead to a Board that somewhat represents the global OSMF Community better, especially better than in the past.

Arnalie Vicario - Q13 Conflict, Etiquette and Etiquette Guidelines

I am part of the LCCWG Moderation Subcommittee and I have been vocal about my views about having a Code of Conduct(CoC) / Etiquette Guidelines. I am in favor and would like its scope to broaden and be adopted in other OSM controllable spaces e.g. other mailing lists, discourse, OSM comments/diary, and will not include other spaces e.g. Twitter and other social media which have their own terms of use or CoC. I have been in different working groups, events, etc and the common denominator that made these spaces safe and work is an enforceable CoC.

We need to build a culture where a welcoming environment is fostered in all our spaces. People’s argument that a CoC is against freedom of speech is valid. I would like to challenge that. Freedom of speech takes into account the individual’s perspectives… but freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequences that impact the listener or reader.

Engaging with / in the online community spaces, I observed that there are two general (online) spaces (I have also tweeted about this here: personal vs shared space):

  • Your personal space e.g. your OSM profile, your social media pages, etc - this is your own space, so you can say anything
    • “my space, my opinions/views”
  • Our shared spaces e.g. mailing lists, forum, group chats, etc - Us, people with different views, are interacting and in the same space

As my last point, let me ask you, the reader, a question: How do you / how would you share space with other OSM contributors?

Włodzimierz Bartczak - Q13 Conflict, Etiquette and Etiquette Guidelines

If you are elected, you will have to vote shortly on whether to continue new Etiquette Guidelines on the talk@ & osmf-talk@ mailing list. How do you think you will vote?

OpenStreetMap should be a community that is fully open and respectful of everyone's views. I am emotionally attached to the project and therefore I know how difficult it is sometimes to tame emotions in discussions. However, this cannot be an excuse against insulting or rude behavior.

I will vote in favor of the Etiquette Guidelines

Is this enough? What is the OSMF role in making the community more accessible to newcomers and marginalised groups?

I want to reactivate the SWG because I think it is also necessary to update the role of the foundation. In this particular case, due to possible language and cultural barriers, I see a greater role for Local Chapters. OSMF should lead by example and coordinate the development of standards.

There have sometimes been complaints about people posting excessively on contact channels. How would you ensure that other voices aren’t drowned out?

This is a difficult question because it is very difficult to define the boundary in such a case. The problem with many of the news channels we use tends to be a fixed group of people speaking on OSM issues, which is intimidating in itself. The best example is osm-talk. Sometimes I get the feeling that it is a closed group with a few people who have access to it. This is probably due to the fact that 99% of people no longer use such forms of contact and moving these discussions to https://community.openstreetmap.org/ would definitely have an impact on the number of participants.

Helps the community to resolve conflicts is part of the OSMF mission statement. Are you willing to get involved and do you have a favourite conflict management method?

Conflicts are part of our lives. From disagreements, interesting ideas can be born. Many times I have had to resolve disputes and moderate heated discussions during my professional duties. This is not a problem.

Ariel Kadouri - Q13 Conflict, Etiquette and Etiquette Guidelines

I believe the best map of the world can't be made without empowering everyone to contribute to the map. In order to create a vibrant and accessible space, guidelines are needed to mitigate disputes in a fair and effective way. No one should face harassment in OSMF sponsored spaces. I believe the Etiquette Guidelines should be renewed.

I am a proponent of moving conversations to the new community forum. This allows individuals to engage in discussion without revealing personal email addresses. I am not familiar with the moderation tools available to the forum and whether individuals are allowed to "block" other members that they have had frequent disputes with but that may be a tool towards reducing conflicts.

In addition to moderating spaces, the OSMF can continue to support the Local Chapters and Community Working Group in their great work bringing community together.

Victor N.Sunday - Q13 Conflict, Etiquette and Etiquette Guidelines

Christian Shadrack - Q13 Conflict, Etiquette and Etiquette Guidelines

That's why we need to encourage local communities to be more inclusive, universal and impartial in order to be more responsive to the communities in which they evolve, especially to be accepted places that will allow the construction of databases easily. I will vote in favor of the mailing lists because they are very simple ways to inform about the activities of our contributors. It will then be necessary to channel the posts first locally and then to the public, not controlled but help to channel the information to be published

Sarah Hoffmann - Q13 Conflict, Etiquette and Etiquette Guidelines

These questions are to an extend worded in a manner that paint a bleaker picture of the OSM community then necessary. So allow me draw a different picture instead.

When it comes to communication, OSM is probably in a more difficult situation than many other internet communities. We are a global community with many different cultural backgrounds, languages and communication styles. We can't rely on our common interest to bridge the gap because mapping by its nature tends to highlight cultural differences. Up to a certain point we can side-step the problem by not communicating at all. A significant number of mappers just edit the map with a live-and-let-live attitude and that works just fine. We should not forget to cater to this group, make it easy for all people to contribute without interacting with the community.

Where we do communicate, things can get a bit heated sometimes. In my experience this stems for a large part from misunderstandings and rarely from malice. We should not forget that when addressing the communication problems we have. The moderation group is a possible tool to address this situation. After all, we have something of a success story with mapping moderation in the DWG. Why not have a similar mode of operation for our communication channels: a group of people that usually functions as mediator but has banning capabilities for the difficult cases.

For newcomers we should put a much larger emphasis on local communities. It is much easier to ask beginner's questions to mappers of your local university than going directly to the global community forum. And once they do start participating globally, it helps to have a local community with more seasoned members that can translate global discussions that would be otherwise confusing or even off-putting to a newcomer. I consider this a much more sustainable strategy in the long term. We can't shield everybody in full from the difficulties that communication in such a diverse community as ours brings.

Logan McGovern - Q13 Conflict, Etiquette and Etiquette Guidelines

If you are elected, you will have to vote shortly on whether to continue new Etiquette Guidelines on the talk@ & osmf-talk@ mailing list. How do you think you will vote?

I would vote to continue. The moderation team is doing a good job at establishing a standard for the moderation of the mailing lists.

Is this enough? What is the OSMF role in making the community more accessible to newcomers and marginalised groups?

Sponsoring the internationalization of instructional materials and the accommodation of other languages for the tagging schemas would be the most effective way for the OSMF to make the community more acceptable. We could start with French, Spanish, and Portuguese and expand to include other languages like Russian and Arabic.

There have sometimes been complaints about people posting excessively on contact channels. How would you ensure that other voices aren’t drowned out?

They can be ignored. If it becomes ridiculous, I would consider placing a temporary ban.

Helps the community to resolve conflicts is part of the OSMF mission statement. Are you willing to get involved and do you have a favourite conflict management method?

Most conflict is people talking past each other. I like to help people define in detail what their grievances with each other are and then it becomes much easier to reach a compromise between parties.

Arun Ganesh - Q13 Conflict, Etiquette and Etiquette Guidelines

Am strongly in favour of continuing the guidelines. Having them sends a message that we consider it important to maintain a space that feels welcoming for everyone.

From my own interactions on the talk mailing list, the feeling one gets is that it is overly Euro centric male dominated medium which naturally makes it easier to express a differing opinion when one is part of the same demographic. This acts a barrier to more diversity in participation and perspectives which need to be highly encouraged for the project to tuly grow.

The etiquette guidelines is only a start and by no means the solution to create a truly open space with free flowing discussion and debates. Maybe something the OSMF could try out is to mandate a map view for OSM diaries and make it a more prominent platform for voices from smaller communities to be discovered.

Conflict management

Am definitely willing to get involved to build and exercise my skills to resolve differences. The approach that has worked well with my is to have everyone catch their breath and then listen to what they have to say by emotionally distancing themselves from the issue.

Mateusz Konieczny - Q13 Conflict, Etiquette and Etiquette Guidelines

  • If you are elected, you will have to vote shortly on whether to continue new Etiquette Guidelines on the talk@ & osmf-talk@ mailing list. How do you think you will vote?

I would support continuation unless I will learn about serious problems with it. So far it seems to be working fine, as far as I can see.

  • Is this enough? What is the OSMF role in making the community more accessible to newcomers and marginalised groups?

New https://community.openstreetmap.org/ forums need more moderators to better handle cases of conflict of interest but for now, it seems to be an ongoing process and at this point, intervention would be premature.

OSMF role would be to set up and maintain places so new people will join and not run away immediately. That includes already mentioned moderation, discussion channels and editor(s) and other tools that are usable by as many people as possible, from all groups.

OSMF can and should also cooperate with others willing to help in various ways - both with individuals, and organizations.

  • There have sometimes been complaints about people posting excessively on contact channels. How would you ensure that other voices aren’t drowned out?

If someone complains about me then the solution is easy - shut up and post less and focus on more important content (I did it on mailing lists which are less resistant to a large volume of posting, hopefully, improvement is noticeable).

If someone else is doing this - gently ask them to post less. I think that this kind of person typically tries to help so this is likely to work.

  • Helps the community to resolve conflicts is part of the OSMF mission statement. Are you willing to get involved and do you have a favourite conflict management method?

Yes, I would get involved if that would be likely to help.

My favourite, not always fitting method is to remove the reason for conflict. In one case of bizarre traffic signs, it was unclear how to tag it, I managed to resolve it by asking the local government to fix traffic signs. For example, more fitting OSMF board role: if some rule is confusing and unclear then the proper solution is to fix it rather than arbitrage endless conflicts.

Sometimes just asking everyone what is going on and what they want to achieve also works, in such cases, it turns out that it was miscommunication rather than a problem.

In some cases, a negotiated solution can be achieved that leaves everyone happy. Or at least leaves everyone alive.

Another technique is to ask them to join in fixing the problem (I got an answer "well, you can nominate yourself for OSMF board" in response to some of my queries).

But sometimes there is true conflict, not merely misunderstanding. Then it may be necessary to make a decision. Sometimes it is easy and sometimes there are no obviously correct solutions.

Craig Allan - Q13 Conflict, Etiquette and Etiquette Guidelines

OpenStreetMap depends on courteous participation and cooperation by global and very diverse folks for its very existence. Contributor's abusive or uncooperative behaviour in community spaces discourages participation. What are your thoughts?

OSM is not 4chan, or Twitter. We like people to be polite. Etiquette on all OSM digital channels and in-person meetings is important to me, especially because I think good faith, respect and dignity in discussion are very important to encourage participation. Good faith will lead to patience and a supportive attitude towards new contributors and contributors struggling with language differences. Respect and dignity between participants will encourage a sense of ownership and committment.

People who are disrespectful or disruptive need appropriate guidance, first by the group members and if necessary by moderators. That respectful guidance needs to be quietly backed up with rules that have teeth. I like the current set of etiquette guidelines, but am open to amending them if they are shown to be excessive or ineffective.

Voting on whether to continue new Etiquette Guidelines:

My personal position is above. I support good etiquette and the Etiquette Guidelines, but I can't say at this time how I will vote. I need to enter the meeting with an open mind and participate in the debate, which includes listening to others and considering their arguments.

OSMF's role in making the community more accessible to newcomers and marginalised groups?:

OSMF's role in building newcomer-friendly and marginalised-friendly channels is to remove barriers to access and make channels be and feel safe and friendly.

Our channels need to be kept clear of bad actors who spread racism, sexism, abuse and anger. On the other hand we need to support and encourage the good contributors who are aware that treating other contributors with dignity, patience, tolerance, support and respect is important. Good behaviour by the community is very important for building and broadening the organisation.

We are already using moderators who can support people injured by problem comments and who can educate or discipline the offending commenters.

We do need more volunteers for moderation work and some training material for moderators. OSM communities could also benefit from moderators on OSM specific channels that we don't control, like those on Telegram and WhatsApp, who can do education of offenders and support injured members, though their powers to block and ban are limited.

Removing language barriers

Language is a big barrier which can seriously marginalise some people. I'd like to see more done to encourage contributions in a greater variety in languages. The current OSM rule is that you can write in your home language if you wish to. This is great, and if you do that, machine translation allows people of many different languages to communicate with you. Sadly machine translation has a limited range of languages. If you speak only Kibajuni or another low volume language, you are stuck outside the group, and that is not acceptable.

People posting excessively on contact channels drowning out others

We can deal with excessive posting under the etiquette guidelines. Excessive posting is bad etiquette because selfishly flooding a channel is a failure to be welcoming and a failure to be respectful. Group members or a moderator should deal with it politely in terms of the guidelines and rules and deliberate repeat offenders can be blocked or banned.

Misbehaviour on channels outside OSMF control may be corrected by polite guidance. It is a little more difficult to manage serious cases that do not respond to guidance as moderators may not always be able to impose blocks and bans on repeat offenders.

Helps the community to resolve conflicts is part of the OSMF mission statement. Are you willing to get involved and do you have a favourite conflict management method?

Getting involved in conflict resolution:

Yes, I can participate in any conflict resolution.

I see many discussions, debates and arguments, sometimes quite heated debates, on OSM channels, but debate is what democracy is all about and any problems are typically breaches of etiquette not open conflict. I'd call for conflict resolution intervention only when two sides reach a point of not listening and talking to each other and fail to treat each other with respect, even to the point of abuse.

Do you have a favourite conflict management method:

My favourite way to resolve many conflicts is by using mediation techniques. Start by getting the trust and agreement of participants to work towards a resolution. If that succeeds, which is not guaranteed, then manage conflicts by reframing the fight to focus only on the issue not the personalities. Then it is a matter of developing an understanding of the issue, finding common ground and working towards a compromise. I learned from a senior trade union official the wise principle that a successful mediation will conclude once both parties are equally unhappy.


OSM Foundation's board election 2022: official questions

All board candidates' manifestos

2022 OpenStreetMap Foundation's: Board election - Voting information and instructions - Annual General Meeting

v · d · e
Annual General Meetings of the OpenStreetMap Foundation
Board Elections
Retrieved from "https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/w/index.php?title=Foundation/AGM2022/Election_to_Board/Answers_and_manifestos/Q13_Conflict,_Etiquette_and_Etiquette_Guidelines&oldid=2445081"