I was amused to see the new AI-generated ferret on the JOSM splash screen. Or is it a meerkat? Obviously I’m a ferret fan, and it’s only a few letters of a leap for the meerkat to resemble the name of a competing map editor.
It is a merkat. But to be fair English animal names aren’t my speciality and I checked the meaning in my own language only after I finished the image. The idea was based on something I read at that time.
I like the connection to the ‘competition’. I’m no longer sure, as it is long ago, but I believe I first contributed there before I went to JOSM.
You can’t SERIOUSLY think that people would care to translate your application if you’re constantly throwing AI images at them. If you think AI is so great, then use it for your translations and take these images away and be done with it.
The AI images are stupid and they’re unprofessionel.
Are you seriously suggesting that it’s normal to have shirtless ripped mice on the start screen of a mapping application. You think it’s normal that if I were to present JOSM to someone from a gov or municipality that this is the first thing they see?!
I’m a furry, I’ll fully admit that, and I don’t mind art like this (I do mind this cause it’s AI garbage) but IT DOES NOT BELONG IN THIS CONTEXT.
EVERY SINGLE TIME you post a new ai image it’s getting worse and you’re upsetting your OWN users?!? why are you doing this and being so stumbern with it.
Keeping one of the ai images on there and that’s it would have been one thing BUT YOU KEEP ON GENERATING NEW ONES, WHY?! every time you do you’re causing another frustrated round of users who are expressing their opinions in various channels, from mastodon to discord.
You want people to translate your app? make a shitty hand drown or even powerpoint / wordart image. Don’t use this ai garbage and def don’t stick with all the furry art (again: THIS IS COMING FROM A FURRY: STOP)
yes, I’m cursing and yes i’m using caps. BECAUSE I’M FCKING DONE with being polite about this. We’ve been civil in the josm ticket but you’ve crearly started ignoring us there, so that’s why I’m angry now.
also: you’re even using ai images THAT HAVE SPELLNG MISTAKES IN THEM?!?!
YOU’RE EXPECTING PEOPLE TO PROVIDE TRANSLATIONS FOR YOUR APPLICATION WITH PROMO ART THAT CAN’T EVEN SPELL A BASIC ONE (because it’s obv ai garbage, as we’ve all been saying from the start)
I’ve written my thoughts on both the threads already, but I also want to express how disappointed I am that there hasn’t been a response from a maintainer on either for over a week now.
For me, it’s not just the fact that AI is on the MOTD, it’s the staunch defence of it despite the wide criticism and not taking into consideration the people this is affecting. I’m interested in translating JOSM, but the Launchpad software is very difficult (for me) to work with. The response I got from Stoecker was to export the file and use a different software that is outdated and now superseded, and still extremely limited in terms of functionality. If the JOSM maintainers are open to using gen AI, why should I spend hours of my time volunteering when what I could submit could be overwritten with AI at any given time?
AI is not going to proofread itself, it’s not going to check for consistency with translations for other editors, and it’s hardly going to make up its own terms when there aren’t any.
You can’t have your cake and eat it.
Edit: I’m not going to contribute any more translations and I’ve also uninstalled JOSM. The best way to go about this is to apologise, move to a proper translation software, and stop using AI.
As I wrote in the other “feedback” ticket, this already essentially happened once before to Vietnamese, and the initial response was a couple rounds of “so fix it”. If it had happened to a language community that’s more visible within the OSM community, I suspect more pitchforks would’ve come out like we’re seeing here.
Thankfully, the problem did get resolved, but apparently the developers haven’t forgotten and have worryingly linked this episode to the internationalization contest that these furry images are advertising. The threat isn’t necessarily AI. LLMs hadn’t really come onto the scene back in 2015 – it was probably just someone’s hamfisted attempt at a homegrown machine translator based on dictionary lookups. Someone could’ve overwritten the localization using a random word generator and I’m not sure it would’ve been met with any less of a shrug. Rather, the root of the problem is a focus on quantity over quality, something that mappers know all too well about.
A couple years earlier, iD faced the same problem with someone attempting to flood the localization with machine-generated garbage, but the developers were quick to respond by putting me in charge of reviewing changes before they went into a release. Putting a human in the loop is important, because the result will be presented to end users who haven’t been replaced by AGI agents yet.
heh! . not really… now a lot of people who wanted to contribute are frustrated at the dev for putting that image there.
It doesn’t help that @snoecker isn’t actually listening to the real feedback he’s getting on HOW TO REALLY increase translations: the translation platform is outdated. multiple people have mentioned this.
He should switch to something modern like Weblate and then he’d get a lot more translations.
Instead he’s generating half naked mice and annoying a good amount of users in the process.
The whole ‘even bad marketing is good marketing’ is def if it’s trying to make volunteers do something.
ALSO: we’re not saying he should use a text banner. nowhere is anyone in this discussion saying that.
He could use CC-BY images. He could sketch something. he could even just make some funny 'ol fashion wordart. Anything but this ai slop.
He could have also asked for people to make art. But no. he did none of this.
I was very confused and somewhat annoyed when I opened JOSM a few weeks ago and saw AI slop. I’m only now finding that there is a forum thread I can voice my annoyance in. So here goes: this is counterproductive and unprofessional; please get rid of it.
I have been planning to update some of our documentation to use JOSM and to briefly introduce JOSM to some newly onboarded external project leads in a business meeting this week but there’s now 0% chance of that happening when inappropriate images like this are what they’d see on first launch - it’s incredibly unprofessional and I just can’t justify it. (Not to mention that I personally feel uncomfortable seeing these images, which I definitely do.)
Will I personally keep using JOSM? Yes, because it’s simply the most efficient way for me to do my work and engage with my mapping hobbies.
Will I ever recommend JOSM to anyone in a context that is even remotely business-related? No, and I cannot do so in the future even if these images are no longer shown going forward, without some kind of formal community address with a sincere apology demonstrating an understanding of what went wrong here and a guarantee of nothing like this happening again. Which, given the dismissive replies on the relevant tickets and the ongoing active disregard for what is clearly a broad community consensus, seems like that’s not going to happen.
JOSM’s market share is steadily decreasing year over year for more than a decade while still remaining first and even slightly relatively increasing in the last few years in number of edits (source). In other words - the dwindling but dedicated few who make outsized contributions are basically all JOSM has, and for some reason there’s a dedicated push to both alienate the existing users and discourage new ones.
@stoeckerPlease stop. Your actions are directly harming both JOSM and OSM as a whole, including the many people who rely on this tool in both personal and professional contexts and all people who benefit from its use.
But to be fair English animal names aren’t my speciality and I checked the meaning in my own language only after I finished the image. The idea was based on something I read at that time.
def if it’s trying to make volunteers do something.