I admit, the art between being concise or descriptive enough to provide evidence is not trivial. As a side comment: Instead of commenting about the lengthy email (which the rest was describing other issues, mostly the photos from my survey), could the Data Working Group please start to take action at all on the wave of edits from 2023? Let’s not fall into the trap of letting it be merged it with 2024, 2025, 2026, etc. Ok DWG take it’s time to decide, in particular because the misbehavior happened outside the edits on OpenStreetMap, most notable one organizer delete contents from OpenStreetMap Wiki against it’s projects, which is a blatant conflict of interest.
In the meantime, I will take the opportunity to comment that direct requests from DWG were ignored. On https://community.openstreetmap.org/t/complaints-against-brazilian-category-moderators/110407/44 despite asking twice to add information of other organizers and on the last reply here he implying would do, neither https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/2023_Brazil_Floods had the contacts of the organizers done, nor the link of that page ever made again into https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/w/index.php?title=Organised_Editing/Activities&action=history after I added but was deleted twice. In 2024, new organized editing are happening without fix the problems of the past ones and some organisations/informal groups are listed in the wiki, without any information about who from that is organising, which causes confusion even inside these groups to a point people from these groups openly deny any kind of participation and getting very upset if they’re mentioned, yet no updates on the wiki to remove their organisation/group.
And for 2024 (which is the focus of this thread)
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Please take your time and do a quick look at https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/2024_Rio_Grande_do_Sul_Floods to see if can find who’s actually the OpenStreetMap users account involved with the organisation of the individual activities and how they’re different from what’s documented in the Wiki.
1.1 As one example this project https://tasks.hotosm.org/projects/16696 cites one organizer which isn’t listed in the Wiki.
1.2 Other projects listed there also have divergences (OSM Wiki says something, material to invite mappers, other), such as the one I used as an example of data being deleted (changeset/151101972), the https://tasks.teachosm.org/projects/1605/ uses “This project is coordinated by Mapeadores Livres - UFPR and was created by mapealivreufpr.”
1.3 On the “General Coordination” currently (current wiki archive: oldid=2713067) cites two organizations, but not even a single OpenStreetMap account of any of these. Who are organizing from “OSM Brazil Community, Coordinated Mapping Group on Telegram”? And in particular, because this could be used to say “local community will verify (in person)” and later we will have someone point to go there and do it themselves, which names from “OSM RS Community on Telegram”?
1.3.1 the lack of information is essential to both confirm at anyone of each group is aware, to also have contact points to report problems and, obviously, both other mappers and DWG in future know if “community evaluation” be mere the participants/organisers voting or removing criticism in own self interest. -
(This is already partially discussed via private messages and waiting to be restated back, but I will mention here) The DWG, if something goes wrong, prefers the use of OSMF channels over Telegram. I asked 11 days ago on a dedicated topic on this forum that any eventual future activity focused on adding specialized information about damage on buildings without survey to be explicitly documented upfront in the OSM Wiki and then have time to discuss before start. In that topic, I both expressed concerns about accuracy and even that this kind of information is known to have opposition of the home owners to be public (because can cause massive devaluation beyond homes that are targeted to receive government support to be moved) and the OpenStreetMap license by default would not protect use of its data for non humanitarian uses.
Thank you.
PS.: Please note that for 2024 (different from 2023), in special if the organizers (unclear who actually are) fix the complaints, I have no reason to open another DWG ticket without at least have upfront evidence that attempted to solve directly with the organizers. But note that (as the current situation) even with DWG asking explicitly to do something, you are being ignored to a point may not even know which OpenStreetMap accounts are organizing it 