Learning from WMF

Toolforge is also open to OpenStreetMap-related projects, such as WIWOSM. It’s a wonderful resource, backed by Wikimedia Cloud Services with direct database access to Wikimedia projects as well as a Postgres database of the OSM planet.

It can be difficult to get the WMF to prioritize a feature that they consider to impact only a sister project or a Wikipedia in a lesser-known language. I’ve literally been on the receiving end of the cold product engineering calculation of, “We need to focus our resources on the larger wikis where our work has the greatest impact.” They got a rude awakening a couple years ago when they proposed to rebrand the Foundation as “The Wikipedia Network” and subordinate all the sister projects to that brand.

However, it’s not as dire as “life support”, or at least it’s no longer as bad as it used to be. These days the WMF even maintains and develops the homepages of each of the projects, something I had to do for over a decade as a volunteer who knew little about Web development. At least we can give the WMF credit for having sister projects under their wing beyond the breakout hit Wikipedia.

If I could pin the WMF’s drama on a single factor, it would be that there have been too many changes in direction, too many reorgs. I think they’re led sometimes by a fear of irrelevance as people’s information consumption habits change. In the past, half-baked ideas that could blossom into real improvements instead got rammed through the community as faits accompli, and before they have a chance to bear fruit, the team gets reorg’d.

Lately the WMF has been charting a more deliberate course. As a denizen of the OSM Wiki, I’ve been chomping at the bit for them to finish the massive talk page overhaul so wikis like ours can benefit from these improvements too, but they’re really doing it in a considered manner and I think that engenders goodwill among the community. I would be remiss in not mentioning the Community Wishlist Survey, in which the community votes on technical improvements big and small and the Foundation somehow manages to deliver them before the next round of wishes comes in. OSM-related improvements are often nominated for the wishlist.

As with OSM, there’s more to the Wikimedia movement than the WMF. They have a robust network of local chapters and user groups. Some of these organizations rely heavily on the WMF for grants, though at times the relationship can be fraught. Many here are familiar with Wikidata, which is in large part developed by Wikimedia Deutschland’s engineering staff.

Whereas OSMF has an active local chapter in the U.S., Wikimedia only has a loose network of city-scale affiliates. The WMF sees itself as a global organization, so they don’t do stuff at the scale of OSMUS. The affiliates are currently looking into forming a more formal umbrella organization for the U.S., taking inspiration from OSMUS. They envision this “hub” having the resources and clout to more easily forge long-term partnerships with educational institutions and reduce duplication of effort, especially around grant applications.

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With the risk of sounding like the devil’s advocate, protecting one’s position as the top player in an industry necessarily involves constantly evolving and developing, growing larger and stronger. Otherwise you risk being overtaken by a competitor with larger economic resources than you (hmm, where have we seen that recently?).

I’m certainly not defending—nor am I a fan of—mindless spending of donations, but imagine what OSM could be if we had:

  • A dozen full-time developers writing A-tier tools like StreetComplete and RapID.
  • A whole team dedicated to consolidating and setting up import procedures for all open datasets in the world.
  • Official and advertised ways for businesses to manage their presence on OSM like on Google Maps, largely negating the need to respond to onosm-notes while at the same time greatly improving OSM POI:s.
  • A team dedicated to lobbying to governments and organisations to release datasets under a compatible licence.

I don’t believe there is a shortage of projects to spend a lot of money on in order to improve OSM:s competitiveness, especially since we seem to have gotten a real competitor in the open data realm. Maybe WMF have a few millions to spare on a grant to us?

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Regardless of the merits of your individual ideas, you seem to assume that there is a bottomless pot of Gold available to finance the OSMF. This is arguably not even true for the WMF, but the main difference is that the WMF completely cornered the market early on and can easily raise money just on the spectre of WP going away. In the case of OSM there are multiple completely viable alternatives of which one is even substantially more popular.

Even just the small amount of funding that is required for current operations (less than 1% of the WMFs) is only available as earmarked and restricted funding. And if the halo around Overture is anything to go by we can expect the thumb screws to be tightened going forward.

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And massive amount of people is using Wikipedia directly and can be reached by banner on the website.

This is not true for OSM, so the same method of fundraising will be far less effective.

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And massive amount of people is using Wikipedia directly and can be reached by banner on the website.

This is not true for OSM, so the same method of fundraising will be far less effective.

we would have to include the banner text occasionally in the tiles :wink:

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Yeah I remember some (French?) tiles having a message in them about going away or something similar…

@SimonPoole Did it come across that way? It was certainly not my intention. I just remarked that WMF has spent millions on not entirely transparent donations to other organisations, and OSMF is a pretty “poor” organisation that could benefit greatly from a bit more funding.

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Bring it on! :laughing: