Mapping activities in active war zones in Ukraine

Literally nothing I’ve said is arguing. On the other hand you clearly want to make it seem like I am to try and discredit my position and distract from the actual topic of the discussion. So I don’t really have anything else to say to you about it. Really, I didn’t in the first place. Again, your the one who instigated this by replying to me. Personally I much rather discuss mapping in Ukraine. Not whatever your trying to make this about instead of that.

You are the one who writes pages about your conspiracy theory that two people have claimed to represent the Ukraine OSM community but actually don’t (and that for whatever reason nobody from the Ukraine community has spoken up against it). Instead, you could just write a two-line question to that community. So no, I meant you.

Since when is it the job of random users on the forums to ask about something that someone else is proposing? Shouldn’t it be on Friendly Ghost to find out if the community in Ukraine wants to implement his idea? I’m not his or your secretary and It’s not my job to ask for him if what he wants to do has any consensus.

You are the one who writes pages about your conspiracy

Aside from the ad hominem attack what do you actually disagree with me about? It’s just a fact that the person who created the article is an SPA and isn’t an editor. At least not that I could find. In the meantime everyone asks people if what they are proposing has been discussed somewhere and with the local community. That’s not a conspiracy, it’s literally how this works.

Anyway, I can almost guarantee that if it was a Russian SPA who created the article and wanted people to do something in a way that benefited Russia in relation to the war you’d totally support me questioning it and asking if it had been discussed first. Same goes for @dcapillae. It’s ridiculous though how every time Ukraine gets brought up all one side does is lob personal attacks at the other. I’d think at least people with your experience would handle the topic better, but I guess not :man_shrugging: To quote a Russian acquaintance of mine (lol) “when the facts end, the personal attacks begin.”

That is not true. I initially replied in the changeset originating this thread because it seemed to me the place most appropriate to the case. Then I intervened in this forum only to clarify that the user had added military trenches. You insisted on doubting that such a thing was true. Again I told you the same thing, that the user had added military trenches to the map. And finally, I left a comment with the original source of the guidelines for evaluation by you and the community. All these interventions show collaboration with other users and a willingness to clarify and expand information available on this subject.

Your half jokes are not welcome. I don’t know what is your history of discussions in this or other forums. I am absolutely certain that I have never had a previous conflict with you.

I do not understand your attitude against me. Please do not insist.

Do not try to argue with them. As long as the moderators haven’t intervened the best thing to do is to ignore the postings (click on their avatar and set him to ‘ignored’).

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To bypass most of this discussion I have created a thread in which I asked the Ukrainian community about it directly: Russian–Ukrainian war

If someone knows a channel in which Ukrainian mappers are more active than on the forum, please share the question with them there.

As a side note, the DWG hasn’t responded to any requests from me to look at some cases of mappers making dubious edits in eastern Ukraine, which could just mean that they’re enjoying their christmas, but it would be nice to know if the DWG has an opinion about Russian–Ukrainian war - OpenStreetMap Wiki

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Thank you @Friendly_Ghost. I think this post reorients this thread in a more productive direction.

Telegram sees a fair bit of traffic. Their Telegram channels have recently split, and I got that link from openstreetmap.community, so I’m not sure if that signs you up to everything or just the “general” channel.

What I said here still applies, I think.

Generally speaking, we’ve been prioritising reports from within Ukraine. In many cases the community within Ukraine is actually well on top of the situation with regards to the data, and we’ve tried to have conversations where they will be beneficial, rather than with what is obviously a sock-puppet account created purely to cause problems.

Since the phase of the Russian invasion of Ukraine that started in 2022 we’ve dealt with about 5 tickets a month that mention Ukraine (excluding ongoing tickets). Some (like the one that prompted my reply that I linked to earlier) are fairly long-running affairs. That doesn’t mean that your reports are being ignored, just that they may not be the highest priority that need to be dealt with right now.

Edit: For completeness - I’m writing this as a member of the DWG.

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I didn’t doubt it. I just said it wasn’t clear to me from the changesets along that it was what they did, because it wasn’t. I dropped it after you provided the link to Achavi though. The absolutely nothing wrong with someone asking if there’s more evidence to back up what someone says and your literally the only who continued about it after I dropped it once the evidence was provided.

Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t call someone accusing another person of conspiracy theories “a collaborative effort to clarifying things and expand information.” It’s 100% just a back handed insult to undermine my credibility. Just like your comment that I was fine with people mapping military trenches. I don’t have a problem with you though. Which is I dropped the trench thing after you provided the link. Your the one who is continue commenting.

Honestly I’d love nothing more for both to happen. I flagged a couple of @dcapillae’s comments as off-topic and literally nothing happened. Which really doesn’t help. In the meantime him and other people who are continue to come after me and not say anything about the topic could just be the adults in the room by not commenting in the first place. Same goes for you. If the comment doesn’t have anything to do with mapping in Ukraine and/or mainly involves personal attacks, don’t write it. Period. This isn’t that hard.

Thank you. It really should have been done in the first place, but I appreciate that you did it regardless of it took a little back and forth to get you there. At least it least it looks like you’ve been doing a fine job dealing with the vandalism in the meantime though and if people local to the area want editors to warn people not to edit there, cool. Personally, I don’t care either way. I just thought they should be asked first like occurs in literally every other similar situation. Really, everyone else has made way hay out of this then I did. But I’m glad it’s at least being dealt with regardless :+1:

I am getting the message: “Sorry, this group is not accessible.” I am fairly new to Telegram, so idk how to bypass it. If anyone else is able to send messages there, please share the link to Russian–Ukrainian war.

Thank you for the link. That message is very specific to the case, and the main take-away that I can find is “follow the local community.” There’s not really a DWG view on mapping in war zones (in Ukraine).
Of course there is the OSMF view on the borders of Crimea, but that says nothing about mapping other features in war zones, like trenches. That reminds me of changeset 130464044, which should probably be reverted.

Then remove yourself from this discussion.

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I have accused you of no such thing. Reread the comments on this thread and you will see for yourself. You are wrong.

I am not going to silence your comments, although I am going to stop replying to you. Neither your comments nor my attempts to redirect your attitude contribute anything to this thread. I apologize to the community for the “noise”.

For my part, it’s over.

I’m not saying you did. @Discostu36 made the comment I was referring to.

I appreciate that. I’m sure there’s a lot about this and other topics that we agree on. Unfortunately, it’s easy for the negative to get amplified over the good. I know there’s a lot of emotions about this topic on all sides. That’s why I was trying to stick to the topic of the discussion instead of veering off into personalized side tangents. For my part though I have zero issue with you and I’m sure we would get along fine if it were any other topic. The same for Friendly Ghost BTW. Hopefully both of you feel the same way :+1:

I apologize for my choice of words, it was not helpful for the discussion.

For the avoidance of doubt, “follow the local community” IS the DWG view on mapping in Ukraine at this time. The answer to “what is it OK to map and what is it not” will always be fairly nuanced; the war that Russia started is still ongoing, but normal life to an extent is also ongoing too. The balance of what is and is not OK is best judged by people actually there.

A wholesale revert may not be the best approach; looking at an example node, it looks like someone added something they probably shouldn’t have, deleted it themselves, and you reverted their delete. A more in-depth look at the data is surely needed.

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My main issue with the wiki page is that this nuance/balance is not properly addressed.

The page even mentions three very different definitions of what we are not supposed to map:

  1. “any (…) objects in Ukraine”
  2. “military or critical social infrastructure facilities”
  3. “location of the Armed Forces of Ukraine or other military formations”

It also does not discuss what sort of edits are acceptable to objects that have already been mapped.

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I think this issue can best be raised at Russian–Ukrainian war and/or on Talk:Russian–Ukrainian war - OpenStreetMap Wiki so the Ukrainian mappers can discuss this and clarify these details.

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Yet you’ve done everything you can in the other discussion to get in the way of Ukrainian mappers doing exactly that :man_shrugging:

I will rephrase myself. Please don’t maintain the continuity of a disgreement on two separate threads. All the context for your last comment exists on the other thread in the Ukrainian forum.

Weird comment considering it didn’t seem to matter when I was the one repeatedly asking other people to stay on topic :man_shrugging: Not to be rude, but you really should have asked everyone to stay on topic when it was originally happening instead of singling my comment out after the fact. Sorry, but at this point I just don’t care about being 100% on point now that literally no one, including you, has bothered to care about it until now.

Also, @SomeoneElse it’s a little ridiculous that you told me people leaving emoji’s without leaving comments isn’t useful when they were upvoting my messages, but then you’ve done exactly that multiple times since then by either upvoting comments attacking me or leaving negative emoji’s on my comments. You can’t have it both ways dude, either they are useful or they aren’t. At least be consistent about it :+1:

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I decided that ‘stay on topic’ was not the best response. My existing response stands. Please don’t maintain the continuity of a disagreement between two different threads. It makes it more difficult to follow what the points of contention are. So, please continue your debate in the Ukrainian forum instead of going back and forth. This goes for all participants.