I recently came across some edits in my hometown that appeared to be coming from a mapper working on behalf of an organization, without any documentation of what kind of work they’re doing and why. As someone who has edited on behalf of organizations before, I asked them to follow the Organised Editing Guidelines, and they responded with details about their work. But they believe that the guidelines do not apply in this case, since they are a single mapper not part of a group:
The organised editing guidelines apply to any edits that involve more than one person and can be grouped under one or more sizeable, substantial, coordinated editing initiatives.
This sparked a discussion on the OSM-US Slack, and most of us agreed that the guidelines don’t make it clear whether they apply to “one-person mapping teams” like us. IMO, the guidelines are there for transparency, to prevent the sort of guessing game that happened in the aforementioned changeset comments. I personally try to follow the guidelines in good faith, even if it’s a small thing and I’m the only one working on a project. But a lot of solitary organizational mappers don’t consider OSM to be a primary job responsibility, and editing the wiki is a significant barrier to entry to someone who is already busy with other work.
Should the OEG apply to solitary organizational mappers? Do the guidelines need to be revised for this sort of situation?
I would suggest that simple common courtesy to their fellow mappers should make people “being told what to map” by an organisation to make it clear on their profile who’s telling them what to do.
That’s an entirely separate issue to the OEG but one of the goals of the OEG was that people shouldn’t be able to pretend to be unrelated individuals if actually being told what to do by a corporation.
If there is a problem with the way that someone is representing themselves I’d invite them to discuss that with the community on this forum. If that doesn’t work perhaps try and get the DWG** involved.
** the usual disclaimer - I’m a member of the DWG but this is just my personal view.
I’d say that if one person pays another person to map but does not issue any further commands (“here’s your paycheck, now map what you want”) then there’s no organised mapping going on.
However, if one person (or company) pays (or otherwise enlists) one other person to map some specific thing, then there are already two people involved in the mapping - one who sets the targets and one who executes the work. If the mapper were to break away and stop the work, they would likely be replaced by another mapper to execute the task - and that’s what I believe to be the core of the organised editing policy, that there is a task that someone is having performed. The community would like to know who that someone is and what the task is - no matter how many people are currently enlisted to perform the task.
if someone wants to lawyer that they edit as a part of a job but they are lone mapper - it still involves the mapper and their boss (and maybe more managers)
therefore it involves more than one person
(yes, it is lawyering but in response to another lawyering it may be fine)
I didn’t mean to lawyer that my edit was part of my job, in fact my company does not wish to be associated. I am a lone mapper not directed by leadership or a manager and I have removed all references from my profile/name for legal reasons.
I offered to make changes for a handfull of transit agencies that use the data in their instances of OpenTripPlanner. I’m on the hook since I volunteered to update the names/tags for Houston’s Park and Ride locations but going forward I will ask that the agencies make these changes themselves.
I hope that this doesn’t discourage you from continuing to contribute to OpenStreetMap!
I made this separate account to clearly communicate, including by username, profile picture, OSM user page, and OSM Wiki, that the edits to OSM and the OSM Wiki that I make using this account are work-related in some way.
That doesn’t stop me at all from making edits on my personal account - even ones very relevant to the work that I do, or sometimes identical!
For example, I recently set up an OpenSidewalks Tasking Manager project for Ocean City, MD, and have done some mapping and validating for that project on both this work account while on the clock as well as my personal account on unpaid time.
In my personal time, I’ve enjoyed making many public transport-related edits, just using publicly available data provided openly by agencies - without communication or direction from them. That’s volunteer work, and while it aligns with the interests of the transit agencies, they’re edits done of my own volition, not actually on behalf of someone else.
Of course, It’s still good practice to document your contribution with descriptive changeset comments and a filled-out source field - and for large projects, ideally something on the Wiki too. Happy mapping!
Same here. @wshavers3D, I truly don’t mean any hard feelings towards you, and your edits have been generally helpful. I apologize if this wasn’t clear from the beginning.
From time to time on OSM, I come across organizations making edits without notifying the community, and I thought that was the sort of thing you were doing—my mistake. You’re welcome to keep mapping, whether under your personal account or a work account.