When I read this forum, I am reminded that communication is a tool, not an outcome. You judge its success if you communicated successfully to get to your goal.
OpenStreetmap is probably the world’s greatest example of a successful deployment of the tool of communication. The project has transcended language and culture in order to exist for going on 19 years, right? I can’t think of anything else that does that on a global scale. It’s astounding.
How did it do this? Because people are laser focused on the goal, which is making and improving the map.
Sometimes, on some of these communication and community discussion threads, it seems like this concept has been lost.
I wonder if people have forgotten that there are a lot of reasons to communicate and not all of them need to happen for OpenStreetMap to exist. For example, to entertain ourselves (stories, books, films), to inform ourselves (school, trainings), to have relationships (family, friends, colleagues).
But in OSM, the reason to communicate is to make the map. Now, to communicate about the map means communication about a lot of things–society, governments, data, science, geography, topography, AI, computer science, information systems, collaboration, etc. It’s a huge conversation. But, the defining category of the communication is “Mapmaking.” Keeping this in mind will simplify things. The community exists because of the shared interest in making maps, and it is unified because it has shared values about the best way to do this. This is the ground truth.
So what does this look like in practice?
Think about the word “authoritarian.” If you were twenty in1985 in East Germany, this word means something different to you than if you are twenty years old in the European Union today. Likewise, “authoritarian” might mean something different to an American in Texas than it does to a Swedish person in Stockholm. I would think very hard before I used this word in the context of making a map and if I did use it, it would be for a fact-based reason such as to refer to mapping disputed borders or with regard to guidelines of a country that is very widely regarded as authoritarian, such as North Korea.
By contrast, if I want to talk about the concept of authoritarianism in modern life I’m going to hang out with my friends with whom I feel safe talking about history and politics. I do not expect everyone to converse with me on this sensitive topic. It is a different category of communication.
Because English is the most common language it’s the one this community has to be most careful about, but it’s true in other languages too. When a cultural difference is on the table, the way to resolve it is to ask “what kind of communication is going to lead to an excellent mapping collaboration.”
Here’s another one. What is a corporation? Is it a mega corporation with more monetary capital than almost all of the countries of the world, like Meta? Is it a smallish, mid-size founder-owned company like TomTom? Is it a venture capital backed start-up like Uber? Is it a small company with 25 employees? Is Overture more like a corporation? Or like OSM? You have to invest something like 15 million to join Overture, so I do have to wonder. Is the Linux foundation closer to a corporation or more like OSM? Wikimedia has something like $100 million operating budget. Are they like OSM? These are not simple questions and people get lost in them. This is not useful.
To me the question should be more like “is this company or corporation or nonprofit going to help improve the map and affirm the values of OSM?”
So that’s the first thing. Remember that you’re communicating about mapmaking.
The second thing is go back to the data when it comes to making sure that the community and its communications are effective. This is great news, right? Because data is OSM’s strength.
For example, there are now hundreds of communication channels in use now. There is no way this is effective. This community is amazing, and gets stuff done anyway, but I would be very surprised if there isn’t a data-backed way to simplify things. The world’s advertising and social media companies are extremely good at deploying digital media communications to meet their goals. The data for this exists. What if OSM used it to establish an updated community communications process and protocols.
This Discourse is a terrific start. I can translate it with the click of a button, it works great on my phone, I can search it with tags, it costs me nothing.
By contrast, the listservs and old style forums cannot be easily translated. They cannot be read on the phone without difficulty. The threads are visually hard to follow, the typography hurts anyone’s eyes who is over 30. Allowing them to stand as official channels in the presence of demonstrably better options is like asking people to stand in the rain without an umbrella.
I mean, maybe the data would prove me wrong, but I highly doubt it.
Do you want a strong, diverse, healthy, successul mapmaking community?
Answer: adopt excellent communications processes and tools to ensure that the most number of people are able to communicate easily about the project in a way that is free, broadly accessible all over the world, translatable, and searchable.
To me, these are what good community communications require.
