Cluster B

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Strategy Cluster B: Community Development for OSM

OSM's strength and comparative advantage lie in its community, which provides to the project accurate local geospatial knowledge, as well as tools for both adding data and using the data at low or no cost. Mapping is inherently personal. Individuals tend to map whatever interests them, and hence, the OSM community strategy must seek to widen and diversify the community in order to capture and database the maximum amount of data.

Strategy B1: Volunteer working groups

Introduction: Working Groups are the OpenStreetMap Foundation’s operative organs. Community participation in the Working Groups is critical to OpenStreetMap’s health. Therefore, the Board seeks to do these tasks:

Task B101: Membership recruitment and retention

• Description: increase retention and recruitment.
• Action: 1) annual appeal for volunteers, 2) targeted recruitment of positive community contributors
• Deliverables: The Board will annually publish an appeal for volunteers for the working groups, and annually remind each working group to identify potential volunteers and to solicit their participation

Task B102: Communication about Working Groups

• Description: increase the visibility of Working Groups and their activity, so that the community recognises and understands them.
• Action: ask the Communications Working Group monthly to blog on the work of a specific Working Group, and to send material to WeeklyOSM for publication there
• Deliverable: Monthly blog posts that can be reproduced widely

Task B103: Best Practices and Onboarding

• Description: offer help to Working Groups to exchange best practices and in particular to enhance onboarding.
• Action: convene annual video conferences at which Working Group representatives exchange best practices and annual hybrid Working Group conferences at State of the Map Conferences
• Deliverable: semiannual video conferences, with one of them a hybrid conference at State of the Map, for exchange of best practices

Task B104: Working Group Membership drive

• Description: organise a Working Group membership drive, using its access to promotional channels.
• Action: annually advertise via the Discourse forum, talk lists, blogs, and social media the need for active Working Group members, and invite community members to apply for Working Group membership
• Deliverable: steady flow of one or two new Working Group members per year

Strategy B2: Community strategy

Introduction: As a global project committed to a "map of the world that anybody can use", OSM contends with nearly every written language on Earth, as well as a multitude of cultures.

Task B201: Focus on local knowledge and distributed intelligence

• Description: OSM's emphasis on local knowledge and distributed intelligence underscore the need for expansion of local chapters and communities, which will propagate information in local languages about OSM, collaborate with local educational institutions and local governments to improve access to geospatial data, and organize events. Well organized local chapters and communities also provide valuable input to Foundation governance, both by generating ideas and informing the Foundation of local achievements, needs, and objectives. Potential donors will find such support easier to offer if said communities are well organized and incorporated as non-profit local chapters. Some local communities have signaled their need for startup financial support in order to become chapters, particularly for legal aid in navigating government registration requirements.
• Action: The Foundation will provide limited, one-time-only, startup funding for local communities committed to becoming incorporated non-profit local chapters, which need financial support for legal aid and initial registration fees.
• Deliverable: One to three new chapters per year.

Task B202: Expand local chapters and communities

• Note: Now merged with B201

Task B203: Provide opportunities for more structured input to project direction and topics

• Description: As local chapters formally affiliated with the Foundation have emerged, their utility as a potential corporate governance structure has become apparent. However, membership of LCs on the Advisory Board affords little opportunity to help guide the project.
• Action: The Board will appoint a special committee of local chapter representatives to draft proposals for how local chapters can be more usefully engaged in corporate governance.
• Deliverable: A report to the Board and OSMF membership on how local chapters can participate in corporate governance of the project.

Task B204: Promote local groups and events

• Description: As a global project committed to a "map of the world that anybody can use", OSM contends with nearly every written language on Earth, as well as a multitude of cultures.
• Action: The OSM Foundation will continue to diversify the languages used in community surveys and to support a multilingual community forum and mailing lists. The Foundation will also commit to supporting moderation of communications media it sponsors, including the community forum and mailing lists, in order to reduce to the minimum friction caused by cultural and linguistic misunderstandings, as well as bad behavior that repels community members. The Foundation will rely on and support local chapters that moderate their own talk lists and forum channels, under the philosophy that local knowledge of local culture and language is best.
• Deliverable: Translation of surveys into at least 14 languages, appointment of moderators to all OSMF-sponsored communication channels that lack self-appointed moderators.

Task B205: Give better visibility to community content.

• Note: Task paused until it is better defined.

Strategy B3: Not in use

• Note: Strategy B3 is not currently in use.

Strategy B4: Cross-border and cross-cultural collaboration

Task B401: Support SOTM and support local SOTMs

• Description: Annual State of the Map conferences, both global and local, are an important mechanism for development and maintenance of both formal and informal communication channels across a worldwide project. They are also an important source of funding for local chapters and communities.
• Action: The Board will be forward-leaning in granting licenses to local communities for use of the SOTM trademark, will encourage local chapters to self-organize local SOTMs, and will support the SOTM Working Group as needed to ensure an annual global SOTM takes place.
• Deliverable: annual SOTM, about a dozen annual or biennial local/regional SOTMs.

Task B402: Address language barriers

• Description: A global project cannot depend on a small number of languages to extend its reach around the world.
• Action: Translate surveys into at least 14 languages. Add a button to the OSMF website and the OSM wiki that allows machine translation (e.g., Google Translate, Microsoft Translator) of the OSMF website into any supported language. Continue to support WeeklyOSM.
• Deliverable: Significant participation in surveys by non-English speakers. Easy machine translation of the OSMF website and OSM wiki. Publication of OSMF-related material via WeeklyOSM.

Task B403: Address cultural barriers

• Description: Cultural differences can lead to miscommunication and unintended offenses.
• Action: The Board will appoint moderators to the talk list moderation team who are sensitive to cross-cultural differences and who are able to defuse situations and, in severe cases, to intervene forcefully.
• Deliverable: Reduction in verbal conflicts in OSMF-sponsored social media channels.

Task B404: Address trust and safety in communication, define role of local chapters in moderation

• Description: A few disruptive community members can poison communications for all, and have in the past driven away new members of the OSM community, harming efforts to expand the community both geographically and numerically.
• Action: In addition to ensuring that culturally sensitive moderators are appointed to the OSMF moderation team, the Board will encourage local chapters to ensure that similarly competent and qualified moderators are on task in the locally oriented talk lists and forum channels.
• Deliverable: Reduction in toxic communications in OSMF-sponsored communication channels and social media.

Task B405: Provide modern, open communication platforms

• Note: The OSMF has fully implemented the Discourse based community discussion platform so this task is now completed.

SUPERCEDED Strategy B5: Gender diversity

Note: Strategy B5 has been rewritten in response to community inputs. The new version is found below the original text.

Task B501: Develop a policy to promote gender diversity within the OSM movement

• Note: This is a collection of several tasks. Suggested that it will promote implementation if it is broken up into single topic Tasks B502, B503, B504, B505 each with single or uncomplex deliverables.
• Description:

The 2021 community survey indicated that the OSM community is only 8 percent female, which is not conducive to creating a map that necessarily includes data responsive to the interests and needs of roughly half the population and thus undermines creating a "map of the world that anyone can use." A 2019 academic study indicated that under-representation of women was in part a consequence of how "...current debates around gender in VGI play out predominantly in online forums and are focused on overcoming hostility and creating acceptance of diversity within male dominated virtual online mapping environments, the prospect of which has been identified as a factor in alienating women from adopting technology more generally..."

Input from women in the community indicates that street-level surveys are inherently more dangerous for gender minorities, so emphasizing street-level surveys over armchair mapping can exclude them.

Offensive rather than constructive criticism of new mappers' mistakes drives away new mappers, including those from underrepresented groups, which argues for broader application of iD presets for commonly agreed tags to reduce neophyte errors and hence undue harsh criticism thereof.

The small number of female role models in OSM is an impediment.

• Action:

The Board will continue support of the Software Dispute Resolution Panel, which since its formation has effectively restored civility to discourse over iD improvements, and will encourage iD developers to expand presets that reduce errors by novice mappers. (Proposed Task B502)

The Board will budget funds specifically to attract women to the OSM project, including to provide a grant for improvement of the current beta version of the Women Mobile Application, and will consider any applications for grants to code similar software products that will attract women to OSM. (Proposed Task B503)

The Board will support any community initiative to mentor women and non-binaries interested in presenting at SOTM, including provision of stipends to cover first-time female and non-binary speakers' travel expenses to SOTM. (Proposed Task B504)

The Board will consider applications for grants in support of webinars to promote the role of women in OSM. (Proposed Task B505)

• Deliverables:

Reduction in discouragement of novice mappers, support for civil discussion and additional iD presets. (Proposed Task B502)

Creation of a Women Mobile Application that attracts more women to OSM. (Proposed Task B503)

Five stipends for global SOTM presentations by women and non-binaries. (Proposed Task B504)

One to two webinars devoted to promotion of the role of women in OSM. (Proposed Task B505)

UPDATED Strategy B5: Gender diversity

Note: This is the updated version of Strategy B5. The B5 version before this has been superceded.

• Introduction:

Note 1: References to 'women' in this section include all people who self-identify as women.

Note 2: The non-binary community is asked to contribute content on Gender Diversity that will address their needs.

The 2021 community survey indicated that the OSM community is only 8 percent women, which is not conducive to creating a map that necessarily includes data responsive to the interests and needs of roughly half the population and thus undermines creating a "map of the world that anyone can use." A 2019 academic study indicated that under-representation of women was in part a consequence of how "...current debates around gender in VGI play out predominantly in online forums and are focused on overcoming hostility and creating acceptance of diversity within male dominated virtual online mapping environments, the prospect of which has been identified as a factor in alienating women from adopting technology more generally..."

Input from women in the community indicates that street-level surveys are inherently more dangerous for gender minorities, so emphasizing street-level surveys over armchair mapping can exclude them.

Task B501: Develop a policy to promote gender diversity within the OSM movement

The Task B501 has been broken up into Tasks B502- B504 in order to create simpler and more manageable tasks. Task B501 has been closed.

Task B502: Provide support for mobile mapping tools for women

• Description: A Women Mobile App is currently under development and is in the beta testing stage. The purpose of the app is to attract and retain more women mappers to the OSM mapper community by providing a mapping solution that addresses the specific mapping needs of women. We currently have no information on this app so a description of the app is not possible.
• Action: The Board will provide a grant for improvement of the current beta version of the Women Mobile Application.
• Deliverable: A Women Mobile Application will be available to address the specific needs of women mappers.

Task B503: Provide and maintain a supportive online environment for women

• Description: Offensive criticism rather than constructive correction of new mappers' mistakes drives away new mappers, including those from underrepresented groups. The problem has been diminished by the establishment of moderation of OSMF controlled discussion channels and the moderation of tagging comments. The establishment of the Software Dispute Resolution Panel which restored civility to discourse over iD improvements has also been a positive step. However, errors by new mappers (and harsh adverse comments on those errors) could be further reduced by broader application of iD presets for commonly agreed tags.
• Action: The Board will:
  • continue support of the Software Dispute Resolution Panel
  • continue support of discussion channel and tagging comment moderation
  • encourage iD developers to expand tag presets that reduce errors by novice mappers.
• Deliverable: Women novice mappers will make fewer tagging errors and error correction comments will be polite and supportive.

Task B504: Increase the visibility of women and non-binary contributors to OSM

• Description: The small number of women and non-binary contributors who are visible role models in OSM is an impediment to the greater involvement of these groups in mapping and related activities. It is proposed that increasing the visibility of the gender minorities who contribute to OSM activities will help to promote minority involvement generally. An important set of venues to increase visibility of women and non-binary contributors are the global and national State of the Map conferences. In addition to the above actions, online events can also contribute to involvement and visibility of gender minority contributors. It is proposed that the OSMF Board take specific steps to promote women and non-binary speakers at SotM events and in online events.
• Action: The Board will:
  • provide a limited number of stipends for travel expenses to support presentations by women and non-binaries at global SotM conferences.
  • consider applications for grants in support of online events that promote the role of women and non-binary contributors to the OSM community.
  • encourage Local Committees, other affiliates and organisers of national SotM conferences to adopt similar principles.
• Deliverable: There will be a measurable increase in the number of women and non-binary contributors to OSM activities.

Strategy B6: Community relations

Introduction: As we have defined OSM’s core as the mapping process, we have to remain engaged with each of its stakeholders – individuals and corporations, contributors and users.

Task B601: Maintain Volunteer (including Working Group) relations

• Description: The OSMF lacks both a formal mechanism for community relations and guidelines for its relationship with the Working Groups, which are the institutional framework of the project. This lack has led to discord between the Board and some Working Groups, and discouragement of community members.
• Action: Negotiate memoranda of understanding between the Board and each of the Working Groups on modalities of interaction, with a specific goal of eliminating micromanagement of Working Groups. Conduct biennial surveys of the entire community, as was done in 2021, to gauge community sentiment on important issues.
• Deliverable: Delineation of respective responsibilities via signed memoranda of understanding with each Working Group to preclude micromanagement and unnecessary intervention, and actionable feedback from biennial surveys.

Task B602: Maintain Corporate relations

• Note: Simon Poole podcast Jan 2023 suggested Overture Foundation will result in less financial and development resources flowing to OSMF. Possible action: Improve relations with Overture members. Spread corporate support wider to non-overture companies. Diversify fundraising.
• Description: The corporate members of OSMF, who at certain contribution levels sit on an Advisory Board, and who are major and important sources of financial support, software support, and mapping contributions, are not routinely tapped for expertise or with regard to their interests in the project, which mostly revolve around improving the geospatial data. They regularly encounter overt hostility from certain members of the OSM community, and thus feel alienated. No formal relationship exists between OSMF and NGOs such as HOT.
• Action: The Board will revitalize the Advisory Board and convene bimonthly meetings between it and the OSMF Board of Directors. The Board will appoint one of its members to be a dedicated liaison officer for corporate members, who will communicate regularly and at least monthly one on one with the corporate representatives. The Board will negotiate agreements akin to the local chapter agreements with NGOs involved in the project.
• Deliverables: Meetings every 2 months between the Advisory Board and the OSMF Board of Directors resulting in enhanced two-way communication. Receipt of actionable feedback that results in data and software improvements. Agreements with HOT and other NGOs that reduce friction and misunderstandings. Reduction of unwarranted criticism of corporate members due to increased awareness of their positive contributions.

Task B603: Maintain Data user relations

• Description: At present, aside from certain corporate users of data who have become corporate members, the OSMF has virtually no formal communication with data users, and in fact has little idea of who most users of data are. The lack of a feedback mechanism is a vulnerability. OSM suffers from being seen as a community of map builders with no connection to the use of that data. There is very little awareness of what map data needs in order to be useful, or the ways competitive map databases are evolving ahead of OSM, which impedes the goal of making OSM the map of first choice.
• Action: Communication is two-way. The OSMF will ask the Communications Working Group to pose questions via social media (Twitter, Facebook, Slack, etc.) needing user input, and to relay any responses to the Board. Biennial surveys of the entire community as noted above will include questions needing input from data users, particularly focused on how OSM data do or do not meet needs.
• Deliverable: Useful feedback from the user community to the Board.

Strategy B7: Empowering volunteers

Task B701: Provide education and training

• Description:  Education and training is specific to locales, in part due to language and cultural barriers, so is properly a task for local chapter and communities. That said, training materials and curricula could easily be shared so as to avoid duplication of effort.
• Action: The Board of Directors will ask the LCCWG to facilitate sharing of training materials, to identify needs and gaps in materials that could be filled by paying for their preparation, and commit to funding preparation of missing materials.
• Deliverable: A comprehensive set of training materials and ready curricula, available at no cost to local chapters and communities and to educational institutions.

Task B702: Provide wiki.openstreetmap.org

• Note: This task has been implemented.

Task B703: Provide curated tags proposal

• Description: Periodically members of the community have called for a subset of tags to be established as "curated" tags, which would be standardized in order to make OSM data more consistent and easier to use. There has been no consensus on this matter.
• Action: Include in the next OSMF survey a question related to whether a subset of curated tags would be desirable.
• Deliverable: A survey result providing guidance to the Board of Directors.

Task B704: Provide dialogue moderation

• Description: Moderation of conversations in OSMF has proven useful in keeping participants civil when communicating and in encouraging communication by disciplining bad actors.
• Action: The Board of Directors will seek not to supplant existing self-governing moderated channels, but to supplement them as needed by appointing moderators where no moderators otherwise exist.
• Deliverable: Moderators in all OSMF-sponsored communications media, whose work results in a significant reduction in discord in said media.

Task B705: Provide infrastructure for training, testing and development

• Description: Demand exists for testbed or "sandbox" servers for two purposes. Firstly for training new mappers in an environent where they are not working on the live database, and secondly for technical purposes and experimenting with OSM data, such as creation of a vector tile map for osm.org.
• Action: The Board will ask the Operations Working Group for a proposed budget and its opinion on the feasibility of hosting testbed servers available to the community for both training and the development of data uses.
• Deliverable: Proposed budget and feasibility report.

Task B706: Provide access to test databases

• Note: This Task has been merged into Task B705

Task B707: Provide project hosting

• Note: This task has been merged into Task B705

Strategy B8: Undertake OSMF strategic planning process

Introduction: This document is a conversation. We will seek commentary on the document, perform structured surveys for input, and directly reach out with questions to stakeholders.

Task B801: Seek community commentary on the strategic planning document

• Description: Foundation membership feedback is needed on the draft strategy in order to assure agreement with any final product.
• Action: Publish drafts on osmfoundation.org and solicit feedback through appeals via social media, the talk lists, forum, and discussions with local chapter and communities.
• Deliverable: Feedback.

Task B802: Perform structured community surveys for input

• Description: The strategy will inform the Board of Directors, which is the executive arm of the OpenStreetMap Foundation and its members. The Board needs structured information from the members to generate a strategy that conforms to the members' views.
• Action: The Board of Directors will use LimeSurvey to survey the Foundation membership on any issues viewed as needing member decisions.
• Deliverable: One or more structured surveys, as needed.

Task B803: Directly reach out with questions to stakeholders

• Description: While the community is dominated by mappers (87%, based on the 2021 survey results), other stakeholders exist, and they must be consulted as well.
• Action: The Board will arrange to conduct focused conversations with a representative sample of stakeholders, including NGO and corporate data users, educators, local communities and chapters, software developers, Working Group members, and others involved in the community to identify needs, concerns, objections, and problems.
• Deliverable: A report on feedback from these conversations.

Task B804: Prepare and revise OSMF Strategic Plan

• Description:
• Action: Gather information from the community and use it to prepare a plan for performing the Mission of OSMF, as a step towards the future state of OSMF as stated in the Vision. All to be done in full accord with the OSMF statement of ethics.
• Deliverable: An annually updated strategic plan, with enough detail on implementation to manage the projects and operations of the institution.

Task B805: Project manage the implementation of the strategic plan

• Description: Follow up on all actionable items in the strategic plan and ensure that the managerial oversight team and assigned implementer are progressing with their tasks. Problem solve if necessary to ensure progress.
• Action:
• Deliverable:Progress reports on the progress of implementing the entire Strategic Plan

Strategy B9: Regular OSM Community Surveys

Introduction: Historically the OSMF Board has conducted surveys ad hoc, with open-ended questions not suited for analysis and quantification. The Board needs to commit to structured surveys conducted at regular intervals.

Task B901: Regular structured surveys

• Description: The OSMF Board needs regular feedback on its decisions and actions, and guidance on future choices.
• Action: The OSMF Board will conduct biennially a structured survey of the OSM community akin to the 2021 community survey, including demographic questions.
• Deliverable: Survey results every two years.

Strategy B10: Humanitarian Mapping

Task B1001: Humanitarian mapping

• Note: This Task is made up of several issues and implementation and performance management of the actions would be advanced if they were split into Tasks B1002, B1003 each addressing one problem.

• Description:

Humanitarian organisations that implement organized mapping by humanitarian organizations have experienced hostility from OSM members. It would be better if OSM members were to welcome and support involvement of community groups focused on addressing social ills or infrastructural shortcomings through mapping. Through dialog, Mapping NGOs and the OSMF can explore ways for the OSMF to support the expanding and changing ecosystem of diverse actors in humanitarian mapping.

Specific issues include:

The iD editor needs a building tool and expanded presets to help novice mappers. (Proposed Task B1002)

Hostile behaviour by OSM members towards beginning mappers recruited by humanitarian organizations when they make neophyte mistakes has the effect of driving them away from the project.

Humanitarian organisations wanting to import data from government and NGO sources willing to donate such data are often met with hostility, preventing contributions of useful data. Current import guidelines are cumbersome and bulk imports are hard to get approved. (Proposed Task B1003)

• Action:

The Board will support expansion of iD presets that reduce neophyte errors by novice mappers. (Proposed Task B1002)

The Board will extend code of conduct and moderation services to stem abusive editing comments directed at new mappers. This is linked to, and partially duplicates Task B403 and B404.

The Board will fund creation of sandbox servers for training purposes with a copy of the planet file to which humanitarian groups will be granted access for training mappers, but which will not affect the real planet file. This action is entirely covered by Task B705.

The Board will seek to recruit humanitarian organizations as chapters of OSMF, granting them the same status in the OSM community as local communities. This is specifically covered elsewhere under the development of Interest Based Committees,

The Board will appoint a special committee to consult with humanitarian organizations on the impact of the Organized Editing Guidelines with an eye to amendments that, without compromising the OSM geospatial database in any way, can ease importation of bulk data by humanitarian organizations, particularly but not exclusively from official government sources. The special committee will issue a report within a reasonable time-frame including recommendations for amending the Guidelines. (Proposed Task B1003)

• Deliverables:

Support for expansion of ID presets.

Moderation of editing comments. (See B403, B404)

Establishment of sandbox servers for training purposes (See B705)

Chapter agreements with non-geographic humanitarian NGOs desiring a formal affiliation with OSMF.

Amendments to the Organized Editing Guidelines that ease importation of bulk data.