Moderation team for talk and osmf-talk mailing lists/Votes/20221228 Attachment on vote about complaint regarding posts by OSM community member Lutz

Wikified content of attachment on Loomio distributed by Allan Mustard to the rest of the moderation team at the time of voting on Complaint about posts by OSM Community Member Lutz.

Dear OSM Community Member Lutz,

The forum moderators have examined your posts and determined that you have violated multiple OSMF Etiquette guidelines in a thread posted to a channel overseen by the moderators, to wit: https://community.openstreetmap.org/t/wie-konne-sich-freizeitmapper-vor-der-willkur-kommerzieller-datenauswerter-schutzen/6888

Background

The event that precipitated the thread is a changeset discussion (https://www.openstreetmap.org/changeset/39776845) between Lutz and Mateusz Konieczny, with contributions from MMD. The subject of the disagreement is the appropriateness of mapping historical objects which are no longer extant.

It is a long established standard of OpenStreetMap to avoid mapping historical objects which do not exist physically in the present day (https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Good_practice). For this specific changeset, your contributions allegedly did not meet this standard.  You took issue with Mateusz Konieczny and MMD, and sought the assistance of the Data Working Group (DWG) to enforce the verifiability standard for your contribution.

Incident Description and Findings

By your own admission you deliberately escalated this disagreement to the general community chat, creating the aforementioned thread with the following misleading title: "How can recreational mappers protect themselves from the arbitrariness of commercial data evaluators?" 

In the post, you alleged persecution by Geofabrik (the aforementioned commercial data evaluator) and made a false claim of association between Mateusz Konieczny and the firm, disparaging Mateusz Konieczny as a 'Polish offshoot' of the entity.

Geofabrik and the DWG are independent organizations, with Frederik Ramm being the only common member between them, yet you did not explicitly identify Frederik Ramm as one of your persecutors. 

The moderators stress that good-faith criticism of all OSM participants, commercial or otherwise, is welcomed. However, this thread does not qualify, as transparently no connection exists between Mateusz Konieczy and the firm Geofabrik. The moderators also find that disparaging other community members by referring to them as "Mickey Mouse" can only be viewed as a deliberate effort to offend.

Result

The moderators find that you violated the following etiquette guidelines:

• Posting false or inaccurate information.

• Using unwelcome, suggestive, derogatory or inappropriate nicknames or terms.

The moderators have decided to ban you for one week from participation in affiliated forums. When this period has expired, you are encouraged to continue to participate in forum discussions, but on condition that you avoid making demonstrably false statements and refrain from applying inappropriate nicknames. Further violations may result in stiffer penalties, as outlined in the Etiquette/Process for Moderation guidelines, which you may find here: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Etiquette/Process_for_Moderation

The Moderation Team is convened by the OSMF Board of Directors ("OSMF Board") to make communications media sponsored by the OSMF productive for OSM by providing safe, healthy and inclusive community norms. Team members are accountable to the OSMF Board to uphold the highest standards on the delivery of the moderation mandate and procedures.

You have the right to appeal the Moderation Team’s decision. To appeal, contact the OSMF Board with your request and motivation and the Board will consider the case.