Hi Øukasz,

Yes we are currently having volunteer updating the “temporary” tag to the approved tag. It’s taking some time though and we are a little bit delayed since it was the holidays and our volunteers were less available during that time. We’ll make sure that what’s been erased (mostly the tag place=*) wiil be back where it was valid.

Best regards,

Léonie

Hello @Øukasz,

Sorry for the delay, I was referring to that db : https://hub.arcgis.com/datasets/aa22618c72ef47148401e3518307c19f_0

Best,

Léonie for the CartONG Missing Maps team

Hi @Jean-Marc Liotier,

If the imported data has the same changeset comments, a revert is doable, it’s what’s been done in our case thanks by Oukasz who noticed it in the first place. For the UNICEF import, I’m afraid that it’s not too old to revert it without damaging even more the datase. Despite we’ve worked with UNICEF on completely different contexts, we don’t have more information than you on this particular import: I suppose you tried to contact the person who did the important back then?

We are sorry if some organizations (same as individual contributors in fact) mess up from time to time. At CartONG, are trying to improve by working to be more compliant with the overall Organized Editing policy and by welcoming feedback and constructive criticism (like the diary post written by Oukasz) in order to improve our processes in terms of communication and documentation, and we encourage other humanitarian (and others) organizations to do the same!

Best regards,

Léonie for the CartONG Missing Maps team

Dear Ouskasz,

Léonie, the new Missing Maps coordinator at CartONG, replacing Manon during her maternity leave. We have read the post you published on July, 24th with attention.

First of all, we want to thank you for reverting the problematic changeset and for noticing the involuntary import of UNHCR refugee camp data into OSM. It was a mistake from one of our volunteers, this data should not have been imported in OSM in the first place, in fact we are not planning any import at all linked to this process. Our volunteer imported by mistake data that was supposed to help the contribution but not end up in OSM (more details below).

After the tag amenity=refugee_site has been approved by the community, we started this summer a process of data cleaning meaning replacing the temporary tag (place=refugee/IDP_camp/settlement) by the new tag (amenity=refugee_site). We are coordinating this work between CartONG staff and volunteers (the matrix is not public because it requires specific briefing to edit it according to the proper format and avoid messing up the coordination).

By the way, I totally share you opinion that the order of things should have been : tag proposal > tag approved > identifying the sites with the approved tag. We didn’t fully master the process when we started it hence the use of the temporary tag we are now replacing.

Over the course of the data cleaning, e.g. replacing the temporary tag by the new one, 2 things you noticed happened : • The removal of valid tags (mostly landuse=residential): we hadn’t discussed the issue before launching the volunteer task. To us, if the camp was clearly identifiable and mapped, there was no need to keep the landuse tag on the polygon. We thought both tags (amenity=refugee_site and landuse=residential) were not compatible. Therefore the volunteer were instructed to keep only two tags in this instance: amenity=refugee_site as well as name=. For your information, the landuse tag was not removed in instances where the camp boundaries were not clearly identifiable, in such cases, the tag amenity=refugee_site has been applied on a node alongside with the tag name= and the tag landuse=residential kept. You noticed it, told us and one of my colleagues replied to you and we instructed the volunteers to keep both the valid tags. We will of course put the erased ones back into OSM.

• Concerning the “import” that was reverted and that contained improper information: it was a mistake from one of our volunteers. Our volunteers were given a layer with the locations of the camps and settlements as well as other information that are not to be imported in OSM. They are supposed to use it ONLY if the nominatim system doesn’t work to locate the sites. The layer was given to help them do the data cleaning, not to be imported in the OSM database. This was stated in the instructions but probably not strongly enough. So there was in fact no import documentation since no data was supposed to be imported in the first place (just “traditional” manual mapping). Once again, you noticed it, thanks for taking the time. We then told our volunteers to be extra careful with that layer and reviewed our documentation. I’ll also give them a cleaned layer with minimum info (just the nodes locating the sites with the names) to work with instead of the old one with all that UNHCR database, to reduce the risk of errors. Finally, the data is already available on UNHCR-curated public database so there is not risk on their privacy here.

Regarding the communications aspect, we are well aware this can be improved, it is linked with multiple factors, such as dissemination and one could even argue disorganization of OSM communication channels (for instance we didn’t instruct our volunteers specifically to watch their OSM messages), working with volunteers that don’t have all the same awareness of open communities, new projects we are building on the go with multiple stakeholders, etc. The key improvement we want to build over the coming months is being compliant with the overall Organized Editing policy, we are very aware we are late on this, but various reasons (including movements in the team, competing priorities, not to mention the Covid19 impact…) have slowed us in implementation. It remains however a high priority and would help other contributors get a better overview of our activities. That being said, we are always welcoming feedback and trying to improve. Promoting open data and participation is among CartONG’s core value and it is good the community takes us accountable on it. We would in fact like to use the opportunity we gained on this project to improve the global documentation on the various process we’ve been confronted that are not always crystal clear to newcomers – if our resources allow us to have time to do it!

Best regards,

Léonie for the CartONG Missing Maps team