curious experience, being locked out because of etiquette misbehaviour.

I heard about the procedure against me only after the procedure had been closed with a condemnation, 4 votes approving, 1 abstaining. not only no space to present my point of view with the people who were to decide, even no notice of the pending procedure. speak about openness.

what were —concretely— my abuses? I may guess, but I was not —concretely— notified of what was the violation. maybe the same as my previous block. I had to review my own behaviour myself, perform a radical self-criticism, purge myself of all evil, then came back once purified.

I’m happy I renounced my membership of such a Foundation.

---

a clarification apparently needed, seeing the first two comments to this entry: I obviously do know that I have a continuous latent conflict with YouthMappers and HOT. I did not know that steps were being taken against me. then I received the following email:

Subject: suspension from OSMF-sponsored talk lists and community forum
From: Allan Mustard
Date: 07/02/2023, 04:54

At the request of the LatAm channel moderators, the OSMF moderators have investigated allegations of Etiquette Guideline violations against you. The moderators voted today with four in favor, one abstaining due to conflict of interest, to impose sanctions, consisting of a two-week suspension from the forum and talk lists. Please also be informed that your conduct is under observation and that any further violations of the Etiquette Guidelines will result in a lengthier suspension from all OSMF-sponsored social media, and if continued beyond that, may result in suspension from OpenStreetMap.

You have the right to appeal this decision to the OSMF Board of Directors.

For the moderators, Allan Mustard

and this is when I became aware of the procedure that led to the block.

A note to myself

This is a note I’m writing to myself, but sharing it to the wider OSM community. I’m a great fan of OSM as a close-to-perfect means for producing this beautiful free geographic database we have, and I like Telegram as an informal platform. I’ve been using Telegram while discussing OSM changesets with fellow mappers, switching from changeset comments that were slowing down the communication, being less interactive and not letting us share images.

me on Telegram

On Telegram I founded the Comunidad OSM Panamá (let’s call it COP here), to which I’ve been inviting mappers who start contributing OSM data in Panama. I have also been made owner of the OpenStreetMap Off Topic (OOT) group, a quite diversified community of mappers who sometimes want to talk about anything else but mapping. In both groups I implement a very simple set of rules: 1) introduce yourself when you enter; 2) assume and practice good faith; 3) try to be nice to each other.

the CoC

In particular in the OOT group we have discussed some meta-issues, like when the OSMF was discussing the need for a formal Code of Conduct. From those discussions, I distilled my personal reasons for decidedly contrasting the formalization of “norms”, on top of what should be shared “values”: if we don’t agree on values, there’s no set of norms that will keep us together. Also, should we once agreed on a set of norms, we would need a group of enforcers, and while on the OSM platforms we have the OSM Foundation to perform that role, on Telegram we are outside the Foundation’s jurisdiction. Cutting it short, in my opinion, if we need the protection offered by the OSM Code of Conduct, we must stay on OSM services.

an event on official channels

Recently I posed a question, an invitation, asking a local Panamanian YouthMappers chapter to please elaborate on a very brief message we had received by one of their members on the COP group. The person who had joined the group and started informing us about a project never appeared on Telegram again helping us understand her better, so I wrote on the official platforms, inviting her, or them, to respond. Still waiting, but anyhow, that’s not the point here.

outcome on Telegram

As a very curious side effect to my insistence, there was a spark of discussion around my person and my behaviour and the unpleasantness of all interaction with me and the abusiveness of my interventions, on a Telegram group. For technical reasons I’m banned from that group, but my partner isn’t, so she very politely responded to the quite insulting description of the COP group she now owns and helps me administer.

OSM should not care about Telegram

But all this happened on Telegram, that’s beyond the OSMF jurisdiction, so I’m not complaining about it, I mean, who cares … who cares if on Telegram some HOT voting member insists with asking us to implement the OSMF Code of Conduct in our Telegram COP group; who cares if on Telegram some Latin American OSM mappers require that the few loosely cooperating mappers in Panama should organize a regional meeting next November; who cares if on Telegram one needs to block fellow mappers to prevent them to contact you -on Telegram- while waiting for them on OSM; who cares if on Telegram so many people in the osmlatam group repeat and repeat and repeat the need that Panamanian mappers should have a single “official” Telegram group, public, managed by people approved by that same osmlatam group?

my standpoint …

I happen to live in Panama, but I’m not Panamanian, on a daily base OSM sees in Panama seldom more than 4 local mappers, and hardly ever more than 8, and you can reach the top 10 with just one very average changeset. If local mappers have come in contact with each other it’s because I invited them to join the group I had founded, generally also suggesting the official alternatives, to have a look at the forum, the regional mailing list, and the community; if we have a welcoming page it’s because I made the pull request on that Belgian service; if the Panama forum is not dead, if there’s some content in the Panama Wiki pages, please simply check who put it; if some Wiki pages have a Spanish version, etc. etc.

… my reaction — on Telegram

So back to the Telegram COP group. As long as I am an administrator of that group, I will not have it implement any Code of Conduct other than the three above rules. About the people who left the group slamming the door, requiring all others to do the same, intending to leave it as an empty container, and to join the new Comunidad OSM Panama (a closed private group for which I can’t even provide a link), in those people, and in their good faith I have lost faith, so I have taken the liberty to ban them from the original COP group. No need to mention their OSM user name here, since, again, who cares, all this happened on Telegram, not on OSM.

… and my intentions — on OSM

On OSM we edit, we describe our changesets, we provide feedback, and I trust the Code of Conduct in place on OSM to keep the communication courteous, and fruitful. I personally find it a failure of the Code of Conduct if it is possible for a mapper to steadfast ignore all hints and attempts at communication on concrete mapping issues, without a working group intervening.

finally: name disclaimer

The COP group I administer is just a space, meant for quick interactions and clearing doubts without the formality of the official OSM platforms. The fact that it’s called “Comunidad OSM Panamá”, it’s just a mistake I made; fixing the name, changing it to a less pretentious one, I’m not doing that because it would break all links to old messages, but also because, short of calling it “Peppino”, all alternative names I can think of are far too long.

later addition

on the subject “The Code of Conduct fails to address the refusal to engage in discussion”, on concrete mapping issues, a few local examples:

• Alvarado2510 providing empty replies even after DWG urging him to read, understand, take corrective action,
• Didiel Pimentel never replying and complaining —on Telegram— that I email him too often,
• Brayan Ameth mapping for the router,
• Carlos Eduardo Rodríguez who, if I understood correctly, asked the DWG to have me stop contacting him on his changesets.
• mariotomo these are my discussed changesets.

(I’m publishing it now, I will review, and might add screenshots.)

rationale

Here in Panama I’ve occasionally noticed bursts of name contributions by foreigners who do not know the language, or by local people who copy from official information where the accents have been purged, or contributed long ago when non-ASCII character became a question point.

Whatever the case, we have textual mistakes in the database, so that when from time to time I browse the database, I still stumble on “Simon Bolivar”, “San Jose”, “Canaveral”, “la Compania”, and the commonplace terms Panaderia, Pasteleria, Fruteria, etc.

If you’re not familiar with Spanish, you haven’t noticed anything wrong, or have you?

Those familiar with the language and/or fixated on formal correctness like linguists, philologists, and mathematicians, have felt pain, because the correct Spanish form of the above words is “Simón Bolívar”, “San José”, “Cañaveral”, “la Compañía”, “Panadería”, “Pastelería”, “Frutería”, etc.

Just for reference, at the time of writing, “Simon Bolivar” in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela returns 32 objects, while “Simón Bolívar” gives 200, possibly giving a measure of some national pride. Colombian “Fruterías” however score 56 vs. 64 against “Fruteria” without the accent.

the task

Here I only focus on what are obvious orthographic mistakes, skipping any data that might look wrong only because it’s in a different language, and I want to fix the mistakes only looking at the textual information, not to the geographic or geometric characteristics of the object.

This spares me downloading object coordinates, and the base map, but still I will advise checking every single instance we’re fixing, no automatic blanket fix.

the tools

I suggest using overpass-turbo, level0, the standard unix stream editor sed. Then correct the data in the level0 html interface.

the procedure by example

imagine you want to fix all “Fruteria” in Colombia, placing the missing accent as in “Frutería”.

first of all, we gather all object ids from overpass-turbo:

https://overpass-turbo.eu/

activate the wizard

have the query built, but not run.

replace the trailing code:

// print results
out body;
>;
out skel qt;

with the lighter:

// print object ids
out ids;

also increase the timout from 25 to, say, 125.

running it will give you a result in the right-hand-side pane. select and copy to the clipboard.

now open a terminal, and give the command:

sed -n -e 's/^.."type": "\(.\).*",/\1/p' -e 's/.*"id": \([0-9]*\)[,]*/\1/p' | 
   sed -e ':a; N; s/\n//; N; s/\n/, /; ba'

when you run the above, sed will read from the standard input. paste the code you copied, then end the stream, hitting Ctrl-D (that’s press and hold Ctrl, press D, release both).

the output will be on a single line, looking like

n805012123, n846533218, n2692985140, n3413518765, n3750009415, 
[…]
n3196435415

triple-click on it, copy to the clipboard, then activate the level0 page, and paste the longish line with the object ids.

have level0 grab the information from OSM, decide what you want to fix, and whatever you don’t feel sure about, remove it from the text area, so you won’t be submitting it to level0.

caveats

I strongly advice you double check all you change, I therefore advice against grabbing more than, say, 50 items at a time.

if the overpass query returned more than 50 items of data, consider choosing a single uniform type of discrepancies among the data, and fix that only.

do not mass change anything other than the name. if you see other textual mistake, clearly a mistake, like “heladeria” (again missing the same ´ on the i) that should be fine.

for the above example, a “frutería” might be tagged as café, or fast_food, or greengrocer, or even ice_cream, generally depending on the presence, or not, of other keywords like “Cafetería” and “Heladería”. you might possibly even notice that it depends on which group of corporate mappers contributed the information.

a Frutería y Heladería tagged as shop=convencience is doubtful, and it might be useful to tag it with a fixme, clearly explaining what doesn’t make sense to you. a shop=greengrocer named “Frutería” might be just fine, in particular if the name also mentions veggies.

please never assume anything, if you have doubts, stay away from the object, or tag it with a fixme expressing your doubt.

otherwise

Another approach, a bit more paranoid maybe, would be to download all named objects for a given area, then look for inspiration on what to correct. My hint here would be to use JOSM to perform the overpass query, save the objects in a (dot)osm file, then look at the names with something like this:

cat yourfile.osm | 
  sed -n -e "s/.*k='name' v='\(.*\)' .>/\1/p" | 
  tr A-Z a-z | 
  tr ÁÉÍÓÚÜ áéíóúü | 
  sed -e "s/'/'/g" -e "s/>/>/g" -e 's/"/"/g' -e "s/&/\&/g" | 
  grep -o '\<[^. -]*\>' | 
  sort | 
  uniq -c | less

(I know it’s a “useless” use of “cat”, but I find it practical because it allows me shuffling the different filters who are all free of the filename.)

once you have decided which words is worth having a look at, you can either use overpass, or easier you again use your local file:

cat yourfile.osm | 
  grep "\(id='\|'name'\)" | 
  grep -B1 -i "\(técnología\|tecnólogico\|técnológicos\)"  | 
  sed -n -e "s/  <\(.\)[^ ]* id='\([0-9]*\)'.*/\1\2/p" | 
  paste -sd,

what is this about?

this entry describes a possible workflow for identifying missing road segments, thanks to the standard low-res Strava heat map. you may also use it to reclassify all those ‘highway=track’ that so many remote mappers keep creating for our ‘surface=unpaved’ unclassified and tertiary roads.

the mapping practice here described is totally manual, and quite obviously its speed will be inversely proportional to the precision you want to achieve.

preparation steps

• install JOSM
• in JOSM, activate the low resolution Strava heat layer
  • do that by editing the Imagery Preferences settings,
  • look for Strava among the available default entries,
  • select the cycling and running heat map,
  • activate it.
  • you will need to restart JOSM after activating the new imagery layer source.

typical editing session

prepare for mapping

• add the OpenStreetMap (Carto) Standard layer,
• roughly choose an area of interest,
• add the Strava heatmap layer, but do change its transparency to 50%,
• add your favourite Aerial photography layer (here I will be using Bing because I will show screenshots and the Bing license allows didactic and instructional use. in mapping I tend to prefer Maxar.)
• order the layers so that:
  3: is Strava, on top of both:
  2: your favourite aerial photography layer,
  1: the Carto standard map,

identify a missing road

• hide layer 2 (click on its corresponding “eye” icon, or use the keys Alt-2).
  at this point your layers pane should look like this:
  
• repeatedly toggle visibility of layer 3, to identify where Strava shows road usage and our map shows nothing (or roads marked as agricultural tracks).
  a rather extreme example might look like this:
  
• download the OSM data for the area, obviously you need to include any previously existing elements, to which you want to connect your new roads.

map the road

this is my personal practice, yours might be whatever it might be, this is just what I am comfortable with.

• ‘a’ (the draw nodes tool), draw a way, very roughly following strava, not looking at the aerial photography.
  • start the road by zooming in
    
  • zoom out and roughly draw the body
    
  • zoom in again and connect the end
    
• hide Strava, show layer 2 with aerial photography.
• ‘w’ (the improve way accuracy tool) (keep the Ctrl key pressed, so that you will be adding nodes, release it to move a node)
  • make your road follow the aerial photography.
    
  • zoomed in, you will occasionally refine an earlier node.
  • again occasionally the area might be obstructed by trees or clouds and you might want to show the Strava layer:

restarting after losing track

still occasionally, I do loose track of which roughly mapped roads I still have to refine. fortunately JOSM has a quite powerful search option.

• Ctrl-F and select all new nodes.
  
• this shows where the new nodes are too distant from each other.
  
• tag the road as ‘unclassified’ (very likely) or ‘tertiary’ (for heavier traffic).

extra value: fill in the blanks

something that happens quite often, mappers stop a road when time is up, even if the road does continue. it is very helpful to routing programs and services if we provide a connected network of roads, rather than scattered segments.

• a candidate for filling in a gap:
  

repeat

• preferably, hide the data layer, which will add a mask on top of whatever raster you’re using. and: “da capo”, from “identify a missing road”.

the end

while writing this diary entry, I mapped these roads:

do not forget to tag the new objects yourself!

https://www.openstreetmap.org/changeset/111457635

This is a follow-up to a pedrito1414 diary entry on Silvester 2020, which itself, at least from my point of view, was a follow-up to a IRC chat the two of us held on 2020-12-15.

From our chat Pete distilled a short list of nine more or less urgent “issues to address / aspects to improve”. We’re 8 months later and a few days ago I downloaded the online HOT projects summaries, to choose some statistics that might let us measure the process and how it has been improving. Of these 9 points I think that the easiest to measure are #6: “TM projects don’t always get closed out” and #2: “Tasking manager transparency - project creators”.

Let’s start from #6 about non closed projects.

The one thing that HOT is not doing, they are not systematically setting a limit to the projects they host nor directly run: of the 3009 still active projects, 2848 (94%) does not have a due date. for the 587 projects that have been created this year 2021, 460 (78%) does not have a due date. it is a small improvement. limiting this to directly HOT owned projects, it’s a total of 315, of which 297 (94%) do not have a due date. This year it’s 111 projects directly owned by HOT, 94 (85%) of which without due date.

I’ll mention the two top outliers, which did set a due date goal for all their projects: osm-libya (37 projects) and unique-mappers-network-nigeria (5 projects).

Without a due date, it’s easy to let things slip through your fingers, so no surprise there’s still 2 open projects from 2012, 24 from 2013, 27 from 2014, and a total of 1378 unclosed projects published before 2020.

The other issue, #2 about project creators, in my opinion it has to do with local involvement, or lack thereof.

In Panama I observed that projects on the HOT TM server have always been started without first attempting to use the official channels nor to contact the top local mappers or peruse the channels most used by local mappers for informal communication. in 2021 HOT supported Rory Nealon from YouthMappersInternational create two projects (10318 and 10361) next to each other near Chitré, in the Azuero Peninsula. By the way, Rory is the other person who was involved in the identification of issues to address. Maybe I contributed to making the local Youth Mappers Chapter YMUP feel under pressure, and I’m glad to observe that these two projects have both achieved an exemplary percentage of mapped and validated. The validation process was ran remotely by four non local mappers, all of which accepting feedback I provided as comment to their changesets. An other step would be Evaluating the completed projects, maybe something for subsequent process improvement.

Charlie, a local mapper from Belize, even less “Latino” than myself, let’s say we possibly share some sort of “Hanseatic” point of view, after some chat about remote mappers, gave me the idea I could have a look at Belize. I found 8 open projects, 6 of which opened in 2020, all owned by SColchester from ‘hot’. Charlie had told me, and I could confirm his complaints, that these projects were attracting unchecked low quality edits to areas he and an other local mapper are slowly but carefully digitising. I contacted the project author SColchester, commenting on one of the projects, telling him of the local complaints, and he pointed me to two web pages (1 and 2) where I could follow their Organised Editing action. I find these pages overly generic, and they state that the campaign was already closed. still the 6 projects stand at an average validation of less than 15%, and contained among other beginners’ blunders: trees, trucks, and albedo patches mapped as buildings, and several repeated objects even within the same changeset. Things that happen, but things that should trigger feedback from the organisation to the mapper, preferably before the mapper disappears from OSM.

I corrected a few errors, and commented to the authors (all of them touch-and-go, one-day-butterflies), and I tried to do so in the most constructive way (1, 2, 3, 4). Still it’s my opinion that it should be the project owner providing this feedback and if they do not have the time that they should delegate someone to the task.

The difficulty in doing the above, it’s in the numbers:

organization	author	published projects
operation-fistula	Privatemajory	117
american-red-cross	edircksen	131
medecins-sans-frontieres-msf	Jorieke V	142
hot	SColchester	191
integration-consulting-group	felixhohl	483

After Belize, I thought I would have a look at whatever new projects were being opened in the area, and I found a staggering 21 new ‘hot’ projects, all owned by ‘SColchester’, in Guatemala. In the Telegram OSMLatam chat I asked if there were anybody from Guatemala who wanted to comment about it, and I got an answer from HOT voting-member ‘mapeadora’, who told me I should stop my witch hunt, that people from Guatemala are clearly involved, and that I should change subject. I did inquire whether and where this project was on the Wiki and she doesn’t know, because it hasn’t started yet, and that my attitude made things all more difficult. So I let go of the OSMLatam chat and go back to the statistics. There’s no ‘DRAFTS’ in Guatemala for 2021, only these 21 ‘PUBLISHED’ projects, part of the OpenCities LAC campaign, 99% mapped, 12% validated. And back to my question whether they are on the Wiki, no, they aren’t. I’m sure they are finely mapped, I didn’t check that, and to tell the truth, I lost interest in helping Guatemala.

Let’s hope the OpenCities LAC campaign will come out of the closet soon, at least before it triggers projects in my areas of concern.

And yes, I know very well, I’m not good at saying things in a pleasant way. I’m sorry, all I say is in good faith and with the goal to improve the process. I also assume or worse expect good faith in others.

the person writing this piece of diary is by now a middle aged man, in his 50s, still passionate about all that he does, or he simply won’t do it. for reasons which might be clear to a psychologist, but not to a mathematician like the person in question, he assumes the same passion and intellectual correctness in his colleagues, even in the face of proof to the contrary.

since 1989 he left his home town, never settled for longer than 8 years, now since October 2016 living in Panamá, speaking the language as any native latin speaker, that is with a decent linguistic awareness, and with an accent making him sound a mix of French, Colombian and obviously Southern Italian. but language is not the whole story, and regardless his “permanent resident” status, he doubts how not to feel as an alien here in Panamá.

I’ll now switch to writing in first person.

when it had become clear I would stay here for a longer spell, that was around the end of 2018, I looked for ways to collect people around the common OSM interest, I found the very sleepy Panama forum and I founded a Telegram group, and started monitoring new mappers coming to contribute to the map, inviting them to come to the group, and form a local community.

if I knew what is the nature of the trouble, I would face it and find a solution, but I’m very obviously not able to understand what motivates people. I’ve proposed activities on our Wiki, on Telegram, on IRC chats, on diary entries, but we never managed to start a common project, we never managed to discuss any of the difficulties we have here. last January a fellow mapper, at the time a member of the group I had gathered, organized a Zoom meeting (not a good choice in my opinion, because of my limited access to internet bandwidth) and they presented projects, there, in the meeting, not in the Wiki, and everybody exchanging so many thankful words to each other, but now we are 7 months later and nothing has happened, or at least not in public. what has happened is that the guys who made their presentation got out of the group I had gathered, and moved to a private area, where they stay in contact with each other, possibly with external institutions like Apple Data Team, Kaart, YouthMappers, ESRI, and HOT.

recently the founder of that new group complained that I’ve been asking questions, like: “did you exclude the rest of the community?”, or “do we have permission to copy from the National Geographic Institute?”, asking my questions to him in a public setting (after all, myself, and all who stays in contact with me has been invited to stay away from his group). he complains I asked, and he does not answer. I can’t say he refuses to answer, he simply ignores me, in the talk-latam mailing list(1, 2, 3), in the forum, in the Telegram Latam and general group, in the changeset comments.

when he published the answer he received from the IGNTG to his writing “por gestión de la comunidad OpenStreetMap Panamá”, I reminded him he should not suggest he represents me, and an other mapper has stressed there isn’t any “OSM Panama” community. I asked him to publish his letter, to no avail, and without receiving any support nor criticism.

people here simply ignore you.

it does feel rotten, hence the title of my post.

Every week we get an alert from the very dedicated OSMBC group, that a new issue is ready on the site. I’m in a country where internet connectivity is expensive, and slow, and unreliable, all at the same time, so I wish to avoid opening the web site with all of its javascript and css files, and only get the information without the site software.

I’ve not been able to make the above situation considered, or understood, but I could use one of the hints I received, namely to check the RSS feed for the newsletter. This feed contains one item per week, and the latest item is the one I want to receive in my mailbox. I first simply added the feed to my Android RSS client, but since every item contains links to pictures, refreshing the feed would again clog my slow limited connection.

What I did was to write a bash one-liner which will run every Sunday on a server hosted in Europe, to which I have access. The script grabs the RSS feed, extracts the first item, and sends it to me by email. Which is what I wanted, so I’m fine now.

Should anybody want to be included in the mail, I have no problem sending them any of the OSMWeekly translations. the only limitation is I can’t send email to google.com.

the script is more or less this:

wget -qO- "https://weeklyosm.eu/feed" | sed -n -e '1,/^\]\]><\/content:encoded>/p' | sed -n -e '/<content:encoded>/,/^\]\]/p' | sed -e 's/.*CDATA.//' -e 's/^\]\]><\/content:encoded>//' | grep -v '^<p class="wp-caption-text"><img loading="lazy" src=".*alt="lead picture"' | grep -v '<p><!-- place picture here --></p>' | mail -a "Content-Type: text/html" -s "OSM Weekly" email@example.com

Speaking of inclusion and participation, I do have an idea why nobody from rural Panama participates to OSM. Mind you, I’m not saying “almost nobody”, but “absolutely nobody” . . . the point is, as most Third World countries, Panama has a failing . . .

I hear voices calling to order, you say that calling Panama a “Third World country” is offensive? Oh, the very use of the concept? I should say “Developing Country”, right, nice, very politically correct. But calling it as you suggest, that’s not political correctness, it’s a lie, in my opinion it’s a lie needed when we don’t want to accept the fact, and to deal with it. So please let me insist:

. . . in this Third World economy, infrastructure suffers from low or absent public investment. We have here a long lasting rain season, from May to November, and in the rural area power fails generally a couple of days per week, may last a couple of hours, or more often until the next morning. In such condition, I still assumed I would be able to follow if not participate to the venueless SotM-2021, as I did last year from a hammock, on a 10 years old tablet, using solar power and a couple of batteries.

We are at this hotel, a beautiful place, in the middle of their own land recovery project, and because of the cloud cover their “high speed” link disappeared (one of the towers must have a power failure, not compensated by solar power), so we went to a different location within the recovery project, a higher located building where you put the phone on the roof, in a waterproof bag, and have “3.5G” from an antenna at 10km. With high humidity and low hanging clouds it may drop to 2.5G, “waiting for network” half of the time. This was less convenient than last year, mostly because I could not use my hammock.

One can listen to streaming audio in these conditions, it’s also quite possible to map, installing JOSM, let it download the aerial pictures while one has internet, work at the data, and wait for the next blessed moment to upload your changeset. But today it was not just mapping, it was the SotM, allegedly “venueless”.

During SotM-2020, organized by South Africa, an Emerging Country that still has some idea of the digital divide, they provided all sessions as streaming audio, using simple http. For SotM-2021, sessions are only behind https so if you have a very old tablet which you cannot update, you’re already excluded, or at least your tablet. On top of this, this year all talks only come in streaming video, so instead of paying about 70kbit/s as last year, we had to configure low speed video and settle with receiving no less than 900kbit/s, only to enjoy the view of a speaker sitting in front of his camera.

70kbit/s cost here $15 per month. 900kbit/s is very close to the highest speed I ever enjoyed in any rural setting here in Panamá, and supposing you are in an area where you do have this speed, it will consume a $3 packet in one hour, or if you buy a $5 packet meant to last a week, it will consume its shareable two gigabytes in 5 hours. Do consider that a teacher’s salary here is like $900 monthly.

So, you speak of participation, and digital divide, and inclusion, you can’t do this as you’re doing it now in SotM-2021, because you’re talking with each other, within a selected group, excluding the excluded.

“Everybody has 4G these days”. Yes, sure. Let me remind you of the obvious: if you implicitly require 4G to participate, all participants will confirm they have 4G.

why this page

I’ve found myself presenting my schema for scan/spam containment on Telegram to different people, writing more or less each time the same stuff. this page summarizes the policy I developed.

why a Telegram group?

it was the path of least resistance, I started simultaneously exploring the official Wiki pages, and the official forum for Panamá, and we missed a mailing list. after a fruitless attempt at creating one, I made a “temporary” Telegram group, which is still there while I don’t think a mailing list would be of any extra value, in particular considering the activity on the talk-latam mailing list, kept alive by the weekly link to the newsletter.

where do I use this?

the Comunidad OSM Panamá and the OpenStreetMapOffTopic are the two groups I manage thanks to a @MissRose_bot administrator, with similar settings.

what is the user experience?

a new user is offered a text telling them what is the group, where they need to click on a button within a short period of time, and inviting them to provide a short message for the people already in the group. in my experience, scammers tend to join several groups at the same time, and will not care to read this invitation, so they can be kicked from the group before they come back to it.

welcome text will disappear after they have been acknowledged by the new user, or when the new user is kicked from the group. the idea is not to clutter the group with technical messages. the bot will also delete all joining and leaving notifications, which I also consider cluttering.

join and leave notifications will be logged to a parallel channel, meant for administrators or for anybody wondering about how much work it is, to administer a Telegram group.

any administrative action like banning users will be taken in a parallel group, only meant to receive commands to the bot, again reducing clutter in the group.

what tasks for the administrator?

not much.
- when a person sends an undesired PM to a group member, the group member will ask the admin to remove the person. that will happen from time to time.
- when a person does click on the “got-it” button, but obviously did not get the idea, they should be removed as well, possibly after a short PM interaction.

how to remove a person? enter the parallel “ban” group and issue an /fban message, using the id logged in the log channel.

what are the settings?

Captcha

/captcha on
/captchamode button
/captcharules yes
/captchatime 2m
/captchakick yes
/setcaptchatext Got it!

goodbye & service

/cleanservice on
/goodbye off

welcome & rules

/setrules Assume and practice good faith, that should be enough. A few hints: use PM sparingly; English is customary, not mandatory; try to be nice to each other.
/setwelcome Welcome {username} to this informal unofficial OSM lounge. Talk about anything you want, join the current subject, or start a new one.
This is an automatic welcome message, however humans in this group will appreciate if you would introduce yourself. {rules}
/welcome on
/cleanwelcome on

la versión española?

/setcaptchatext Listo
/setrules Asuma y practique buena fe, no hay más reglas, y trate de ser amable el uno con el otro.
/setwelcome Hola {username}, gracias por unirte al grupo {chatname}. Como medida anti-spam, por favor contesta a este mensaje con tu nombre de usuario OSM. — Yes, we speak English! Please do reply to this message with your OSM username, it's a simple anti-spam measure.
Buen Mapeo, y ¡aquí está tu nuevo grupo!

Andy Townsend wrote to me “we’d ask you to step back from your self-appointed role as “OSM gatekeeper” in Panama”

now, I have no idea how to stop caring for quality.

only option I see is to stop even looking at what is being added to the database.

someone please shows some support in public, or as said I am short of options.

https://forum.openstreetmap.org/viewtopic.php?id=72158

une révision des éditions autour du carrefour Node: 6866858324.

c’est quoi, ce texte?

il s’agit de R.Q. qui je ne connais pas, qui à travers de la plateforme anonymisant Telegram m’a demandé mon avis autour de la zone du carrefour là. Le but n’est pas seul de améliorer les éditions indiquées, mais d’aider d’autres cartographes de la même zone.

quelles characteristiques a la zone la ?

la zone est rurale, avec construction récente, les bâtiments groupé et la terre agricole comprend des vergers.

les maisons ont une cour intérieur ou arrière, peut être un espace pour les animaux.

la photo Maxar est plus à jour que la photo Bing, mais la qualité Bing est superieure.

il y avait des routes, tracées par AI/Apple, basées peut être sur Maxar.

comment commencer ?

Tout d’abord, il faut aligner les deux sources, je vais le faire en dessinant un objet arbitraire, qui repose à plat sur le sol, bien visible sur le deux photos.

Faisant confiance au choix d’Apple pour Maxar, j’aligne Bing sur Maxar, c’est a dire je dessine l’objet sur Maxar puis je déplace Bing.

Ensuite, je sélectionne tous les points pas alignées avec les rues, (en JOSM: Ctrl-f, puis la sélection type:node user:XXXYYY), et les déplace pour qu’ils correspondent à la position des objets dans les deux images. Ça me solutionne presque tous les conflits entre rues et bâtiments.

qu’est ce que c’est notre tâche ?

À mon avis, l’extension des bâtiments a été systématiquement surestimé, la tâche est donc de répéter la sélection de l’un d’entre eux et de le réduire. nous pouvons le faire avec JOSM «Améliorer le mode de précision» (w).

là où les bâtiments partagent un nœud, je sépare le nœud de l’un des bâtiments, en sélectionnant bâtiment (clic) et nœud (Ctrl-clic) et en appuyant sur Alt-j.

comment le faire, ça ?

c’est après tout un travail simple et répétitif: cliquez sur un contour de bâtiment, déplacez chaque point vers le coin visible le plus proche, si nécessaire utilisez Ctrl pour ajouter un nœud, ou Alt pour en supprimer un. une fois satisfait, si le bâtiment semble suffisamment carré, appuyez sur q, puis sur ESC pour le désélectionner et continuez avec le bâtiment suivant.

bâtiments avec une cour intérieure, corrigez d’abord le contour, puis activez les buildings_tools en appuyant sur b, créez un nouveau petit bâtiment près de la cour, puis w pour corriger la forme et la taille, puis s pour changer l’outil en “selection”, sélectionnez la cour et le périmètre, et créez une relation de construction avec Ctrl-b.

il-y-a des conseils particuliers ?

Je travaille avec trois couches: 1 contient Maxar, 2 Bing, 3 est la couche de données. J’utilise Alt-2 pour basculer la couche deux, afin que Maxar devienne visible. Parfois il peut être utile d’utiliser Alt-3 pour basculer la couche de données et voir plus clairement les images aériennes. Remarquez comment les outils w et b fonctionnent également lorsque la couche de données n’est pas visible.

Le zoom que j’ai utilisé la plupart du temps, c’était à l’échelle de 10m.

Si j’ai l’intention d’aligner un côté de la cour intérieure sur un mur extérieur, je sélectionne les deux extrêmes du mur avant d’activer l’outil b. Ceci la est plus facile si le périmètre externe est carré, car je peux sélectionner le périmètre dans ce cas.

Pour les bâtiments qui semblent composés de plusieurs corps, je dessine ceux-ci, en les laissant se chevaucher, mais en essayant de réduire le nombre de nœuds qui résulteront de l’union. Puis je sélectionne les corps que je viens de créer, et je les joins avec Shift-j, puis Shift-y pour simplifier le périmètre. Si le résultat de la simplification n’est pas comme prévu, Ctrl-z et simplifier à la main.

Si le nouveau bâtiment chevauche toujours un bâtiment existant, je résous le conflit manuellement, en créant de nouveaux nœuds à l’intersection (cliquez sur les deux lignes), en fusionnant des nœuds (cliquez sur la position que je ne veux pas conserver, puis ctrl- cliquez sur la position à conserver, puis m pour “fusionner”), ou en déplaçant un nœud près d’une ligne (sélectionnez la ligne et le nœud, dézoomez un peu si nécessaire, puis n pour “près”).

Certains détails ne sont visibles que sur Bing, qui a une résolution bien meilleure, mais j’utilise toujours Maxar pour vérifier que l’objet existe toujours. Si un objet n’est visible que sur Maxar, tant pis. Mais s’il est visible sur les deux, j’utiliserai toujours Maxar pour valider et Bing pour dessiner.

YMUP

In Panamá there’s a YouthMappers chapter, at the Universidad de Panamá. This YMUP Chapter started quite late working at its visibility here on OSM, so their first activities went mostly unnoticed. They do produce quite a bit of action and boast a remarkable access to various types of resources.

My goal in this diary page is to document the groups initial organized activities, and I’m writing in English because I hope this will help reach a wider public.

who’s who

Member composition is dynamic, but a few members are sort of “resident”, definitely the two mentors María Adames de Newbill and Humberto Smith, professors at the University of Panamá. The support by Esri is also a constant, through Manuel Quintero and Jean Felix Guevara. fanny16 is possibly also part of the Chapter through Esri, I don’t know. Two other mappers closely tied to the YMUP are Karen Martínez and Martitza Rodríguez, who have been president of the chapter respectively from October 2018 to October 2019 and from October 2019 to October 2020, confirmed for one more year.

Further membership can only be inferred based on early participation to the mapathons and HOT projects. Given the logs, few of their mappers participated to mapathons in more than one calendar year. As of January 2021, according to their mentor, it’s 12 people in the group. Here an incomplete and possibly incorrect list: fanny16, Marianne_pty, Tinago, Yarilpa, Nwalachosky18, Brenda Soto, Mafe96, Angel Ortega…

blog entries

The YouthMappers International web portal has a blog link, and I’ve collected the entries related to YMUP:

• camino de esperiencias
• Gis Day 2019
• smart campus

the projects

It’s mostly buildings that they map, and I’m focusing on that only.

2018 - Chiriquí

This was project 4917 on HOT, and this is JOSM with the buildings edited 2018-07-01/2018-07-31:

2018 - GisDay at Nombre de Dios

GisDay is the yearly event by Esri, and YouthMappers obviously participates. In 2018 this was in minor tone, with the new mappers Milenaelizabethma, Daigeo, Génesis Yaiguili, Lati12, Maitée Oda, Melania30 and Karen Martínez as instructor. They chose a very easy place for initial mappers, a small, naturally delimited flat area, with buildings clearly delineated.

On the 13th of November they mapped 12 buildings, plus other ~30 by Karen a few days later. In my opinion what they have been missing here was GPS traces, which would have allowed them to align aerial photography more uniformly.

2019 - Guna Nega

This was some sort of emergency mapping, too bad there isn’t any HOT project associated to it, and too bad we can only read their declaration of intents in some of the changeset comments:

Los ríos cercanos a la comunidad de Kuna Nega estan totalmente contaminado sus aguas no son aptas para el consumo pero la comunidad se arriesga debido a que no cuenta con agua potable. #YMUP #YouthMappers #JovenesMapeadoresUP

A first exploration of this area was executed in the days 2019-03-20/26 by Esri associate Jean Felix Guevara and by fanny16. They focused on a central area of the settlement:

This activity took place while Esri was backing the YMUP Chapter, asking for help from the community, as you can read in this meeting report.

The main activity took place in the timeframe 2019-10-01/11-23, with 5 mapathons: 14th, 17th, 22nd and 25th of October, then the final peak the 13th of November:

Without a tasking manager, they could not avoid some obvious mistakes (up to three buildings on top of each other, and the inexperienced mappers produced an amount of questionable geometries). I pointed them at the issue, but after the final mapathon the group did not manage to come back to the area, so I edited them myself 6 weeks later:

Since I only merged the stacked buildings, a few absurd geometries resulted, something which triggered this YMUP review, 27th July 2020:

I hope someone will review this area, because the activity got interrupted, and in the meanwhile Maxar has updated their coverage for the area, telling us of a considerable expansion of the built up area (for license reasons: no Maxar screenshot here).

It’s a challenging area, not as flat as Nombre de Dios, more buildings hidden under the canopy, and more irregular shapes, orientation, sizes.

2020 - Distrito de Mariato

In the days around the 12th of October 2020 there was this activity, with very homogeneous changeset comments, mostly buildings.

2020 - Eta

In reaction to the heavier-than-usual rainfall associated to Hurricane Eta, the YMUP has focused each of their members in different impacted areas, all in the Chiriquí Province:

The Mariato District was also impacted by overflowing rivers.

2020 - San Miguelito

this is HOT project 9844, and this attracted a record amount of mappers to Panama, around 80, while our previous daily record was below 15.

after the GisDay, we obviously needed to review the edits, which were mostly by beginners, as stated in the HOT project.

This is an ongoing project, and some of the YMUP mappers have expanded the area of activity outside the 9844 limits, which might make review more challenging. The review itself is being performed mostly by amymack, a fairly new OSM mapper, who’s quickly reached the “experienced” level on HOT. User shows no affiliation on profile page, has received invitations to join the local community, let’s see how it goes. I’ve been in contact with amymack through changeset comments, in my opinion pleasant and fruitful.

(work in progress)

“cosas que pasan”

he escrito estas notas pensando en las cosas que pasan, cuando un mapero principiante se encuentra con unas fotos aéreas y no tiene la preparación o el apoyo para interpretarla correctamente. los ejemplos que siguen son reales, y las soluciones son lo que haría yo. todo está basado en JOSM. espero que les sirva, o que me dejen algún comentario.

a veces es muy sencillo

hay áreas con edificaciones recientes, donde las calles son ortogonales, las casas todas paralelas a las calles, los árboles están poco desarrollados o quedan lejos de las casas, y todo es bien visible, como en Villa Belén al sur de Santiago de Veraguas, en Panamá:

pero las casas no son todas iguales, así que seguramente es más rápido dibuarlas una por una. sólo debes seleccionar dos puntos en la calles con que alinearse, activar el plugin “buildings_toos”, dibujar los elementos rectángulares, y unificarlos.

sin embargo, puede pasar, y pasa, que se te olvide de seleccionar los puntos de referencia, y las casas te salen rectangulares, pero no paralelas.

muy simple, seleccionas tus edificios, los dos puntos con que alinearlos, oprimes la tecla q y listo. con un centenar de edificios podrá tardar un par de segundos.

ya editaron en esta zona

una dificultad, más psicológica que nada, de muchos principiantes: no atreverse a borrar los errores ajenos, y terminar por crear edificios correctos encima de los errores. JOSM debería avisarte antes de permitirte subir los datos. “overlapping buildings”:

revisa con tus asesores, revisa si hay información en los edificios ya presentes, pues sí es cierto que no hay que borrar información válida. pero igual si no lo sabes hacer, no lo hagas, y no dibujes nada encima. quizás marca los objetos existentes con una etiqueta fixme, algo como “este edificio no esiste en esta forma”, y lo dejas para tus asesores, tus compañeros más expertos, o para el próximo mapero.

dibujar un edificio en cima de otro no es una buena práctica, evítalo.

ángulos rectos y casas paralelas

A veces las fotos aéreas no tienen buena definición, y uno termina por dibujar mal por estar malas las fotos.

here you have to realize and firmly believe that the buildings are square and the imagery is misleading you. if you do choose to map at all, try to draw 90° angles, and reasonably sized buildings. or be prepared to see your edits reverted, or commented upon, or both.

es un techo con manchas, o son casas pequeñas?

las casas “crecen”, y los techos viejos se pueden volver a utilizar, así que una casa con techo en zinc, de 20 años, podría tener no menos que 5 colores diferentes en el techo. sin embargo, sigue siendo una casa.

hay árboles

cómo alinear?

El mapero principiante, en su inocencia y confianza en la información recibida, abre un sector y empieza a mapear lo que ve. Todo está donde está, no es cierto?

Bueno, no, no es cierto, por lo general la cosa está un poco más complicada. Las fotos que recibimos de Bing y Maxar son fotos aéreas, no satelitales, y por consecuente no fueron tomadas en dirección perfectamente vertical sino desde un ángulo, y reconstruir el plano es difícil, si quieres precisión absoluta. Las fotos Bing y Maxar no pretenden ser de calidad militar, y tienen errores de varios metros, tanto de desplazamiento como de deformación, y por esto que siempre habrá quien te sugiere de grabar trazas gps y de subirlas al servidor OSM.

Sin trazas GPS, sin nada de referencia sino las fotos aéreas, lo único que puedes hacer es decidir en cuál foto confiar, y alinear la otra con la que escogiste.

Sin trazas GPS pero con objetos ya mapeados, intenta alinear las fotos con los objetos, por cuanto posible.

Si al alinear las fotos te enteras de que los maperos anteriores siguieron dos alineamientos diferentes, ay, no sé. Lo correcto sería de informar a los maperos anteriores, comentando en los conjuntos de cambios, y escribir algo en los grupos locales para informar del problema. De todas maneras habrá que alinear a una foto aérea, sin romper nada. Creo que sólo mapeando con JOSM es prudente proceder.

En las laderas de las montañas, reconstruir un mapa plano de unas fotos aéreas tomadas no verticalmente no dará resultados perfectos, y el error depende del punto de vista al tomar la foto. Consecuencia? No sólo un desplazamiento, sino también una diferente deformación. Mejor esperar de tener un par de trazas GPS, eso es.

This is a review of a IRC meeting with the local Panamanian YouthMappers chapter at the Universidad de Panamá (YM-UP), where I have been trying to represent the interests of the OSM mapping community, with a specific focus on the quality of data in Panama.

The meeting was suggested by me, since I considered necessary to reach some understanding with the YM-UP chapter, and the date called by professor María Adames de Newbill, who, together with Prof. Humberto Smith, is formally an external support of the chapter. I had suggested using IRC, while the chapter and the university both use Zoom and meet in audio and video. My limited internet allowance in combination with the high local fees do not allow for that, but I also wanted to keep a log of the meeting, and review it with more time.

The meeting was on September 17th, more than two weeks have gone by, and as it seems, the meeting hasn’t served the purpose of establishing a stable communication. My other intention was to understand the dynamics of the chapter, and here is what I observed. The reader is invited to form their own idea, and comments will be welcome.

Youthmappers International, in the person of its director Patricia Solís says

[09:39]  DrPatriciaSolis: please encourage and support them - they are the future of OSM 
[09:39]  DrPatriciaSolis: I believe in these young people so much .... 
[09:39]  DrPatriciaSolis: we need to stay positive and encouraging 
[09:39]  DrPatriciaSolis: and help them not only technically but gain experience and leadership

I’ve never even been able to get a list of chapter members. I have commented on several changesets, and never got a reply (not even a “what do you mean by that?”), nor seen the comments processed and the mapping mistakes addressed.

Previously, that’s less than one month before, I had contacted the current chapter president, and exposed her my interpretation, which she confirmed: the chapter is part of a university curriculum, students are requested to join OSM, become part of the chapter, and will leave the chapter when done with that specific part of their education. The only stable part of the chapter is the teachers who, more than assisting the “leaders of the future” (as YMI puts it), give assignments and expect results, totally unrelated to any OSM logic.

My comments had been seen, and discussed internally, like “who’s this Mario Frasca and what should we do with this?”. After all, they were editing within an assignment, why should the assignment take more time after it’s completed? Nevertheless, the current chapter president contacted me, and I was able to understand more of what was going on.

From the chat log, you can see not only this, but also the underlying hierarchy: students, that’s chapter members, have been kept out of the meeting, which was called during lesson time. Chapter president structurally patronized by her supporting professor. Obviously does a professor take decisions and will implement them without consulting with students, but less obviously so if we’re describing a mentor to a group of “future leaders”. I’m sure you can see who’s boss from the chat log, and I’m afraid you will also notice that both YMI and the university professors behave as if they lacked any familiarity with the OSM data knowledge content, their organization, and I would even say the very existence thereof.

Closing the meeting, prof. Adames states “le agradecemos que cuando tenga alguna observación que realizar lo haga con copia a los asesores” (we thank you in advance that when you have any observation (to chapter members), you do so adding us mentors in carbon copy), which is obviously impossible, since my observations will reach the editors as comments to their changesets.

I had suggested we used our OSM usernames in the chat, so you will recognize MZeballos, Maritza20r, Karen Martinez, and myself. I still do not know who’s María Adames de Newbill within OSM, nor whether she and her colleague Humberto Smith have an account at all.

#osm-pa @ irc.oftc.net, 2020-09-17

[08:50]  * OSM has joined
[08:51]  * OSM_ has joined
[08:51]  * OSM_ has disconnected (Remote host closed the connection)
[08:57]  * maritza20r has joined
[08:58]  maritza20r: Buenos Días a todos.
[09:00]  * MZeballos has joined
[09:04]  mariotomo: Buenos días a todos y bienvenidos (o/a) :-)
[09:05]  mariotomo: Hola Maritza. sabes cuántos van a estar?
[09:05]  MZeballos: Buenos dias
[09:09]  mariotomo: este medio, IRC, y este servidor, es el mismo que utilizamos durante la SotM virtual de Sudáfrica.  no tiene logging público automático, así que cada quien que quiera puede guardar la conversación.
[09:10]  maritza20r: Hola,  podría ser menos de 6  personas.
[09:11]  mariotomo: tengo la curiosidad de conocerlos, a los asociados al capítulo.
[09:11]  OSM: Buenos días a todos.
[09:11]  * Karen_Martinez has joined
[09:12]  OSM: Sr. Frasca hemos invitado a todos los integrantes de YouthMappers que puedan participar. 
[09:12]  mariotomo: hola 'OSM', es la profesora?  puede cambiar el 'nick' en su cuenta osm? 
[09:12]  * OSM__ has joined
[09:12]  OSM: Eso implica que vamos a tener varias personas tratando de escribir .
[09:13]  OSM: Si soy la Prof Maria Adames deNewbill. Es un placer.
[09:13]  OSM__: Buenos dias
[09:14]  mariotomo: tiene cuenta OSM, cierto?  algo como /nick maria-adames
[09:14]  OSM__: Soy el Prof. Humberto Smith
[09:14]  maritza20r: Gracias Mario, si nuestros asesores nos invitaron. 
[09:14]  mariotomo: hola 'OSM__', igual misma sugerencia.  :-)
[09:14]  OSM: Que bueno que tenga usted curiosidad de conocernos pero sería mucho más factible si lo hiceramos desde una plataforma donde pudiesemos vernos. 
[09:15]  mariotomo: me encuentro en zora rural, no tengo banda suficiente para video.
[09:15]  mariotomo: en realidad, también la comunicación audio no llega bien.
[09:16]  MZeballos: Buenas, y si organizamos una llamada por zoom pero sin video? 
[09:16]  mariotomo: buenos días prof. Smith.
[09:16]  OSM: Me parece bien. 
[09:16]  mariotomo: yo no tengo zoom
[09:16]  mariotomo: ni el programa, ni la cuenta.
[09:17]  MZeballos: no hay problema, al invitarlo es solo hacer click al enlace, no tiene que bajar la plataforma
[09:17]  mariotomo: Hola Karen, gusto volverte a ver.
[09:17]  OSM: Si es mucho más sencillo para todos
[09:18]  mariotomo: pues, no sé, reúnanse por zoom y me cuentan.
[09:19]  OSM: Sr. Frasca usted solicitó la reunión por eso estamos aqui.
[09:19]  Karen_Martinez: Hola buen dìa tenia unas complicaciones pero logre solucionar, Si zoom me parece buena opciòn.
[09:19]  mariotomo: me gustaría entender mejor la función, si tienen los clásicos 'statement'
[09:19]  mariotomo: śtatement' de misión y visión del capítulo YM-UP
[09:20]  MZeballos: Sr. Frasca, el correo de la Dra Patricia Solis incluye un link a nuestro statement e incluso un link a la pagina de OSM wiki de YouthMappers
[09:20]  MZeballos: si tiene alguna duda en particular porfavor diganos
[09:21]  mariotomo: sí es correcto, pero es el statement de YMI, no tanto del capítulo.
[09:21]  mariotomo: sí tengo dudas ...
[09:21]  MZeballos: es el statement de todos los capitulos que son parte de YouthMappers
[09:21]  mariotomo: mira, y me disculpan si me exprimo de manera 'europea' ...
[09:22]  mariotomo: entre el aspecto académico
[09:22]  mariotomo: y el aspecto pedagógico
[09:23]  mariotomo: supongo que los profesores enofquen en lo académico, y YMI en lo pedagógico.
[09:23]  * DrPatriciaSolis has joined
[09:23]  mariotomo: me corrigen
[09:24]  DrPatriciaSolis: Hola todos - les habla Dra Patricia Solis
[09:24]  mariotomo: Hola Patricia Solis, estoy preguntando sobre los aspectos académico y pedagógico que respectivamente los profesores asesores y YMI supongo reconozcan al capítulo.
[09:24]  DrPatriciaSolis: What academic credentials do you have?
[09:25]  mariotomo: I'm MSc, computer science, from Italy, but according to the Dutch academis system I'm a mathematician.
[09:25]  OSM: No Sr. Frasca el capitulo YouthMappersUP es integral como una organización que busca contribuir a que todos participen. Tenemos nuestros estatutos que fueron concensuados y hemos sido reconocidos por la Vicerrectoría de Asuntos estudiantilles de la Uniersidad de Panama
[09:26]  DrPatriciaSolis: why are asking about the academic aspects then?
[09:26]  DrPatriciaSolis: I thought this discussion was so you could offer your experience and advice and support for learning all about openstreetmap
[09:26]  DrPatriciaSolis: as a mentor
[09:27]  mariotomo: because as far as I understand your front page statements, your chapters aim at stimulating growth of chapter members.
[09:27]  mariotomo: it's funny that when I comment to a changeset with hints on how to make it better, nobody responds.
[09:27]  DrPatriciaSolis: we build maps and we build mappers. yes
[09:28]  DrPatriciaSolis: what response are you looking for?
[09:28]  mariotomo: later on, really very much later on, I understand from Maritza that  the comments were received correctly, but not reacted upon.  and as far as I understand it was so because they were unexpected.
[09:29]  DrPatriciaSolis: I also make hints to users on how to improve and while I don't always get a specfic reply, I don't assume that it means the person doesn't understand or take them to heart
[09:29]  DrPatriciaSolis: thank you for the hints!
[09:29]  mariotomo: 'build mappers', that's precisely my understanding of the front page of your web site, and I'm very interested at supporting you
[09:29]  DrPatriciaSolis: great!
[09:30]  DrPatriciaSolis: let's do this in the most positive way possible
[09:30]  DrPatriciaSolis: I think this chat for example is not the best way
[09:30]  DrPatriciaSolis: we can use many other types of communication that are much better for teaching and learning
[09:30]  mariotomo: well, you see, it was an area with lots of superposed objects, and I cleaned it up after several months of wait.
[09:30]  DrPatriciaSolis: great! thank you for helping with the validation of edits. We also have a validation team and do the same
[09:30]  mariotomo: I find myself in rural Panamá, with limited bandwith.
[09:31]  OSM: Although Maritza is the President of Youth Mappers UP her obligation is tell every one everything that has to do with the chapter. That has not happened because we only knew of your exitences on August 20 of lthis year
[09:31]  DrPatriciaSolis: that is after all what a "wiki" style ethic is about
[09:31]  DrPatriciaSolis: helping each other improve the map 
[09:31]  DrPatriciaSolis: where in Panama?
[09:31]  DrPatriciaSolis: I know panama well
[09:31]  DrPatriciaSolis: I lived there for about 9 years
[09:31]  DrPatriciaSolis: my husband is panamanian
[09:31]  mariotomo: Coclé, north of Penonomé, on the way to Toabré.
[09:31]  DrPatriciaSolis: I know that area well!
[09:32]  DrPatriciaSolis: I'm surprised you don't have acces
[09:32]  mariotomo: all area that I mapped personally, just check the history.
[09:32]  DrPatriciaSolis: Panama is pretty well connected afterall
[09:32]  MZeballos: I am also surprised
[09:32]  OSM: Another thing that it has to do with ethics how are your finding out information that we discussed in the youthmappers chat and then you mentioned? That should not happen.
[09:32]  DrPatriciaSolis: good for you!
[09:32]  DrPatriciaSolis: what shouldn't happen?
[09:33]  mariotomo: I don't know, I'm reading it now.
[09:33]  DrPatriciaSolis: que?
[09:33]  DrPatriciaSolis: this chatting is really not optimal communication
[09:33]  DrPatriciaSolis: there's so much room for misunderstanding or misreading and cross communication
[09:34]  DrPatriciaSolis: why don't we zoom?
[09:34]  DrPatriciaSolis: what are you reading now?
[09:34]  DrPatriciaSolis: what do you mean?
[09:34]  mariotomo: I'm so sorry about that.  I never used zoom, I think I evaluated it some time ago and have not liked it.
[09:34]  OSM: Yes it is better 
[09:35]  DrPatriciaSolis: well yes, I try to use whatever our students most use so that I can better reach and engage with them and support them
[09:35]  DrPatriciaSolis: sometimes it's also whatsapp 
[09:35]  DrPatriciaSolis: young people have many channels they use 
[09:35]  OSM: Everybody uses zoom now. We all learned with this pandemia and it will be fair for the students who I am sure cannot follow what it is happening because the way we are communiticating
[09:35]  DrPatriciaSolis: it's good to go where they are to reach them
[09:35]  mariotomo: where are the students, members of the chapter?
[09:35]  DrPatriciaSolis: yes - I'm on zoom all day some days!!! 
[09:36]  DrPatriciaSolis: I suppose most of them are stil in panama city even with the quarantine
[09:36]  mariotomo: I'm not sure I understand 'OSM'´s comment regarding ethics.
[09:37]  DrPatriciaSolis: okay, again what is the point of this chat meeting?
[09:37]  DrPatriciaSolis: can I help in any way?
[09:37]  maritza20r: Profesora Maria en Agosto de este año fue mi primer contacto escrito con el Señor Mario . Siempre cumplo mis obligaciones en contarles a todos todo lo que tiene que ver con el capítulo.
[09:37]  OSM: Some of them are here. Karen and Maritza
[09:37]  DrPatriciaSolis: Hi Karen!!!!!! 
[09:37]  Karen_Martinez: Hola yo soy miembro del capitulo, algunos de nuestros compañeros estan en clases a esta hora.
[09:37]  DrPatriciaSolis: HOLA MARITZA!!!! :)
[09:37]  DrPatriciaSolis: que gusto verles
[09:37]  mariotomo: DrPatriciaSolis, I'm sorry, I didn't make myself clear.  I mean where are they digitally.
[09:37]  DrPatriciaSolis: oh, no "ver" les!!! ha ha 
[09:38]  DrPatriciaSolis: sort of
[09:38]  maritza20r: Hola Patricia :)
[09:38]  DrPatriciaSolis: I don't know what you mean where are they digitally?
[09:38]  DrPatriciaSolis: what does that mean?
[09:38]  mariotomo: not in this chat
[09:38]  mariotomo: but Karen answered
[09:38]  DrPatriciaSolis: again, what are you trying to accomplish?
[09:38]  mariotomo: what's the goal
[09:38]  DrPatriciaSolis: I left a meeting this morning so I could join you 
[09:38]  mariotomo: establishing communication
[09:39]  DrPatriciaSolis: I thought you wanted to help the students. 
[09:39]  mariotomo: I did not know you would be here, sorry to bother you.
[09:39]  DrPatriciaSolis: please encourage and support them - they are the future of OSM 
[09:39]  DrPatriciaSolis: I believe in these young people so much .... 
[09:39]  mariotomo: they do not reply
[09:39]  mariotomo: that's the problem
[09:39]  DrPatriciaSolis: we need to stay positive and encouraging 
[09:39]  OSM: Si Maritza le estaba comentando al Sr. Frasca que usted ha tenido contacto desde hace un tiempo atrás con él por un proyecto que usted le está cooperando en forma personal. A lo que me refiero es que nosotros no conociamos de las dudas del Sr. Frasca hasta agosto 20
[09:39]  mariotomo: the group uses a Telegram chat.
[09:39]  DrPatriciaSolis: and help them not only technically but gain experience and leadership
[09:39]  DrPatriciaSolis: and be great role models
[09:40]  mariotomo: Karen was briefly in the group/chat, and she left, then removed her Telegram account, I was thereafter unable to contact her.
[09:40]  DrPatriciaSolis: from my many years teaching and mentoring I've learned that it requires alot of patience! and support
[09:40]  maritza20r: Así es Patricia yo cre
[09:40]  OSM: I invited Dr. Solis
[09:40]  maritza20r: creo que mario puede ayudarnos 
[09:40]  DrPatriciaSolis: I hope so ... and I hope this can be a very positive experience 
[09:40]  mariotomo: we also have a more official room for Panama, we don't use it much.
[09:40]  Karen_Martinez: Estuve en el chat de grupo para informarme sobre tips para mapear pero debido al espacio en mi celular tuve que desintalar
[09:41]  mariotomo: we have a wiki, but if you ever revise the history, you will see it's only foreigners writing there.
[09:41]  DrPatriciaSolis: probably it's not used much because it's not that easy to use
[09:41]  OSM: Sr. Frasca los chicos han estado haciendo una gran labor desde el 2016
[09:41]  DrPatriciaSolis: yes, that's you and me mario! we're the only foreigners here today i think!
[09:41]  DrPatriciaSolis: I'm like you - adopted panama as my second country (at least I assume that since your'e from italy)
[09:42]  mariotomo: in the wiki, there's 80% me writing, that's not my goal.
[09:42]  DrPatriciaSolis: I think youthmappers has a fabulous potential to help change that
[09:42]  OSM: Ellos han participado en congresos internacionales, han apoyado a otros youthmapper, estan tratando de fortalecer las redes de yothmappers enel interiior con el apouo e los asesores
[09:42]  DrPatriciaSolis: and get panamanians involved - starting when they are in university and learning they take that into their work later on and life later
[09:42]  DrPatriciaSolis: si - son fabulosos las panamenas!!!
[09:42]  mariotomo: I mam fron Naples, but also associate myself wiht Holland, and Colombia, and Morocco.
[09:42]  OSM: Han ganado premios internacionales participando en muchas actividadees. 
[09:42]  DrPatriciaSolis: es bonito que la conexion entre los estudiantes que la red puede dar
[09:43]  DrPatriciaSolis: y apoyo y oportunidad de sentir parte del gran proyecto oms
[09:43]  DrPatriciaSolis: osm
[09:43]  OSM: Si reconocemos que hay mucho por aprender tanto los estudiatnes como los profesores.
[09:43]  DrPatriciaSolis: si - es cierto! felicidades a ustedes!
[09:43]  OSM: Creemos en este proyecto y por eso estamos aqui
[09:43]  DrPatriciaSolis: yay!!!!
[09:43]  OSM: Estamos muy orgullosos de los lque ellos han podido obtener
[09:44]  Karen_Martinez: gracias!! estamos haciendo lo posible por seguir adelante y seguir aprendiendo y mejorar.
[09:44]  mariotomo: each monday I have a small script based on neis-one, that gives me the list of panamanian edits by new users
[09:44]  mariotomo: I invite them systematically to get in contact
[09:44]  OSM: Cuando iniciaron muchos no conocía programas, ni las experiencias que han tenido gracias al apoyo de YOuthMapper internacional y el esfuerozo de todos.
[09:45]  mariotomo: es muy bueno ser orgulloso de los succesos
[09:45]  DrPatriciaSolis: yes, good to invite them - let's remember that this is all volunteer too 
[09:45]  DrPatriciaSolis: they have jobs and classes and many do this as service to their society
[09:45]  mariotomo: también sirve aprender de los errores.
[09:45]  DrPatriciaSolis: exato
[09:45]  maritza20r: Le comunique a mario que como mapeadores deseamos mejorar nuestras ediciones en OSM y si el pudiera ayudarnos en esa parte. su respuesta fue positiva. 
[09:45]  DrPatriciaSolis: exacto 
[09:45]  mariotomo: that's why I comment on changesets.
[09:45]  OSM: Si usted desea realmente apoyar al grupo como esperamos que asi sea, entonce colabore con nosotros dando entrenamiento, parte de sus horas de voluntariado como han hecho muchos profeesionales que desingerasamente lo hane hec ho y por eso nos }
[09:45]  mariotomo: but after 4 months no reaction, I edit myself.
[09:45]  DrPatriciaSolis: yes, but when you don't get 1:1 reply don't fret
[09:46]  DrPatriciaSolis: that's just part of the process
[09:46]  DrPatriciaSolis: it happens to me all the time
[09:46]  DrPatriciaSolis: they are still learning
[09:46]  DrPatriciaSolis: let's stay positive
[09:46]  mariotomo: let's not stay too positive
[09:46]  OSM: sentimos orgullos de decir hoy que ademas de mapear estos chicos van a ser grandes profesionales no solo para este país sino para la comunidad internacional y prueba de ello ese Karen
[09:46]  DrPatriciaSolis: we also just relaunched our validation team - they are other students who are systematically going throuugh all of the edits we can find 
[09:46]  mariotomo: or we miss the chance to learn from mistakes.
[09:46]  DrPatriciaSolis: but OSM is a big place!!
[09:46]  OSM: Si 
[09:47]  mariotomo: there is so much to do in OSM-Panamá, really a huge lot.
[09:47]  DrPatriciaSolis: mario, don't fret if you don't get an instant reply or get one reply for each changeset- it doestn' mean that people aren't listening or don't appreciate it
[09:47]  mariotomo: in the wiki there's ideas of projects, of systematic mistakes, of needs ...
[09:47]  DrPatriciaSolis: I agree - I think together we can really make a big impact
[09:48]  mariotomo: I don't 'fret' during 4 months.
[09:48]  maritza20r: : )
[09:48]  DrPatriciaSolis: we need to think of how to do that - count with my support as much as I can do
[09:48]  MZeballos: we are in the middle of a global pandemic
[09:48]  DrPatriciaSolis: don't get fixated on 4 months either please - it's been done and that's the great thing
[09:48]  mariotomo: but it's funny that you review my edits and say it's perfect what the chapter members did.
[09:48]  OSM: Sr. Frasca despues de cuatro meses no hubo reacción y eso tendrá que corregirse pero usted debe comprender que de repente usted tiene mucho tiempo para dedicarle al OSM lo cual es encoamiable pero los chicos tienen escuela, trabajo y familia y son una comunidad que trata de participar lo mas posible aun en tiempo de pandemia
[09:48]  DrPatriciaSolis: I never said they are perfect
[09:48]  mariotomo: you see, this chapter is the first one with which I at least manage to get in contact.
[09:48]  DrPatriciaSolis: please stay positive
[09:48]  DrPatriciaSolis: and encouraging
[09:49]  DrPatriciaSolis: it's the only one in panama!!!! 
[09:49]  maritza20r: y queremos mejorar 
[09:49]  maritza20r: para ser mas
[09:49]  DrPatriciaSolis: again, what do we want to accomplish with this meeting?
[09:49]  maritza20r:  :D 
[09:49]  DrPatriciaSolis: I also think that future communication should not be chat
[09:50]  DrPatriciaSolis: this is not optimal 
[09:50]  mariotomo: there's a group from Chiriquí doing edits on OSM, importing stuff out of control, it's been a real source of trouble.  not the case for YM-UP.
[09:50]  OSM: No entiendo por qué si el grupo tienen tweeter, facebook y correo electronico si los chicos 
[09:50]  mariotomo: we have a wiki, we have a forum, we have a Telegram chat
[09:50]  DrPatriciaSolis: well that's a great idea! maybe we should support chiriqui to form a chapter that can help each other out
[09:50]  OSM: <Great for you!
[09:50]  DrPatriciaSolis: I think the social thing of groups helping each other is really great
[09:50]  mariotomo: no tengo twitter, I could not cope with it.
[09:51]  mariotomo: no señora no es 'good for me', it's good for us who want to use it
[09:51]  DrPatriciaSolis: all around the world people use many different means of communicating 
[09:51]  DrPatriciaSolis: I find it most helpful to go where the students are
[09:51]  mariotomo: please help the community
[09:51]  DrPatriciaSolis: sometimes even us old people have to adapt !!
[09:51]  OSM: Cada grupo trabaja de acuerdo a sus posibilidades y el prof Smith y yo como asesores seríamos incapaces de opinar sobre los asuntos de su grupo al menos que sea para aportar algo y es lo que queremos escuchar de usted en forma concreta.
[09:52]  mariotomo: I insisted on IRC because of the logging.
[09:52]  DrPatriciaSolis: I also know that if students are approached with negativity and only criticism they stop and don't learn
[09:52]  mariotomo: so we can extract all the positive ideas coming out of here.
[09:52]  DrPatriciaSolis: yes, let's do
[09:52]  Karen_Martinez: tiene mucha razon Patricia!
[09:52]  DrPatriciaSolis: I have only 8 mintues until my next meeting and can't miss two today sorry
[09:53]  MZeballos: Yes, please share some of your ideas with us Mario
[09:53]  mariotomo: Maritza te dijeron que mis comentarios eran ofensivos?
[09:53]  mariotomo: I have shared projects on the wiki
[09:53]  DrPatriciaSolis: mario where do you say things like that no one said anything like that
[09:54]  MZeballos: Ok, there are projects listed in a wiki. Which wiki?
[09:54]  mariotomo: approached with negativiy
[09:54]  mariotomo: the osm wiki
[09:54]  mariotomo: the Panama page within the OSM wiki
[09:54]  MZeballos: which osm wiki
[09:54]  MZeballos: ok, thank you
[09:54]  Karen_Martinez: ok, tomaren en cuenta la pagina de wiki para cuando vaya a realizar mis ediciones
[09:54]  DrPatriciaSolis: I am reading your words here as not too positive, that's why I keep saying let's stay positive .... but again in chat one cannot tell about tone of voice or anything which is why we should shift to something else
[09:55]  MZeballos: Once we view those project ideas, then what? Are you proposing a collaboration?
[09:55]  DrPatriciaSolis: I like this idea about the projects
[09:55]  OSM: Me too
[09:56]  OSM: We need help especially for covering areas in the interior 
[09:56]  mariotomo: mira Karen, te estás preparando para ser lider, cierto?  ayúdame pues a escribir en la wiki, no te limites a utilizarla como fuente de información.
[09:56]  Karen_Martinez: ok me parece excelente
[09:56]  mariotomo: gracias !!!!
[09:56]  Karen_Martinez: gracias por la oportunidad
[09:56]  maritza20r: Patricia, Marcela, Mario, nosotros solo buscamos una manera mejorar nuestras ediciones y evitar que Mario y su buen equipo. nos den tanta correcciones de los cambios realizados. bueno y si lo hacen que nos digan con mas detalles como corregirlas. 
[09:56]  mariotomo: wiki: yo escribo, tú mejoras, él completa.
[09:57]  DrPatriciaSolis: I also want to know if there is some guide that is specific to OSM Panama
[09:57]  maritza20r: trabajar en equipo
[09:57]  DrPatriciaSolis: sometimes differnet countries have that - and it's helpful
[09:57]  OSM__: Cuando uno le proyecta la información compartida en la pantalla se entiende mejor, por eso era la insistencia de utilizar una plataforma zoom u otro
[09:57]  mariotomo: una oportunidad para mejorar las ediciones es revisar los comentarios a los changeset.
[09:57]  OSM: Me parece excelente esta colaboración 
[09:58]  OSM: Es importante tambien chicas recuerden reforzar el capítulo.
[09:58]  mariotomo: Patricia: este es un punto importante.  mucho de los que está descrito en OSM es del punto de vista del Norte.
[09:58]  mariotomo: estoy en contacto -telegram- con el grupo tagging áfrica.
[09:58]  DrPatriciaSolis: that's something very useful Mario that you could do! I don't think the students would put that together but they would use it if you did
[09:59]  DrPatriciaSolis: yes, I've used that tagging there when remote mapping and it's SUPER useful
[09:59]  mariotomo: por ejemplo un problema es la clasificación de los Puestos de Salud.
[09:59]  DrPatriciaSolis: panaman has it's own unique geography
[09:59]  DrPatriciaSolis: I have to go in one minute all 
[09:59]  OSM: Eso es cierto y hay que tomarlo muy en cuenta
[09:59]  DrPatriciaSolis: can you update me on what you decide and if I can be of any help?
[09:59]  mariotomo: geography point, wait a moment please
[09:59]  maritza20r: Gracias Patricia.
[10:00]  DrPatriciaSolis: I'm due to join my other meeting right now
[10:00]  mariotomo: about the mapping of forests that are used traditionally.
[10:00]  DrPatriciaSolis: I left the first one today to be with you 
[10:00]  mariotomo: ok
[10:00]  OSM: Gracias Patricia 
[10:00]  mariotomo: so I'll mention it so you will find it in the minutes.
[10:00]  Karen_Martinez: Gracias Patricia
[10:00]  DrPatriciaSolis: know you have my support in making this a positive experience and learning for everyone and making the OSM in Panama a vision and example to other nations!! go youthmappers!!!
[10:00]  DrPatriciaSolis: ciao
[10:00]  * DrPatriciaSolis has disconnected (Remote host closed the connection)
[10:00]  mariotomo: seguimos en Español?
[10:01]  OSM: Podemos tratar de hacer hotra reunión cuando el Sr. Mario esté de regreso.
[10:01]  OSM: a la ciudad. De esta forma nos podemos comunicar mejor.
[10:01]  mariotomo: 'de regreso a la Ciudad'?
[10:01]  mariotomo: yo?  :-D
[10:01]  OSM: perdon otra reunión
[10:02]  mariotomo: bueno, estaba hablando de un accidente geográfico-cultural aquí en Panamá, algo que lo encuentran comentado en la chat Telegram.
[10:02]  OSM: No sé si usted está permanentemente en el interior. Es algo que no me quedó claro. Me imagino que con la pandemia está por allá
[10:03]  mariotomo: (Telegram tiene la ventaja que las chat quedan a disposición -en su totalidad- de los nuevos miembros
[10:03]  OSM: Sr. Mario lo invitamos a una charla virtual cuando tenga acceso a video para que nos converse sobre Telegram no solo a los youthmappers sino a nuestros estudiantes. 
[10:03]  mariotomo: no, yo estoy aquí permanente
[10:04]  mariotomo: telegram, el foro, el wiki, son medios, instrumentos.
[10:05]  mariotomo: el foro y el wiki tienen la ventaja de estar abiertos a la búsqueda por google
[10:06]  OSM: Si entendemos pero usted sabe que los chicos están viviendo en un mundo diferente al cual todos nos tendremos que adaptar de una forma u otra y para ello y que les llegue la información . En Zoom tambien se puede grabar y hacerlo accesible al publico
[10:07]  mariotomo: si me permite una contrainvitación, que los participantes al capítulo se presenten en el foro, es el número 61. 
[10:07]  MZeballos: Mario, me gustaria organizar pasos concretos que podriamos hacer despues de esta reunion. 1) Quedamos que el capitulo buscara la lista de proyectos en la pagina de wiki. 2) que los estudiantes se unan al foro no. 61
[10:07]  MZeballos: que mas?
[10:08]  mariotomo: le comenté que mi perfil profesional es de científico de la información.  no soy 'geek', y no creo que los videos sean un medio eficaz para transmitir información, como densidad por bit utilizado.
[10:08]  OSM: Pero con el compromiso de que ustedes participen en las plataformas que ellos usan.
[10:08]  mariotomo: quienes son ustedes y ellos?
[10:09]  mariotomo: si los estudiantes utilizan zoom para comunicarse durante los estudios, no veo porqué sugerirle otra cosa.
[10:09]  OSM: Algunos del grupo de Telegram y ellos son nuestros estudiantes.
[10:10]  mariotomo: tampoco quiero comprometerme en una tarea profesional de forma voluntaria.  voluntariamente apoyo OSM.
[10:10]  OSM: Perfecto entonces se puede hacer una presentación por zoom. 
[10:11]  mariotomo: sé que muchas veces no me dejo entender.
[10:11]  OSM: Pero pensé que ese era parte del objetivo de la reunión.
[10:12]  mariotomo: MZeballos: el foro 61 podemos revivirlo, el wiki está abierto a las contribuciones, la chat Telegram es el medio al momento más utilizado, pero consultaré sobre las opiniones de los demás del grupo Telegram.
[10:12]  OSM: Que usted al igual que otros colaboradores que hemos tenido iba a colaborar dandonos seminarios y orientando a los chicos para que puedan aprender más de OSM
[10:12]  mariotomo: OSM: podemos hablarlo.
[10:13]  MZeballos: lo estamos hablando, se compromete a dar un seminario o training?
[10:13]  OSM: Sr. Mario Cuántos miembros tiene el grupo Telegram?
[10:14]  mariotomo: es un encargo profesional para la universidad?
[10:14]  Karen_Martinez: si nos gustaria que nos diera un entrenamiento 
[10:14]  OSM: Si sería buena idea si nos pudiese colaborar en ese sentido
[10:14]  OSM: Perdone a qué se refiere a encargo profesional?
[10:14]  mariotomo: creo que somos por ahí 30.  pocos realmente activos.
[10:15]  mariotomo: es que yo no entiendo la forma
[10:15]  maritza20r: Si eso es lo que buscamos entrenamiento, aprender. y una buena convivencia.
[10:15]  mariotomo: profesora, ya estoy apoyando a los editores, comentando los conjuntos de cambios, hasta si viejos de 2 años.
[10:16]  mariotomo: yo lo veo como mi manera de ofrecer oportunidades de mejorarse.
[10:16]  OSM: La forma en que trabajamos es que los chicos y los asesores nos contactamos con estudiantes o profesionales interesados en aportar sus conocimientos y se realiza unavideo  conferencia en zoom y se les da el link a todos los que quieran participar.
[10:17]  mariotomo: me suena como trabajo, que no puedo ofrecer gratis.
[10:18]  Karen_Martinez: si, incluso màs chicos pueden conocer la informacion de lo que usted nos esta compartiendo sobre osm y de la comunidad
[10:18]  OSM: Pero eso es la labor del voluntariado. A ninguno de nosotros se nos paga para ello. Lo hacemos porque creemos en el proyecto y porque queremos que nuestros estudiantes tengan experiencias globales que les permitan tener oportunidades.
[10:19]  OSM: de crecer personal y profesionamente
[10:19]  MZeballos: Lo que entiendo de esta reunion es que usted no esta en una posicion para preparar y dar un seminario o training. No esta dispuesto a conectarse por otra plataforma (aunque ea mejor para los estudiantes/editores) y tampoco usa redes como twitter donde aun se conecta mayor parte de la comunidad, cierto?
[10:19]  OSM: O se que tendriamos lque pagarle paraque nos dé una conferencia de 30 miutos?
[10:19]  mariotomo: no los sigo, se han dado cuenta que no soy un buen comunicador, hay varios tutoriales OSM a disposición, tanto en inglés como en español.
[10:20]  MZeballos: Mario, I have to ask you, as Patricia asked, what is your goal for this meeting?
[10:20]  mariotomo: no es encontrar trabajo.
[10:21]  mariotomo: it's to make sure that your chapter does do what your front-page adverts say.
[10:21]  maritza20r: Entiendo Mario, en ese caso podríamos verlo de esta manera.  Nosotros este mes estamos mapeando en el OSM un lugar especifico, te puedo compartir el lugar. Podemos contar con tu apoyo con la validación de la informaron y así ir viendo en que tanto nos corrige tu comunidad a los youthmappers.
[10:22]  OSM: Nosotros como una comunidad que colabora para que el conocimiento sea gratuito y se comparta no podemos ofrecerle remuneración por training o asesoría.  No trabajamos así.  Trabajamos con todos los que quieran fortalecer los skills de los estudiantes y que ellos a su vez los puedan pasalos a otros . Ese es el objetrivo de nuestra comunidad además de mapear.
[10:22]  mariotomo: I'm available through the communication lines put in place by OSM.
[10:22]  maritza20r: Al final siempre nos vamos a encontrar con sus correcciones de cambio eso es lo que queremos evitar.
[10:22]  mariotomo: maritza20r: muy bien.
[10:23]  mariotomo: mira ... te ayudo si quieres en seguir las líneas de ediciones organizadas.
[10:23]  mariotomo: no hay que cumplir con TODAS, pero sí tomarlas en consideración.
[10:23]  mariotomo: profesora, usted trabaja gratis para la universidad?
[10:24]  OSM: Por eso decía si usted pertenece al OSM que es una comunidad donde se comparte conocimiento e información seria de mucha ayuda que nos brindara una conferencia sobre los patrones a seguir para las ediciones organiadas.
[10:24]  mariotomo: ah, entiendo, estamos cayendo en la confusión libre-gratis.
[10:25]  mariotomo: todo lo que produzco, que puede ser en mi tiempo personal, o en el tiempo de un encargo profesional, es información libre.
[10:25]  * OSM__ has disconnected (Remote host closed the connection)
[10:25]  maritza20r: Cual es el objetivo de esta reunión. 
[10:26]  OSM: No señor pero si trabajo voluntariamente para YouthMappers al igual que el Prof. Smith y hemos dedicado mucho tiempo y sacrificio a lograr los vínculos para que los chicos hayan alcanzado el nivel de expertise del que nos sentimos orgullosos.
[10:26]  maritza20r: ya no tengo mas que agregar a la platica.
[10:26]  mariotomo: maritza20r: me dices que tienen un proyecto
[10:26]  mariotomo: cuál es?  quieres apoyo para ponerlo en el wiki?
[10:27]  mariotomo: según las líneas sugeridas para las ediciones organizadas?
[10:27]  mariotomo: (pues no es tanto 'sugeridas', es casi que necesario, pero no son muchos los grupos que toman en serio la cosa.) 
[10:28]  mariotomo: o sea, no estoy disponible para hacerle una presentación, no.
[10:28]  mariotomo: pero ayudarle en buscar material, sí
[10:28]  OSM: Pues nosotros si las tomamos y muy en serio. Uno de los proyectos ya Patricia se lo informó en la carta que le envió el día de ayer y que pronto lo colocaremos en el OSM que es donde pertenece.
[10:28]  MZeballos: gracias por confirmar mario
[10:28]  mariotomo: ayudarle en mejorar sus prácticas, sí.
[10:29]  MZeballos: ok, nos podria mandar un correo electronico con alguna enlaces para empezar a buscar el material?
[10:30]  mariotomo: si quieren, también puedo apoyar a sus estudiantes para que produzcan los subtítulos de videos en youtube, si son videos que valgan la pena, y no estén en español.
[10:30]  OSM: En ese proyecto han participado dando parte de su tiempo libre profesores y estudiantes de varias facultades de la universidad.
[10:30]  MZeballos: ok muchas gracias
[10:30]  mariotomo: MZeballos, el wiki está repleno.
[10:30]  OSM: Le agradecemos por su tiempo e interés.
[10:30]  mariotomo: gracias a ustedes por la oportunidad
[10:31]  mariotomo: espero verlos en el foro 61 o en el grupo Telegram
[10:31]  MZeballos: gracias por la invitacion, ahi estaremos
[10:32]  OSM: Enviénos la informacióny si no nos choca con las clases con mucho gusto asistiremos. Si le agradecemos que cuando tenga alguna observación que realizar lo haga con copia a los asesores. Tal y como le envié mi correo es newadames@yahoo.com
[10:33]  Karen_Martinez: gracias por la pagina me debo retirar
[10:33]  Karen_Martinez: buen dìa a todos
[10:33]  maritza20r: Me retiro, hasta pronto. 
[10:33]  mariotomo: ciao
[10:33]  * Karen_Martinez has disconnected (Quit: Page closed)
[10:33]  OSM: Gracias por todos que tengan buen dia
[10:33]  * OSM has disconnected (Quit: Page closed)
[10:33]  MZeballos: buen dia a todo/as!
[10:34]  mariotomo: :-)
[10:34]  * MZeballos has disconnected (Quit: Page closed)
[10:34]  maritza20r: Como salgo de aqui?
[10:34]  maritza20r: jajajaja
[10:34]  mariotomo: jajaja
[10:34]  mariotomo: cierras la página?
[10:34]  maritza20r: ah ok
[10:34]  mariotomo: escribes /part
[10:35]  * maritza20r has disconnected (Quit: Page closed)
[10:35]  * OSM has joined
[10:35]  * OSM has disconnected ()

this isn’t really about OSM, it’s about how to protect our privacy while on a OSM-centered Telegram group. I manage the Comunidad OSM Panamá Telegram group, and since the Covid-19 struck worldwide, also our group started to be targeted by several types of scammers and spammers, so I looked for options to contrast the events and shield the users of the group from the nuisance.

Initially, I participated in the osmallgroups Rose federation, but I came in disagreement with the most active admins in the federation, as to how aggressively ban potential scammers. My point of view was that, at the first hint of suspicion the person has nothing to do with OSM, with the area, with geography, and is only looking for sources of Telegram user contact details, the correct action is to ban immediately, possibly contacting them with the invitation to tell me that they are legitimate OSM mappers. This was not the shared opinion in that Rose federation, so I left and developed the following protocol.

Each new member gets a message inviting them to mention their OSM user name, and are warned this is an anti-spam measure. Failure to comply results in ban within the first few hours. I then privately write to check the intentions of the user. Up to now I have not had a single false positive. In at least two occasions I saw the person joining and immediately leaving the group.

To reduce the impact of my instructions to Rose in the group, I use a “federation” and a parallel group, where I issue the /fban command to Rose. Rose reacts to that and removes the user from all other federated groups, that includes the Comunidad OSM Panamá. All that people in the real group will see is “Rose removed user Xxx”, something that happens without the Rose avatar. Soon after, this becomes “Rose removed DELETED”.

The other detail that needs to be mentioned, that’s Rose’s ability to log events to a channel. I need that in order to have the necessary user details to invoke the /fban command.

the only remaining problem with Rose is its avatar, which was initially very sexist, has been polished down, but is allegedly still offensive to some members of the OSM communities. Personally, I have no problem with it, and I have not heard direct complains for its presence in the Panama Group.

En el grupo LatAm estaban hablando de varias amenazas al proyecto, y por mi parte lo que me parece un riesgo real, es la falta de sentido de comunidad, y las contribuciones por maperos que no respetan la propiedad intelectual ajena. A mi manera de ver, son dos aspectos distintos que cuando se junten en la misma persona, pueden causar un daño real a la comunidad OSM.

Me pregunto, sin tener respuesta, cómo prevenir el mapeo de fuente con licencia no compatible con OSM? Digo y subrayo, prevenir en el sentido de evitar que el hecho se concretice.

No tengo respuesta pues si es cierto que he desarrollado una práctica, finalizada a la formación de comunidad y al monitoreo de mapeo “copia ilegal”, igual no creo que mi práctica sea suficiente ni para la primera ni para la segunda cosa.

Lo que por mi parte tengo, es un pequeño script que corre cada lunes y que me envía una alerta si hay actividad en Panamá por maperos con menos de 7 días de experiencia. Reviso sus ediciones, entro en el sistema openstreetmap.org y envío un correo interno a los nuevos maperos, en forma de saludo e invito a unirse al grupo Telegram Panamá.

Esto, por supuesto, con el objetivo “formación de comunidad”, y claro, de las 10 invitaciones quizás 2 sean aceptadas, si es mucho. Pero es que muchos de los nuevos maperos no vuelven a mapear, así que este 20% quizás sea un porcentaje muy alto.

Otro monitoreo lo hago sin ninguna garantía de regularidad, o sea, de vez en cuando si tengo tiempo y ganas, miro en el historial osm buscando cambios por agradecer o por comentar. Pero ya estamos entrando en la sección “corrección”, dejando la sección “prevención”.

Y qué más puedo hacer, no sé. A veces se llega a deber activar el DWG, pero antes que nada, si no entiendo cuál es la fuente de información para un cambio, pregunto, preferiblemente en el grupo, si el autor se asomó, y de todas maneras en forma de comentario al conjunto de cambios, pues es la manera pública aceptada para proporcionar retroalimentación.

A veces uno se queda con la duda, pues de dónde xxxx sacó esta información … y porqué no contesta el autor … y qué hago con un pico o una quebrada, que yo no veo en Bing, que tiene nombre y otros datos, y por ejemplo que es utilizado en una frontera administrativa … de alguna parte debe salir esta información, a no ser que uno invente, pero sí puede ser que el autor supo ver lo que yo no veo en las fotos aéreas, o que estuvo en el lugar … y bueno considerando que cada uno mapea en buena fe, no borro nada, hasta tener la seguridad que el dato es de fuente no admisible.

O si comí y dormí mal, no me aguanto la tercera inconformidad, y activo el DWG. ;-)

Mi punto de vista es: estamos en un proyecto comunitario … no debería ser obvio tener un mínimo de intención de formar comunidad, de querer compartir, trabajar en paralelo, hasta convergir sobre un objetivo … A veces realmente no entiendo.

Cape Town

“Gracias” a la crisis global causada por el SARS-CoV-2, la reunión “State of the Map 2020” no se ha podido desarrollar en forma presencial, sino fue convertida en reunión virtual.

Me gusta empezar resumiendo unos comentarios en la página de retroalimentación: la conferencia online ha permitido la participación a personas que normalmente no hubieran podido acudir; es una gran manera para ampliar el acceso y deberíamos repetir la experiencia; por cuanto siempre deberíamos intentar encontrarnos en persona, el acudir virtualmente debería volverse costumbre. También me gusta hacer referencia a un artículo en lemonde.fr, que describe el desafío de realizar virtualmente todos aspectos de una conferencia científica en persona.

No tengo a la mano las estadísticas para comparar la participación este año con la de los años pasados, pero por cuanto me concierne, la forma virtual me ha permitido participar a la conferencia, a costo prácticamente cero, cuando la forma presencial me lo hacía ni más ni menos, pues … entre imposible e impensable. He aprovechado mucho de las charlas, he podido poner preguntas que han sido consideradas, y he tenido la oportunidad de comentar sobre detalles conectados con las charlas, a través de los canales digitales puestos a disposición, todo desde una ubicación rural en Panamá, con una conexión internet de 128kbit/s.

desafíos técnicos

Mi conexión internet me puso en condición de no poder seguir sino las charlas en audio. Esto ha funcionado perfectamente, exceptuado por pocos puntos que se podrían mejorar.

• El nivel y la calidad audio no era uniforme, en el sentido que cada grupo conectado desde su posición tenía su propio nivel de volumen, y su calidad de audio. Una charla, creo que desde Togo, su calidad audio estaba tan mala que después 3 minutos sin entender ni de qué hablaba, preferí pasar a la presentación paralela. Las otras estaban bastante bien, pero siempre y cuando pusiera el audio al 150%-200% del original.

• Fue complicado entender dónde iban a estar los canales audio, y cada vez he recibido la respuesta, en los canales IRC y Telegram, de abrir las páginas web. Bueno esto es razonable y por supuesto uno debería tomar la iniciativa de buscar antes de preguntar, pero mi punto de vista detrás de mi conexión era que para abrir cada página debía esperar varios minutos, y buscar en páginas de varios megabyte me estaba costando un minuto por megabyte. Por supuesto debería tomar iniciativa de buscar, pero por favor no piensen que todo el mundo tiene internet a alta velocidad, o a costo cero.

• Los stream audio en formato opus y mp3, una vez encontrados, me resultaron muy ventajosos, el opus por ser muy compacto, y el mp3 por ser “viejo”, o sea posible aprovecharlo de hardware y software desactualizados.

• Nunca entré en los “pad” de que seguían hablando en las charlas. Los enlaces a los “pad” estaban en la página de cada presentación, enlaces que no he utilizado por mis limitaciones de banda internet. Ahora midiendo con calma qué es un pad, se trata de megabyte y medio de javascript por descargar antes de iniciar a participar en el pad. No lo he visto en función, pero da la impresión de ser un documento editable por todos los participantes, en cualquier punto del documento. Por suerte no he estado encargado de su manejo. No entendí porqué tener “pad” separados por presentación y no canales asociados a los “track”, en que se transmitían las charlas.

• Sobre el sitio mismo: la portada pesa 3Mbyte, o sea unos minutos de espera, pero todos los enlaces muy bien realizados, con tiempo de espera de 10 segundos o menos. No encuentro función de búsqueda, pero la FAQ está bien realizada, muy completa.

• Uno stream audio por cada track, me pareció perfecto, pero me sorprendió que no se hubiesen separado los canales IRC/Telegram de la misma manera. Separar los canales es parte de mi idea de cómo mejorar la inclusión de las varias comunidades.

desafíos sociales

¿Qué es una conferencia? ¿Qué espero del participar?

El punto de vista que he desarrollado, considerando las pocas conferencias científicas a que he participado, y comparando mi experiencia del SotM-2020, es que una conferencia online debería por lo menos intentarlo, de ofrecer también el aspecto socializador de las conferencias presenciales. Los participantes a una conferencia están en la sala, escuchando, anotando preguntas, tomando notas de quién preguntó cosa, y una vez salidos de la sala, o durante las pausas de los refrescos o de las comidas, intentando intercambiar unas pocas palabras con esas pocas personas que parecen ocuparse de lo mismo, o tener información valiosa.

En la sala uno está escuchando, y aprovechando del servicio de intérprete, si la conferencia es multicultural —por ejemplo en el Caribe uno no puede tener una conferencia internacional sino incluyendo los tres idiomas Francés, Español, Inglés. Uno tiene sus audífonos que le proporcionan la traducción a su idioma, y al poner preguntas lo hace en su idioma, con los interpretes traduciendo. Esto es mucho trabajo, pero consideramos que una charla, para ser aceptada, habrá sido propuesta en forma de resumen, y seguramente el poniente tiene un texto de referencia, sobre que está hablando y que estará leyendo, o sea que para cada presentación tenemos a disposición un texto base que se podría utilizar como subtítulos (por ejemplo me hubiera servido en el caso de la charla que no pude escuchar por la baja calidad del audio), y que se pueden traducir de antemano en manera automática, y revisadas por voluntarios —yo mismo estoy a disposición para el castellano, de ser necesario, o el italiano.

Simular las traducción del intérprete, por audífonos, sugiero hacerla con canales IRC, en que se le pide a los asistentes de no intervenir durante la charla, al igual que se le pide a los asistentes de no utilizar sus teléfonos, de no conversar con sus vecinos, de no ponerse a cantar La Macarena, mientras que dure la charla. El protocol IRC tiene la ventaja de permitir la creación de una chatroom no más que mencionándola: puesto que los subtítulos en inglés, español y ruso estén en las chatroom respectivamente #org-sotm-track1-en, #org-sotm-track1-es, #org-sotm-track1-ru, nada y nadie te impide crear un cuarto de discusión llamado #org-sotm-highway=track-es e invitar a tus vecinos, y darle la bienvenida a los demás interesados. Lo que no es posible es ponerle candado a la puerta de una chatroom.

Al final de la charla, se puede intervenir en el mismo canal en que se han recibido los subtítulos, poniendo preguntas, por supuesto, no para conversar o cantar, y hará falta que el mismo intérprete encargado de canal, traduzca las preguntas al poniente, y se encargue de devolverlas al canal traducido.

Los comentarios más libres, emulando lo que es la socialización en las pausas café, podrían realizarse dentro de los canales correspondientes a los track, que me parecen el equivalente digital de la sala de conferencias física, en que se ha preferido entrar.

Terminadas las presentaciones y abierta la sala del almuerzo, emular esta fase se hace un desafío más grande. En una conferencia presencial, no hay la opción de alejarse, mientras en remoto quizás uno quiera tener algo más de privacidad, antes de volver a seguir las charlas siguientes. de otro lado, en una conferencia presencial, uno estará intentando sentarse a la misma mesa de una o dos personas en particular, o a una mesa en su propio idioma, y tendrá la garantía que no más que 8 personas estén en el grupo. Sé que existen software que realizan todo esto en un sitio web, pues es el mismo “problema” de componer mesas de cualquier juego de naipes online. Entras en la sala, miras las mesas ya abiertas, consideras los nombres de los que ya están en la mesa, quizás nombre e idiomas disponibles, y tomas tu asiento, o abres una nueva mesa si ninguna te agrada. Pero bueno, quizás podemos quedarnos con una sala de charla libre por idioma, siempre queda posible empezar una charla privada, o abrir un cuarto virtual, no más abriéndolo: “/join #osm-sotm-whateverthesubject-es”. por supuesto sería útil respetar la misma lógica, en poner nombre a los cuartos virtuales: #osm-sotm-<título>-<dos-letras-para-el-idioma>: esto permite al participante que quiera charlar en italiano, con la istrucción “/list #osm-sotm-*-it”, de conocer todos los cuartos en italiano, con el número de participantes.

no tengo conclusiones

Son mis notas al margen de la conferencia, no es un paper listo para una presentación. Me gustaría que fueran consideradas, para la próxima SotM, y si bien como todos estoy con la ilusión que la próxima SotM no tendremos la necesidad del distanciamiento social, igual pienso que deberíamos aprovechar de la experiencia de este SotM virtualizado —por mi parte demasiado positiva— y volver a realizar todo lo necesario para tener la SotM abierta a la participación virtual.

Mi única sugerencia técnica es que me parece que deberíamos utilizar un solo sistema para las discusiones, y me parece que sólo IRC permite la flexibilidad necesaria. Bueno, adicionalmente sugiero que los “nick” correspondan al nombre de usuario OSM, así que siempre sepa con quién estás hablando, digamos que esto realizaría lo correspondiente del “badge” de participante.

Como comunidad OSM le exigimos a organizaciones externas a OSM que sigan unas líneas guía (https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Organised_Editing_Guidelines). Bueno, quizás exigir es un poco excesiva como palabra, pero sí se han puesto unas líneas guía y se sugiere conocerlas, considerarlas, y luego respetarlas y si acaso mejorarlas.

Lo que me deja “basito” (es palabra toscana, y no sé en castellano como se diga, algo entre aturdido/encantado/perplejo) es que de cuantas organizaciones se apoyan a OSM, justamente HOT, quizás por llevar en su nombre la ‘O’ de OpenStreetMap, parece desconocer las otra ‘O’ de Organised Editing Guidelines, o por lo menos parece sentirse, HOT, en derecho de ignorarlas. Mi impresión es que también del lado de la comunidad OSM haya la percepción como si HOT fuera parte de OSM, y no una NGO externa capaz de influir sobre el funcionamiento interno.

Les hago un ejemplo concreto. En Panamá en junio 2018 un grupo de personas tocó a la puerta de HOT, con una propuesta de proyecto. HOT ha aprobado y abierto el proyecto 4917. La persona que ha resultado encargada de coordenar el proyecto está conectada con ESRI y tenía, a la fecha inicial, una experiencia OSM de 3 changeset. Todo esto, como se entiende, es interacción entre dos grupos externos a OSM. HOT, recibida la petición, no ha considerado necesario informar la comunidad local en OSM, que ha empezado enterandose del proyecto con los primeros cambios actuados. Es como si alguien llame a una empresa proveedora de servicios, de una cabina telefónica y diga ser yo, y la empresa no diga: un momento, le llamamos a su casa, y al día siguiente me están instalando una parábola en el techo. Ahora concretamente: el proyecto es compuesto de 909 tareas, ha llegado al 14% de ejecutadas, con 17 tareas validadas. Ninguna tarea ha sido validada en el último año, sin embargo el proyecto se ha quedado abierto y ha seguido atrayendo mapeadores sin experiencia en una zona donde la comunidad local no tiene ningún enfoque de mapeo, sino que debe revisar estas ediciones no solicitadas. Ni HOT ni el grupo que propuso el proyecto se han encargado de nada. Y bueno, acabo de obtener la desactivación del proyecto, pero no su evaluación, y toda la zona se ha quedado con un mapeo extremadamente desigual.

Lo que ha pasado en este caso concreto, considerando el procedimiento que se ha implementado, no me parece raro, más bien me parece consecuencia del procedimiento. El paso que falta (mi opinión y propuesta) es que se explicite la relación entre HOT y OSM, que se le exija a HOT, como a Kaart, o AppleMaps o sea quien sea, que siempre socialice sus actividades en OSM, que las comunidades OSM reciban constancia temprana de las actividades externas, que no se confundan las NGO externas, reconociendo como comunidad OSM cualquier grupo que se le presente. Cada comunidad tiene su portal wiki, y me parece obvio pedir que el primer paso, quizás hasta necesario para que se considere la petición de “la comunidad local” sea que el proyecto antes que cualquier otra cosa aparezca como página wiki enlazada al portal de la comunidad. En el caso 4917, que haya un enlace de wiki/Panama a una página que presente el proyecto.