Talk:OSM SWOT

OSM SWOT Discussion

Please add discussion here. Use headers as necessary. Sign your work with four tildes. Apm-wa (talk) 18:05, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

And yes, please refrain from personal attacks, ad hominem attacks, and insults. Let's be civil and let's be polite, please. Apm-wa (talk) 17:21, 18 January 2020 (UTC)

Proposal to refrain from personal attacks and ad hominem language

I'd like to propose that we all refrain from insulting, attacking, and denigrating one another. We have many disagreements, and I don't propose we ignore them. I simply propose that we all limit our disagreement to ideas, not disparage or attack people's motivations, skills, or contributions.

Here is an example of a posting that strongly defends an idea: "of the 10 most evil tech companies #1,#2,#5,#6,#7 are highly and openly active in OpenStreetMap." Maybe not everyone agrees with this, but it's a legitimate concern and can be debated.

Here is an example from the same posting that attacks and insults the people who may disagree with this idea: "...claqueurs are jubilantly applauding and welcoming more corporate involvement..." This is a deliberate personal insult to the people who disagree with the poster. It's literally name-calling.

I suggest that the idea portion of this posting (OSM should not readily accept intervention by for-profit corporate entities with track records of harmful behaviour) be retained, and the ad hominem portion (calling people "claqueurs" and suggesting that they are uncritically jubilant about corporate involvement) be removed, ideally by the original poster.

Another posting: "meanwhile so popular that it attracts righteous leaders who want to tell us what to do without even considering mapping an activity worth their time!" This includes name-calling ("righteous leaders") and denigrates anyone whose contribution might some something other than mapping, suggesting that they have no right to make suggestions.

I think it will be difficult to have a productive discussion if we cannot treat each other with respect.

Ivangayton (talk) 21:35, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

I agree that we shouldn't call people and companies names here. It detracts from the severity of the issue and gives way to deflect it as disgruntled ranting. I have added an example of how OSM's current involvement with privacy-hostile companies works to the detriment of OSM contributors. Rostaman (talk) 04:30, 18 January 2020 (UTC)

I've taken the liberty to edit out some particularly inflammatory language from the "evil tech companies" bullet item. In my opinion, these bits of text were at odds with the spirit of this exercise as outlined in the preamble. Should the item's author object to that, let's discuss. --Tordanik 12:55, 18 January 2020 (UTC)

A better strategy is to find a 'win' or 'middle ground'. How might we turn corporate engagement in OSM favour? Statements that companies are not welcome might not help OSM. Thanks for bringing this up.--HeatherLeson (talk) 11:42, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

Inspired by Tordanik, I've made a pass through both Weaknesses and Threats and removed or modified all language that seemed to me to be ad hominem or personally insulting. I've striven to retain the original intent of the postings (whether or not I agree with them) while removing insults and personal attacks.

I've used the following guidelines:

- Never describe a person as a threat or weakness, only specific actions

- Opposing an action simply because it comes from a particular person, or a person who has done specific other things, is also not ok (opposition to the action must be about the action itself, not the originator)

- Never impute motivations to another person. For example, "one person ate all the cake because they want the rest of us to starve" is not ok, while "One person ate all the cake, which is bad because the rest of us don't get any" is ok.

- Never describe people with insulting terms. Disagree with them as freely and as vigorously as you like, but don't call them names. (Common exception that's usually ok: deliberately chosen descriptions that are welcomed and embraced by the people being called them, for example geek/nerd).

- In principle describing an organization in negative terms is less problematic than doing so toward individuals (i.e. "SuperMegaCorp is an evil organization that invades privacy"). However, it's not useful as an argument. Ad hominem attacks on people are wrong for two reasons: they commit a logical fallacy (a practical problem) and they harm individuals (an ethical problem). A negative description of an organization is still logically fallacious, but is less likely to harm individuals—but not entirely; a statement like "SuperNonProfit is a greedy duplicitous agency making money by pretending to represent OpenStreetMap" can be seen as a personal attack on the people who work with that organization. Alternative formulations could be "SuperMegaCorp has a well-documented history of invading privacy, which makes it a poor choice for OSM to work with" and "SuperNonprofit is separate from OSM and has a mandate that differs from that of OSM, and should make the distinction clear in their fundraising."

If people have a problem with the changes I've made, please speak up, or revert my changes. In particular, the original posters whose contributions I've modified are welcome to respond in kind by reverting, though I'd be grateful if they'd engage on this talk page first.

--Ivangayton (talk) 19:05, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

First round analysis and tagging

I did a quick review of the content and set up some tagging. It would be great if someone could take this and put it in another collaborative format and/or add more analysis. first review of SWOT --HeatherLeson (talk) 10:21, 26 January 2020 (UTC)

History of the SWOT analysis campaign

From my point of view, a (synthetic) history section of this SWOT page & campaign is missing, probably at the beginning of it (keeing it short), because it's a bit strategic. Something like :

History of this communautary action

• 2020 january 15th : creation of the page and opening of the campaign ;
• 2020 january 26th ; first review of SWOT (google doc) by HeatherLeson (talk) ;

short- and mid-term horizon lines (indicative)

• 2029 december 31st : closure of the harvest, aggregation of propositions, labelling, reducing and condensing the database ;
• 2039 december 31st : end of summarizing, production of a synthetic SWOT, 1st version of strategic recommandations, and proposed operationnal actions ;
• 2049 december 31st : community consensus, plus a few votations for the very few cleaving points.
• 2050 january 2nd : end of actions.

(This big anything is just my two centi-cents :-)) --Eric38fr (talk) 18:03, 5 February 2020 (UTC)