Board/Minutes/2022-03-08
Draft minutes. These minutes do not undergo via a formal approval process.
Location: Video room at https://osmvideo.cloud68.co
using BigBlueButton.
Please note that this video chat is not open to observers.
Date and time: Tuesday 8 March, 13:00 UTC - Countdown
Acronyms
Participants
Board members
- Amanda McCann (Chairing)
- Tobias Knerr
Not Present
- Eugene Alvin Villar
- Guillaume Rischard
- Jean-Marc Liotier
- Mikel Maron
- Roland Olbricht
Officers and board
Biographies
Minutes by Dorothea Kazazi.
Guests
Not open to observers.
Discourse launch
| Discourse to replace some OSMF-hosted communication channels |
|---|
| There were discussions and there is work on using Discourse to replace the OSM forum, OSM mailing lists and OSQA (the software that powers help.openstreetmap.org).
A server has been allocated for testing the Discourse requirements. Related minutes from Operations meetings
|
| Suggested by Tobias Knerr. |
The board has encouraged the Discourse launch to go forward, over a year ago.
Status: Almost ready to launch - waiting for pull request to be merged. Date for launch not set yet.
- Rubén Martín (HOT) has prepared some messages for communicating about the launch.
- Grant Slater (Operations Working Group) is in touch with the rest of the team.
- Tobias was asked by the team to be the board contact, in case anything needs board involvement.
Streamlined board decision making
Suggested by Amanda McCann.
Amanda might try to do more board tasks in a doocratic way.
Proposed Conflict of Interest policy changes
| Related |
|---|
| Board Conflict of Interest policy |
| Suggested by Amanda McCann. |
Amanda's plan
- Next board meeting: Amanda plans to propose an agenda item about suggested changes to the board Conflict of Interest policy and probably a vote.
- Thinking of adding a clause where Working Group membership alone is not always a conflict of interest (CoI).
- Thinking of changing the suggested policy wording, so that the board will have to vote on whether to allow board members with a conflict of interest to speak on related discussions.
Points mentioned during discussion
- Recent EWG-related board vote mentioned, where two board members abstained from voting on funding the Engineering Working Group, as they were also members of it.
- Working Groups are parts of the OSM Foundation and board members who are also on working groups probably do not have a conflict of interest.
- Tobias is not convinced that excluding board members with conflicts of interest from related discussions is always beneficial - no strong opinion in either way.
- The wording of the suggested changes to the policy will be available before the March board meeting (2022-03-24).
If a contract is signed based on a vote, and everyone who votes had a conflict of interest, is the contract deemed to be legally invalid?
Data Working Group communication / recent edit conflicts
Suggested by Amanda McCann.
The board received two emails from the Data Working Group (DWG) with information regarding recent edit conflicts in Ukraine.
- one external - overtaken by recent events.
- one informational about other related emails that the DWG has received, and its replies.
No board action was requested by the DWG.
The board has also received a related external email.
Suggestions
- Answer the email forwarded by the DWG with the standard answer about the disputed territories policy - perhaps including a question on whether the OSM community can map something to help.
- The DWG to answer the external email.
- Publish blogpost related to the issue.
- OSM Carto/Nominatim/www.osm.org not showing certain features in some cases - this might be potentially problematic and is not in the remit of the board but for the specific projects and sysadmins to decide.
Other points mentioned
- Some people in the DWG suggested a videocall of the DWG with the board.
- Probably won't be productive.
- Trust the DWG to reply.
Action item: Amanda to email the DWG, asking them if they are ok to reply to the email they forwarded to the board.
Any other business
Contributions without individual OSM accounts
| Background |
|---|
| External tools like Wheelmap and the recently introduced Microsoft MapBuilder allow their users to submit changes to the OSM data via a single account, instead of having one account per individual contributor.
The Data Working Group (DWG), after a request by the board, sent a well thought-out list of requirements for contributions to OSM via external services - such as the Microsoft MapBuilder - for the contributor to be a meaningful part of the community. E.g.
Related board discussions:
|
| Suggested by Tobias Knerr. |
Microsoft's MapBuilder was submitting edits to OSM by multiple Microsoft contributors via a single account, which was recently blocked by the Data Working Group (DWG).
- Harsh Govind (Microsoft's representative on the OSMF Advisory Board) had a call with Tobias Knerr (board) and showed him plans about changing the implementation of Microsoft's MapBuilder.
- Microsoft seems to be trying to set-up a meeting with the DWG, but the DWG has not replied yet.
- The DWG members might be busy with the situation in Ukraine.
- They might feel that a videocall will not be productive - people have different communication styles.
Suggestion
Tobias to encourage Microsoft to send an email to the DWG with the plan regarding changes in the implementation of MapBuilder.
Moderation team candidates
| Background |
|---|
| On 2021-12-15 the board adopted the Etiquette Guidelines proposed by the Local Chapters and Communities Working Group (LCCWG) moderation subcommittee for the talk* and osmf-talk** mailing lists. Enforcement will begin as soon as a new moderation team for these lists is affirmed by the board.
* talk is the mailing list for all OpenStreetMap community members. All past messages are available here. The board intends to extend the scope of the Etiquette Guidelines to all international communication channels hosted by the OSM Foundation after informal consultation with the respective communities. Regional communities, and communities on platforms not hosted by the OSM Foundation, are free to choose to use the Etiquette Guidelines for their channels as well. Proposed moderation team
Additional information about the composition of the proposed moderation team was mentioned during the November board meeting. The board asked the committee for the "resumes" of the proposed moderators and the names of other people who applied to be on the moderation team. In case the LCCWG moderation subcommittee is not willing or legally able to share the details about unsuccessful applicants with the whole board, the board will ask the subcommittee to share it with the members of the board who happened to be also members of the subcommittee at the start. Related discussions:
More information can be found in the background sections of previous board meetings. |
Any plans to schedule a meeting with the moderation team candidates? Question by Tobias.
Reasoning
- Some board members said they would like to talk with the moderation team candidates before voting on their approval.
- Move the topic forward.
> Nothing planned.
Suggestions
The board could:
- collect the information about the candidates directly from them via email.
- might be better than a videocall, to get more information and people should be convenient with email as they'll moderate mailing lists.
- difficulty with the wording of the email to the candidates.
- do both a videocall with the candidates and also collect the information via email.
- start a circular.
On having a videocall
- Difficulty to schedule.
- Probably won't be productive.
- People might assume that the candidates have been approved.
Other points mentioned
- The board shouldn't decline or vote on the candidates, until it has more information about them.
- Guillaume discussed with Maggie Cawley (LCCWG moderation subcommittee) doing a blogpost about the candidates, but that was not a collective board decision.
- The email from the board could be ignored.
- Allan Mustard (who according to the LCCWG moderation subcommittee has agreed to take on the role of lead moderator) has a track record and would be a suitable moderator.
- Dedicating more board time on the issue might not be worth it.
Next meeting
Public board meeting on Thursday 24 March 2022, 13:00 UTC -- Countdown