Documenting the history of OpenStreetMap

I knew that was coming ;).

Well, I actually have used {{delete}} quite a few times and reverted those who reverted you multiple times, to be fair. Which Nakaner complained about on my talk page (resolved through archiving them). I’ve also reverted you quite a few times and restored pages too (mostly in that mass reversion spree of mine, which you complained about and I apologized for). And in that spree I started reverting not just you but your opponents again and I also repeatedly reverted myself over and over again, blanking and refilling and blanking and refilling and repeat, spurring that famous self-edit war of mine. So I apparently didn’t even agree with myself then, with one side of me wanting to do this, another to do that, etc. (also I was in a weird state of mind then, where I admittedly lost all reason and went way overboard with not taking sides / taking everyone’s side, which I luckily managed to snap out of, see my talk page apology for the story behind it). It basically became a speedy race to be on everyone’s good side by repeatedly reverting their opposers and vice versa. Little did I realize that by repeatedly reverting everyone on all sides I would only make all of them mad at me… that may seem obvious, but I was in a sticky situation at the time.

Confused yet ;)?

So it’s not personal. Note: I am not performing any more reversions until this discussion is finished, and I hope no one else does either.

I try to keep middle ground ;).

Well, I’ll admit that when I first stepped in to the deletion war (through looking at Polarbear’s contribs) last summer I at first saw it as an opportunity to take Polarbear’s side just so he could, err, maybe have a better image of me than he used to. And I actually went along with that crazy plan… but once I was blasted by that one adamant sea of fire (yes, I’m reining in the puns again ;)), which knocked some sense into me, I realized that I was wrong. I was so consumed in trying to get Polarbear’s respect after what happened between us in 2017 that I didn’t even bother to consider why you were deleting pages in the first place, or have an opinion of my own. Since that second message I gave you in July 2018 I have been authentic to my views instead.

(What I just said was admittedly an over six months old secret ;)).

Like you said about RicoZ, you’re not my enemy either. In fact, none of you are. We’re supposed to be a community, work things out, hold discussions first.

And I also noticed how you could have been treated better, by the way. Like how Nakaner, Mateusz, and Tordanik reverted you without discussing with you first. How multiple users discussed you without you knowing and mass complained on your talk page in the span of less than a week, leaving you to have to juggle 7 conversations at once. How Polarbear analogized you with a book burning iconoclast. How RicoZ talked behind your back. And then someone (me) comes and reverts all of you (sorry about that).

To be fair to them, maybe they actually have an emotional attachment to them (for unknown reasons). Which would explain why they did what they did. Some people don’t want to let go of anything. And it’s tricky to draw the line. I thank Tigerfell for the great work at drawing those lines though.

I also admittedly have some reservations about deleting pages that have actual content in them, somewhat like RicoZ (although I see the benefits Adamant1 outlined of deleting certain pages). At one point (July 2018) I wanted to keep them all, at one point (November 2018) I didn’t care if (and in fact hoped) all of them got deleted, and at another point (February 2019) I didn’t even care if they were deleted or kept during my mass reversion spree. So I’ve changed my mind multiple times during this deletion war. However after what happened a few weeks ago I think I’ve finally formed a concrete opinion.

You, adamant one, are very adamant about this, adamant Adamant1 ;).

Hmm, so my apology about my mass reversion spree of literally everyone on all sides (pro-delete and anti-delete) in the deletion war, including myself, wasn’t effective ;)? I thought it was (and much needed) :).

Thanks Tigerfell ;). Nakaner hasn’t replied yet though.

There is a possibility that Polarbear could persuade the other DWG members to go on his side though. And he could also extend official DWG business over to the deletion war (I haven’t seen a rule that prevents something like that). Especially if a) the other DWG members are doing other things and no one’s in his way, or b) he did enough to persuade them that they follow along.

I completely agree with that ;). But in this case, an actual member of the DWG is involved in the conflict.

By the way, Adamant1, what do you think of my idea about moving (most) old proposals to the original proposers’ userspaces? It solves the category and the search problem. Maybe it’s a chance to cool down the angry mob.

Now I’m actually sick of repeating myself about how I’m sick of repeating myself

You actually have a much better memory then I do about all this stuff. I had forgot about a lot of it, including Constantine being involved at one point. That was quit awhile back if I remember correctly.

I won’t preform anymore deletion requests until its resolved either. Although I don’t want it to be used as a stalling tactic by people who aren’t commenting to get their way. If need be, at some point we should just go ahead with the next step in the process without them (that includes Nakaner not responding).

Maybe. I guess we will see. I don’t think he will though. I think he’s slightly more reasonable then he initially lets on and he also cares about his imagine. Everything we do here comes at the cost of some social capital with other users. I imagine I have way more of it I’m willing to burn in this then he does.

Although I could be wrong, I still don’t think that means a single DWG member has more clout for how things should be ran compared to say a larger group of Wiki members, wiki and forum admins, or even other DWG members. There’s still a process that has to be followed also. The only instances where I’ve seen that not be the case is with a semi unspoken social contract type thing where people that have been here longer or have special “geography” degrees get preferred treatment, like not being called out for bad behavior when they should be. That doesn’t cover things like edit warring though in my opinion.

I’m still undecided on it. I guess its an option and I can see some situations where it might be useful, but I agree with Tigerfell’s critique of it. Ultimately id like some more robust guidelines put in place. It could be used to complement them though. One instance where I think it might be helpful is with abandoned proposal drafts that have very little or no content, and its not clear why the proposals was abandoned. In those instances a lot of times reasons for the abandonment aren’t given and in some cases it might not be clear if deletion is necessarily the best option.

So, I think a good alternative would be to send the person who created the proposal a message saying that its being considered for deletion and if the user doesn’t mind we would like to move it to their user space instead. Along with also asking them why the proposal was abandoned so it can be factored in. In cases of older proposals though there’s a good chance the user isn’t even around anymore. So if there’s no response the page should be deleted, because generally I think its a bad idea to screw with peoples user pages without their permission. I got chided for it myself a few times even when they were superficial changes to their talk pages. So transferring pages to a person’s user space probably isn’t that good either. I only step on people’s toes when its necessary ;).

Should I add it to the draft?

Additionally, RicoZ and I discussed about contesting deletion request at the draft’s talk page. The trade-off was that the contesting user undoes the change and the requestant adds the {{delete proposal}} label afterwards. Any opinions?

It might be good to add it. I’m not sure where in the process it should be though. If the original person who wants the article deleted contacts the original creator of it and then moves it before there’s a discussion it might piss people off. But then if its at the end where the two possible options are moving or deleted then people might always favor moving over deleting. Even if its not the best option. So where it should be in the draft is up to you I guess.

As opposed to what? I’m not really sure what you mean. If your talking about if to discuss the deletion request on the drafts talk page or somewhere else, the draft is best (compared to say a mailing list).

If your asking who should put the {{deletion proposal}} up, the original person or the contesting them, id say the person contesting them, because they should have to say why they are contesting it on the discussion page. Whereas the person requesting the deletion already should be justifying it in the deletion request (so if they started the proposal discussion it would just be redundant). Also, it seems like a more natural path for the person doing the contesting.

I.E. 1. revert → 2. place {{delete proposal}} → 3. give rational.

Compared to 1. place deletion request → 2. receive email about being reverted → 3. login → 4. Place deletion proposal → 5. remember what your justification was and how to dispute the short revert comment → 6. Post discussion message.

Its the difference between 3 steps versus 6. Neither the person making the deletion request or the person disputing should have to jump through a bunch of hoops to it, but its clearly easier on the disputing persons side. So I think it should be on them.

Plus it stops people from 1. reverting and calling it a day 2. reverting and deciding to harass the deletion proposer on their talk page before they can start a discussion on the page of the actual article 3. The person doing the reverting talking the conversation to somewhere else inappropriate like the mailing list. All of which currently happens.

Please have a look at https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/User_talk:Tigerfell/Crafting#%22In_case_that_a_deletion_is_opposed%22.

I suggested this path, because it is shorter and you do not need to revert anything if the page was not emptied when requesting deletion (simply place “proposal” after "{{delete ". I think there were too many reverts causing aggression and anger, so I wanted to remove this step.

Exactly!

If the editor who originally created the proposal has retired from everything OSM, most likely they wouldn’t care if we moved their proposals to their userspaces. They were the creators of them anyway.

If the editor is still active on OSM and the OSM Wiki and still hasn’t replied then we should probably go along with the deletion process, especially if the proposal was created by accident or has no informative content.

Maybe in that case we should create a voting system where users vote to “keep” or “delete” on the talk pages, through or not through RFC. With the more contentious ones anyway. The ones that have no informative content should probably be replaced with {{delete}} without discussion & the admins can decide themselves whether to delete them or not.

As I said, changing a user sub page is some sort of problem…

Why not using a section of the talk page and the usual templates for feature voting…

Whatever is discussed here it seems almost everyone lost interest in this thread so it will be at best the consensus of 2.5 people (pun intended) and I stopped wasting my time.

Either we agree in the wiki or it will go the normal proposal route with RFC call on ml and voting.

Its clear no one was interested in this in first. Including the the couple of people doing the reverting. Since they where obviously making a much bigger deal out of it then it is. The whole reason this discussion is happening is to satisfy those people. So the thing was a waste of all our times in the first place. Since they could have just shoved off to start with instead of reverting me repeatedly because of some stupid personal problem or something. But that didn’t happen. So here we are. Going by the lack of response here and everywhere else though this is essentially a none issue and most of the pages should have just been deleted originally, but its still worth having guidelines despite that, just to keep them from doing this type of thing again if nothing else (and there’s no other good reason I can think of).

Not that it is the consensus of 2.5 people, but so what if it was? plenty of more important decisions having to do with OSM are made by less consensus. At least in this case we did our due diligence to allow people to provide feedback. Which is more then usually happens. If those people decided not to provide feedback though, that’s on them. We aren’t going to say screw the whole thing because other people decided to stay silent about it though.

Are you talking about the guideline proposal or when it comes to certain pages being deleted? If its about the guideline proposal its obviously still being worked on and discussed. As I said above, its on whoever doesn’t participate if they decide not to, not us. Things take time on here sometimes though. That’s life. The 2.5 people that are involved have provided pretty good feedback though that the proposal has been refined based on. So I’m not sure what your complaining about.

If your talking about deletion proposals, its clearly the consensus here that doing an RFC on the mailing list every time someone wants to request a page be deleted is unrealistic, a waste of the mailing lists time, and just not the right medium for it. There’s a good chance that people on the mailing list will just agree with whatever and not actually go over the page. Which is completely understandable. There’s no reason their time should be wasted reviewing a blank page or “bad” page every time someone does a deletion request. Plus, the person doing the deletion request shouldn’t have to manage a discussion about it in multiple mediums. Its hard enough with one. Also, know one really cared or contributed to the discussion when it was brought up in the mailing list. There’s no reason it would be any different, because ultimately this is a completely manufactured none issue, created by a few people that don’t really care about it in the first place.

Either way though, things within the wiki should be dealt with within the wiki. If things can’t be resolved there, then that’s on the wiki and its lack of a good civil community. In cases where consensus or a compromise can’t be reached, the pages should just be deleted in my opinion. In cases where its just a blank or “bad” page getting the deletion request though, which is 99% of the time, I don’t think consensus or a discussion should be used in the first place and the pages should just be deleted. Which I think the 2.5 people here all agree on. So it probably won’t be an issue most of the time anyway.

Its important to remember that not only are we discussing an extremely small percent of proposals out there, the ones out of the deletion requests that might qualify for or merit a dispute conversation is even more tiny. Unless people disregard things by reverting everything, including blank pages. Then they should just be reported to an admin. Before this gets finalized though we should be clear on what deletions requests should be contestable and which shouldn’t.

I am against deleting any proposed features and prefer to keep all of them as an archive. In cases where there is a good tagging for this kind of feature I would create banner at top of proposal template. The exceptions are pages that would fit generally deletion as being essentially blank, created as vandalism etc.

Though I am really dubious on discussing it here - not on OSM wiki where it can be followed and watchlisted or on talk mailing list where it would have larger audience.

Discussing it here combines poor ability to follow discussion and small audience.

I agree with Mateusz, generally we should keep all proposals, with the exception of empty pages and vandalism (and possibly with those pages that the original author wants deleted, and which haven’t had contributions by anyone else, including their “talk” page).
Btw., you can “watch” this forum thread as well, and get notices when new answers are posted

As I already said, you can alternatively discuss that at the draft’s talk page. Current strategy is to formulate a draft which will be posted on the mailing list.

I still do not understand why you want to keep a proposal like https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Talk:Proposed_features/Xian (which Mateusz Konieczny and I recently discussed about). There is zero use, it is effectively an abandoned draft that is almost identical to the tag is_in=Xian and it does not follow the guideline “Do not map you local legislation, if not bound to objects in reality”. We are mostly talking about proposals like this.

Can you please name a reason why this would be worth keeping?

there is a key, a value and a definition. And a suggestion on the talk page why it is not a good tag according to the mapper. And this for a tag that is only useful in a country where mapping is prohibited by law.
I would be interested to know why we should delete it. It will probably not be found by anyone else but people looking for a tag for Xian, and they at least will get some guidance from the talk page.

Please elaborate this. I do not understand the relation between using this tag and prohibition of mapping in mainland China.

Basically, you need a key, value, and a definition and then it is worth keeping?

I would say a key is sufficient, plus desirably a definition.

What I wanted to say is that we can not expect the same amount of contributions from countries where mapping is legally prohibited than from other areas. It is natural that such tags that refer to places where mapping is not allowed, are expanding slower than other tags. And it means that it will probably not get in the way of other mappers, because they will not search for the term.

You still should explain why you believe it would be better to delete this rather than keeping it.

And additionally, to focus the documentation of the wiki on currently relevant content and avoid duplication.

Ok, then let us say I hereby propose feature a=b.
This is worth storing permanently in the wiki even though just I know its meaning, right?

IMHO we have to distinguish. When it comes to focussing the documentation, this should be seen as focussing the linked / structured documentation. Isolated wikipages with few content do not distract anybody. You will not see them (if you do not explicitly look for them). Of course I would not link the xian proposal from a map features page or something like that, nor would I link it from as “see also” or similar, and I would oppose to do so.