Carlos Cámara
Admin
@ccamara@bonfire.cim.warwick.ac.uk
Principal Research Software Engineer at CIM piloting this #bonfire instance. Expect a mix of RT from my mastodon account with genuine posts about #bonfire and the #fediverse
Carlos Cámara
boosted
Another chapter of #AI extracting and abusing the commons. Today is #zenodo 's turn, but before it has been #OpenStreetMap, #Wikipedia... This clearly shows that they are not looking for knowledge (knowledge was already there in the open) but about appropriating and fencing it.
Carlos Cámara
boosted
If you use AI or shrug about AI or talk about AI or love AI or hate AI—please watch this video showing that there's no mind behind it.
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Carlos Cámara
boosted
The recording of the talk "CoMaps: How to make a community based map navigation app based on OpenStreetMap" which @dmlls and @gedankenstuecke gave at State of the Map last Sunday is already out!
If you couldn't watch it live, it's available here: https://peertube.openstreetmap.fr/w/9DGz6jXc2wG93XohZweE8M
A very big thanks to the @sotm video team for getting those videos done so quickly (and of course also to the rest of the organising team for a job so well done!)
2
Carlos Cámara
boosted
What shocked me at #sotm2026 is the gender imbalance in the public and presenters. I counted about 80% men, 20% women in the presenters, and I think that the public was possibly even more strongly biased towards men.
This seems to echo the results of this article from 2019, whose authors surveyed a small sample of contributors (N≈300), and found not only that men represented 87% of them, but also that men were more prolific than women in their contributions. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10708-019-10035-z
One anecdotal datapoint was that the only talk where I have been this weekend, which had more women than men attending, was a talk about mapping accessibility.
I obviously haven't been to all the sessions, so I don't know if this issue was discussed somewhere at some point. But I think that this is rarely a sign of a healthy community. Shouldn't such an imbalance be one of the most urgent problems that we should tackle? Is the OSM community hostile to women? At which stage: are they dissuaded to even enter it, or do they quickly leave after joining? Why?
OriginalPaper
GeoJournal
Quantifying gendered participation in OpenStreetMap: responding to theories of female (under) representation in crowdsourced mapping
Z.
Gardner,
P.
Mooney,
S.
De Sabbata,
L.
Dowthwaite
December 1, 2020
#Environmental Management
#Geography, general
#Human Geography
This paper presents the results of an exploratory quantitative analysis of gendered contributions to the online mapping project OpenStreetMap (OSM), in which previous research has identified a strong male participation bias. On these grounds, theories of representation in volunteered geographic information (VGI) have argued that this kind of crowdsourced data fails to embody the geospatial interests of the wider community. The observed effects of the bias however, remain conspicuously absent from discourses of VGI and gender, which proceed with little sense of impact. This study addresses this void by analysing OSM contributions by gender and thus identifies differences in men’s and women’s mapping practices. An online survey uniquely captured the OSM IDs as well as the declared gender of 293 OSM users. Statistics relating to users’ editing and tagging behaviours openly accessible via the ‘how did you contribute to OSM’ wiki page were subsequently analysed. The results reveal that volumes of overall activity as well editing and tagging actions in OSM remain significantly dominated by men. They also indicate subtle but impactful differences in men’s and women’s preferences for modifying and creating data, as well as the tagging categories to which they contribute. Discourses of gender and ICT, gender relations in online VGI environments and competing motivational factors are implicated in these observations. As well as updating estimates of the gender participation bias in OSM, this paper aims to inform and stimulate subsequent discourses of gender and representation towards a new rationale for widening participation in VGI.
6
Carlos Cámara
boosted
@Armavica totally agree! And while ironically I embody that very hegemonic demographics you're rightly pointing out, my talk at #SOTM2026 ("Whose Knowledge Counts? Analysing Diversity and Exclusion in OpenStreetMap's Tagging Proposals Process") was precisely about this, but in a very specific contribution type: tagging proposals.
The first part of the session covered why maps are not neutral and why the lack of diversity is an issue.
You can see the slides here: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22158699
Carlos Cámara
boosted
Remember 100 years ago when radiation was new and exciting and poorly understood, and companies were putting radiation into everything?
Thankfully we learned our lesson and will never make that mistake again.
Carlos Cámara
boosted
We have updated this instance to the latest 1.0.7 version of #bonfire. The new release includes interesting features and an exciting roadmap / roadbike for the future.
Carlos Cámara-Menoyo
Responsible AI in RSE - a living register to support practitioners, leaders and policymakers
Note
This collaborative post was originally published at the Software Sustainability Blog and was authored by some of the Responsible AI Study Group members: Joseph Shingleton, Carlos Cámara-Menoyo, Oscar Seip, Stephan Druskat, Sam Harrison, Arielle Bennett and B. Almarzouq.
Carlos Cámara
boosted
RE: https://polyglot.city/@Stoori/117118173274259165
20 years ago, normal people avoided technology and techies would jump on the newest gadgets as soon as they could.
Now, normal people buy smart toasters & coffee mugs while every techie I know is on the verge of retreating to the forest
Testing comment from bonfire
1
You can see the extended abstract in OSM Science 2026 Conference Track Proceedings here: doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21576...
https://schema.org/ScholarlyArticle
Zenodo
Whose Knowledge Counts? Analysing Diversity and Exclusion in OpenStreetMap's Tagging Proposals Process
Cámara-Menoyo, Carlos,
Monteath, Timothy
July 26, 2026
This paper analyses how gender inequality shapes OpenStreetMap's (OSM) tagging proposal process, revealing that diversity gaps intensify at higher participation levels. Maps are never neutral — their makers' demographics determine whose realities are represented or silenced. Systematically analysing every tagging proposals and votes since its creation using a purpose-built R package, we found that 59 prolific, mostly European and North American male users dominate proposal approval, while feminised proposals are underrepresented and disproportionately opposed. These findings confirm that structural inequities persist regardless of how well-designed, flexible and well-intended technologies may be. We propose governance reforms to make OSM's decision-making genuinely inclusive.
Carlos Cámara
boosted
On Saturday, I will be giving a talk at #sotm2026 : "Who'se knowledge Counts?", where I will be talking about #inclusion in #OSM . You can see the abstract here: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21576272 and info about the session here: https://2026.stateofthemap.org/sessions/FLYV3H/
I would welcome anyone interested in #feminism, #EDI #DEI to join the session and start a diaglogue
1
A tiny Bonfire feature that we’ve grown quite fond of 🌱
Instance admins can define their own set of default avatars, which are randomly assigned to people who haven’t uploaded a profile picture yet.
It sounds like a very small thing and technically, it is.
But after experimenting with it on the Jacobin community, we noticed how much these little details can contribute to giving an instance its own visual identity and fostering a sense of belonging to a shared digital place.
Not every feature that shapes a community needs to be big. Sometimes it’s just a bunch of tiny avatars 😊
Read more about our work with Jacobin in our case study: bonfirenetworks.org/case-stu...
2 media files
@Bonfire@bonfire.cafe two days ago I was thinking this would be a good nice feature, but didn't want to bother with this. I'm glad you've thought of this already and have implemented. #bonfire team rocks!
Carlos Cámara
boosted
A tiny Bonfire feature that we’ve grown quite fond of 🌱
Instance admins can define their own set of default avatars, which are randomly assigned to people who haven’t uploaded a profile picture yet.
It sounds like a very small thing and technically, it is.
But after experimenting with it on the Jacobin community, we noticed how much these little details can contribute to giving an instance its own visual identity and fostering a sense of belonging to a shared digital place.
Not every feature that shapes a community needs to be big. Sometimes it’s just a bunch of tiny avatars 😊
Read more about our work with Jacobin in our case study: bonfirenetworks.org/case-stu...
2 media files
1
Have you heard about @Bonfire@bonfire.cafe 's #telling #widget?
It is a widget for adding a #fedi comment system to your website (including #WordPress #Drupal... but also #SSG and plain html websites!)
It is also on my top-10 #bonfire features' yet
You can read more about it here: bonfirenetworks.org/telling/
The feature was developed for/with their work with the German edition of Jacobin as part of #bonfire 's #codesign strategy.
You can read more about that experience here: bonfirenetworks.org/case-stu...
