I want to say something from my own perspective for Drinking Water Map, and option is my own, not a community members consensus. If other community members have thoughts it is only properly for them to speak for themselves.

Drinking Water Map is a organization to organization corporate-project, it is not wise to ban some certain people, and also not a mature things to do. But if we count the actions of e-info, I thought they will have a consistent action plan, at least interacting with outside will have a consistent action plan. But it was not the case, community member of OpenStreetMap had to reply to questions that already was answered, no one had read the written notes. I am very disappointed about e-info, being a environmental organization for 10 years, someone had to reply to already answered questions, had to explained to already told future vision.

Orthree on Flickr, CC-BY 2.0

The decision to choose OpenStreetMap database for data points and also background map, is a pure political decision. Undoubtedly if something was political, it should be judge properly, counting the cons and pros. If it was decided, e-info and OpenStreetMap community of Taiwan should doing both their best to achieve the goal, not keep questioning the decision.

OpenStreetMap is a global project, can obtain all existing stuffs with geographical information. It is heavily influenced by Wikipedia, using the similar open source, community-driven co-editing structure. It is started in 2004 and now OpenStreetMap have expand to all world, even in Taiwan there is a community drawing stuffs, monitoring the quality of the data. There are many different topic group like bus, hiking, bicycle, food, and wheelchair infrastructure etc..

As a 10 years old environment organization, E-info is more organized and much more famous than OpenStreetMap, with much more resource. It is expected that E-info had much more man power, but they just want to work in front the computer monitors, not verified data on the ground, adding water points just by surveying on site.

If you just use government released open data with coordinate, I can just do it by myself, no need to handle by someone else.

If two side work together, one not agree with other, no one said something, the outside people have no idea. But if you do not listen to the community explaining the mechanism of open content community, and how they update their data, it is a big big trouble.

One important point is the note point handling, you have to get the exact location by geocoding, and finally mark it on OpenStreetMap database. OpenStreetMap project is just like its sister project Wikipedia, there is a strict license mode, data which are not compatible will be removed eventuality. The other example is Mapping Party, is neither happening.

E-info is also a media, knowing the way of media promotion, have release press release several times, let Drinking Water map a famous thing. But the recent 10 thousand people mark the location of drinking water point is a disaster, the OpenStreetMap community is very nervous about it. The community is afraid about the problem editing, it needs double time to check and fix, and even remove the data. The report drinking water point quality is a big problem, and leave to people not familiar with OpenStreetMap is also a questionable thing.

OpenStreetMap is not a geek project like its open source counterpart, recruiting transport fans, bus fans, bicycle lovers and hiking lovers. Now OpenStreetMap is adapted by big corporation, like Flickr, Apple, Facebook, Uber, even Niantic use OpenStreetMap for calculate the odds of monsters appearance, and the in-game map display. There are also some government agency in Taiwan using OpenStreetMap, like real-time house price registration map, Taiwan 100 years historical map. OpenStreetMap is a small community compare to some frontend community, but it has more exposure than ever, and different project that recruit people.

There is a disadvantage of community, that there is no single voice, community member will join the project they have interested. We in OpenStreetMap community still have trouble to recruit people, which means still lots of work to do. But for the bright side, we can embrace different people from different background, and make the community much bigger and diverse.

In my final words, I still want to thank E-info when OpenStreeetMap is still not known in Taiwan, there are not much project going, wanting to work with the community in Taiwan. By adding drinking points on Drinking Water Map, becoming a example of OpenStreetMap data application, just like a offline Map App. We could use offline map to find drinking water, not only for the locals, but also foreigners who travel to Taiwan, they may not know E-info, and no ideal about Drinking Water Map.

Now the community in Taiwan have the capacity to make sure the data quality is good, keeping OpenStreetMap project going on. There is no end day of mapping the whole world. The code of Drinking Water Map is forked to OSM-TW Github, I believe in community limited time and resource, we could improve Drinking Water Map together.