An interesting comment has recently been made by dreamy, a Korean OpenStreetMap contributor, on cultural differences in OpenStreetMap. The topic of how different cultures cooperate in OSM and what challenges this creates has interested me for a long time, so i wanted to point my readers to these comments and share a few thoughts of my own.

We in the cultural West have often very limited insight into Eastern (and also Southern) views on OpenStreetMap and often, when we get a glimpse into those cultures in OSM, we do so through people largely assimilated into a western culture – because they are the ones who often can best communicate in western languages.

Side note (and recommendation) to German speaking readers: For more background on the political/cultural concept of the West i can recommend a recent podcast by Mick Klöcker.

As you probably know, the broad agreement seems to be that Western cultures perceive themselves to be more individualist, while Eastern cultures think of themselves as more collectivist. The linked comment seems to frame this slightly differently in the OSM context as Anarchy vs. Authority (with authority not being primarily the authority of individual humans but of values and order principles) – with the de-facto state of the moment being that of anarchy.

I see substantial elements of anarchy in the way OSM works these days but i would like to suggest that this is less something that is inherent to how OSM works in the context of the cultural West. A few examples:

• While not of much practical weight these days, the fundamental values of OSM form a fairly clear framework of values that could serve as a guiding principle and value system. The question is more how it came that these values have so little practical significance these days (for some discussion see here).
• The origin of consensus based decision making in western cultures is not at all tied to anarchy but stems from strongly collectivist communities (like the Quaker movement and other religious communities).

Could it be that the anarchy you can widely observe these days in OSM is more related to the struggles of the more individualist parts of the western culture with the inherently collectivist aspects of OSM?

What i would be very interested to hear is ideas from the cultural East of how to practically counter the anarchy in OSM without ending up with dominance of special interests rather than harmony, universally beneficial order, moderation and collective responsibility. Especially with a huge percentage of community members having grown up in the west, in societies where individual advancement is largely put above the collective good.