In this specific case, I have been marking Texas frontage roads the same way you have, and it annoys me as well when NE2 changes this.<div><br></div><div>I think, however, that it's more important to keep the data open and editable by anyone. There needs to be a better way to solve disputes like this, without imposing a blanket punishment on everyone, when the vast majority of us have done nothing wrong.</div>
<div class="gmail_extra"><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, Nov 1, 2012 at 6:27 PM, Sam Iacullo <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:sjiacullo@gmail.com" target="_blank">sjiacullo@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
Hello all, <br><br>This email will be divided into two parts. The first contains specifics about the email that touched off the discussion about mapper issues, which I will call "COMPLAINT'. If you want to skip this section for my opinion/commentary about the issue at large, you can scroll down to "MY TWO CENTS"<br>
<br>COMPLAINT<br>Since my personal situation apparently lit up a bit of a firestorm, I'd just like to bring to light exactly what happened in my situation. In the spirit of keeping this entire discussion public, my request for him to refrain from editing things that were already edited was such. <br>
<br><p>>On 2012-10-31 07:06:15 UTC homeslice60148 wrote: This is the second time you have ruined hours of work that I have put
into my map with bots. Please, please, stop using bots, and stay out of
places you don't live in and have no knowledge of. </p>
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</blockquote>
<p>
</p><div>
>>On 31 October 2012 at 12:00 UTC NE2 wrote: What the fuck are you talking about?<br>>>On 31 October 2012 at 12:01 UTC NE2 wrote: Wait, you mean this? <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/browse/way/131637116" target="_blank">http://www.openstreetmap.org/browse/way/131637116</a>
Why the hell would you use a secondary to get between a motorway and a
primary? It's you that's ruining work by changing every frontage road to
secondary.</div>
<p>>>>On 1 November 2012 at 22:26 UTC homeslice60148 wrote: From the Texas OSM wiki: "Primary: A highway that is a main thoroughfare or links larger
cities and that does not meet any higher criteria. Business route
through cities. May be multi-lane and have a lot of business’. A very
busy and important road. 55mph or greater speed limit except in urban
areas. In rural areas probably has shoulders or breakdown lanes. This
covers State Highways.</p><p>>>>Secondary: Urban arterials that connect to higher highway networks.
Rural highways that connects smaller cities although may not be the most
traveled route. Less busy than Primary with fewer business’. Blvd, Ave,
most city thorough fairs, freeway feeder roads in urban areas, hard
paved, striped, 2 or more lanes in each direction of travel, may or may
not be divided and/or one-way, 45-55mph or greater. May or may not have
shoulders. Grade crossings controlled by traffic lights with few if any
stop signs."</p><p>>>>By this very specific definition, the very vast majority of access
roads in Texas are secondary roads. I do not expect you to know this,
since you do not live in the state, and from the situation we had
together in January, you have not read (or have read and disregarded)
the common practices of mapping in this area. The road level system DOES
NOT mean that the road between a motorway and a primary MUST be a
primary. This is nearly the exact same problem we had in January.<br></p><p>For those who do not know, there was another issue we had together in January where NE2 went around the entire state Farm-To-Market highway system and used bots to delete a MASSIVE amount of information (some edits were so severe that he just left a ref number and a highway tag) with no regard to the standard of tagging roads as per the Texas wiki. That's where it stands as of this minute. <br>
</p><p><br></p><p>Now that's gone over, time for "MY TWO CENTS"</p><p>It is my personal opinion that the "Open" part of OSM is a double-edged sword. The ease of data entry and usage, along with the flexibility of the project as a whole are the core of what OSM is about. Since mapping with OSM involves following "guidelines" more than actual rules or laws, there is no system of "punishment". Just to be clear, I am NOT advocating a system of justice, or laws, but there does seem to be a need for regulation. However, the more regulation and enforcement that are involved, the more restrictive the system becomes. Some of my ideas:</p>
<p>-Gradually "unlocking" the world to new users (Since OSM is about mapping the areas we know best, start with a fixed radius around the person's home. This could involve a tutorial of sorts, such as, "This is your street. Are the spellings correct? Is there a speed limit? Is it lit at night? Are there houses or other buildings? Are there addresses?" etc. After a certain amount of time/tutorials passed, the amount of data, or the ability to delete data could be unlocked by the user? I would have no idea as to how to rank the validity of these new edits, but maybe linking them to a "buddy" existing user with experience? This would promote local community building, and improve not only the quality of the map, but the quantity. <br>
</p><p>-Having a system of moderators based on areas of knowledge. (Say in descending order of power, "Local resident, former resident, tourist," etc. I will use myself for this example. I currently live in San Antonio, TX but I have lived in Madison, Wisconsin. Should I edit an area in Madison, an "alert" of the changeset could be sent to a local resident to review and can give feedback to my username. Their review would not be an accept/reject level, but if the edit is ranked very poor, this could be noted in the offending user's profile. There could also be restrictions based on deleting/editing existing data vs. adding new data based on the person's "knowledge" of the area. This could also limit large-scale data edits or changesets with very large bounding boxes to those who are trusted/verified by admins. On the downside, this opens the door to rogue admins and or moderators, but maybe there could be additional safeguards put in place. <br>
</p><p>-However, none of this could be possible without a system of user ranking. Feedback, types/validity of edits, ability to "buddy" users, edit larger areas, etc. could all be rolled into this. There would need to be some sort of leveling system built into this. <br>
</p><p>I've been thinking about this for a long time, but have not brought them up because the need for them didn't seem to be there. However, with my email to the US group earlier this week showed that I am not necessarily alone in thinking that there needs to be some sort of additional levels of moderators. I realize that most of my ideas are impossible to implement, especially retroactively. Part of the beauty of OSM is that the mappers are mostly self-policing, but the ease of editing large amounts of data has shown that a few number of people can have a large impact. <br>
</p><p>Sam Iacullo</p><p>San Antonio, TX<br></p><p><br></p><p><br></p><p><br></p><p><br></p><p><br></p><br><br>
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