[OSM-dev] created_by considered harmfull

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

> For the non-advantage that created_by brings, it is rather costly.

You are right in everything you say, but you forget that created_by  
helps us to find problems with certain editors. So it doesn't have  
*no* value at all ;-)

> So here is my proposal with the most immediate action first
> 1. all authors of editor software stop adding created_by tags to  
> new nodes
> in their next release
> 2. all authors of editor software silently surpress the created_by  
> tags
> when uploading edits to existing map features in their next release
> 3. optionally we run a query on the database to delete all existing
> created_by tags.

I don't think the problem is so pressing to call for such drastic  
measures. I would like to repeat a suggestion I've made in the past:

* Change our data model at the API so that instead of every record  
having a last-modified timestamp and a user id, every record only has  
one "changeset id"
* Create a new table "changesets" that stores user id, timestamp,  
editor type and version, plus an optional "commit message"
* Initially, auto-generate one changeset entry for each change that  
is committed, but step by step migrate to a solution where editors  
can issue a "create changeset" call (with optional commit messages)  
which gives them an unique id and have them upload every change  
referencing that changeset id

I have proposed this mainly because I think we need commit messages  
for the benefit of the community (I want to see what the person  
thought he was doing an why!), but it would remove the need for  
"created_by" tags nicely along the way.

Bye
Frederik

-- 
Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frederik at remote.org  ##  N49°00.09' E008°23.33'