[OSM-dev] 0.6

[bvh]

On Tue, May 06, 2008 at 09:25:24AM +0100, SteveC wrote:
> Without reference to the ongoing debate or the changeset stuff,
> 
> is there anything else that should be put in 0.6? Probably a good idea  
> to talk about it now.

Well, since 0.6 is all about giving us some tools to deal with
vandalism, has there been any thought about the deliberate abuse of
OSM as a tool in some of the worlds geographical conflicts?
For example what we've seen with Cyprus last year.

Changesets are good, but they are only feasible to restore occasional
damage. The usual response of reverting until they give up relies
on you being more fanatical then they are. Given that some of these
conflicts have participants that make Sinn Fein and the DUP seem
like push-overs, that is unlikely. There are only two reasons why
this is not yet (a big) problem : osm is not yet very prominent and
neo-mapping technology is still too big a technology leap for some
of these regions. But OSM wants to change that!

How difficult would it be to add a mechanism for whitelists? Ie
for some areas only allow changes if you are on the whitelist.
If you are not -> save the changeset diff into a special folder
for review by a moderator.

This would still allow occasional contributors (for example a tourist
in Cyprus who is staying in a resort on a newly developed lot) to
do their thing. But instead of  changes going directly to the
database, they go in the review queue.

The only real support in the API would be a call that says
'yes you can edit in this area' so that editors can warn their
users about what is going on. Even if we don't implement the
whitelist, having the api already there (and returning always
true for now) might help transition later on.

cu bart