[OSM-dev] A new take on the "mutable" idea

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

Matt Amos wrote:
> bots are bad, m'kay? especially if the person who "violates" the
> immutable rule has his own revert server. also, this system becomes
> useless the moment someone teaches an editor to automatically apply
> the signature or immutable rule.

I might not have been clear enough here. It is plain obvious that this 
idea will not protect anything against editing. This whole idea deals 
only with the well-meaning half of the universe - with people who 
actually *want* to know that someone else considered a certain object 
"special" and "not to be edited without good reason". It is actually a 
kind of human-to-human messaging system, not a secret super duper 
automatic bot revert edit protect whatever.

Of course it would make sense (and not render the system useless!) to 
implement the scheme in editors and have the editor display a pop-up 
note saying something like "the previous editor of this item has 
specially flagged this item <list source tag> <list changeset comment> 
<....>, do you want to upload your change anyway?".

Bye
Frederik

-- 
Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frederik at remote.org  ##  N49°00'09" E008°23'33"