[OSM-dev] finding OSM users by their home locations

[Tom Hughes]

Russ Nelson wrote:

> So, being intolerant of boring, repetitive activities, I've written a  
> program to find OSM users by their home location.  You give it a  
> lat,lon, and the radius in degrees of the circle in which you want to  
> find people, and it repeatedly changes your home location until it's  
> gotten everyone.

I had heard rumours that such a program existed...

> Is this program a good thing or a bad thing?  If it's a good thing,  
> then great, I'll use it.  If it's a bad thing, then how do we stop  
> other people less cooperative than myself from writing the same program?

Well it's certainly bad from a technological point of view, and from the 
point of view of the stress it potentially places on the site. The 
correct way to solve the problem is to enhance the facilities the site 
offers for visualising mappers locations.

We may also of course want to strengthen the privacy controls we offer 
users at the same time.

Tom

-- 
Tom Hughes (tom at compton.nu)
http://www.compton.nu/