[OSM-dev] Editors should advise users of new messages

[John Robert Peterson]

Although this may reach the same fundamental end (some of the time) this is
definitely not the correct way to go.

If a new and budding mapper arrives, and starts getting something slightly
wrong with tagging conventions or relations etc, but is clearly just
misunderstanding rather than being malicious, they certainly should not be
blocked. if they are any of the following could happen:
<>They will declare it "broken" and lose interest;
<>They will work out what's going on and take offence (and rightly so)
causing them to leave;
<>They realise that they have stuffed up, and that it's caused a big
problem, so leave in embarrassment, because "this mapping thing is too
complicated, it's so easy to make mistakes and get people angry".

In each of the above cases we lose a mapper that could have gone on to sort
out a chunk of a city.

Not to mention it's rude to mess about with other people's accounts without
good reason. The admin load is also significant.

Imagine the scene, you join a new gym, and the first couple of times you go,
you leave a towel lying some where by mistake. The third time you go to swip
in, a siren goes off and a bunch of security heavy men grab you and bundle
you into a small room and tell you off for it. Result: you leave
perminently.

Blocks have their place: sorting out serial ar$e holes.

JR

On 5 June 2010 01:27, John Smith <deltafoxtrot256 at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 5 June 2010 10:02, Alan Mintz <Alan_Mintz+OSM at earthlink.net<Alan_Mintz%2BOSM at earthlink.net>>
> wrote:
> > Perhaps OSM editors should be able to check for new messages and advise
> the
> > user?
>
> Isn't that what the block feature is for?
>
> _______________________________________________
> dev mailing list
> dev at openstreetmap.org
> http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/dev
>
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