[OSM-dev] Vandalism how to proceed?

[Apollinaris Schoell]

On 23 Mar 2010, at 24:32 , John Smith wrote:

> On 23 March 2010 17:26, Apollinaris Schoell <aschoell at gmail.com> wrote:
>> has the block user function ever be used?
> 
> There is debate over how much it would actually help, given that it's
> trivial to add another account and do more damage.

I know. at least it could delay things a bit.

> 
>> If anyone want't to check it started with this changeset of mass upgrades from residential to tertiary of approx 3500 roads
>> http://www.openstreetmap.org/browse/changeset/3515112
>> http://www.openstreetmap.org/browse/changeset/3518792
>> http://www.openstreetmap.org/browse/changeset/3519089
> 
> It might be easiest to just track his change sets and revert them…

how? as soon as multiple edits on a object are done a revert tool must know which versions of which tag to reset too. Another user could have done a useful edit in between. 
I try to write tools to do it without creating more damage but this is really tricky. the programming part is really the simplest of it.
I am not even talking about splitting/merging  roads, just tag changes which are relatively easy to track.
And the worst of all this is if someone comes up with a good tool it' shouldn't be provided to anyone except fully trusted users. But this is another discussion long time ago how to define a trusted user?
To be really sure to revert things I'd need to go back analyze all his edits and the to see them all reverted the next day. this is way beyond the time I can spend.