[OSM-dev] Vandalism how to proceed?

[Frederik Ramm]

Apo,

Apollinaris Schoell wrote:
> any ideas on how to deal with vandalism of a technically skilled user?

What you have given us here is not really an example of vandalism. You 
seem to have someone who thinks that certain roads should rather be 
tertiary, and who writes arrogant e-mails. (But anyone can be made to 
write arrogant e-mails given the right input so this doesn't say much.)

And while other "vandals" rarely bother to put proper changeset comments 
(or they write "piss off" and things like that), this guy explains what 
he is doing and why. He might still be wrong but at least he talks about it:

http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/mk408/edits

Unless this guy is really good at cloaking his "vandalism", he looks 
like somebody who does a lot of work and who truly believes that he 
makes OSM better. It should be possible to engage him in a discussion. I 
do not know anything about the exchanges between him and the multiple 
users who contacted him, but does the possibility exist that these 
exchanges have perhaps been initiated in a way that put him in the 
defensive?

You're telling us how you have spent time investigating and writing 
scripts and reverting his edits and all - but to be honest, from the 
information you have given us, it looks like more time should have been 
spent on the human side rather than on the technical side!

I'd say calm down, go slow, try to talk to him - if he doesn't like 
mailing lists then ask him if he'd prefer a meeting in person or what. 
It's not like 3500 roads changed from residential to tertiary need to be 
fixed instantly - if we decide to change them back a few months from now 
we can still do it.

Bye
Frederik

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