[HOT] #ValidationFriday - June 7

[Jean-Marc Liotier]

On 2019-06-07 04:52, Matthew Gibb wrote:

> - Validate! Simply find a project and dive in!

While http://www.missingmaps.org/validate/ and
http://www.missingmaps.org/assets/downloads/MissingMaps_validation_josm_en.pdf
offer practical instructions on how to begin about the validation
business, I feel a gap in guidance on what happens after invalidation. The
advice about how to express constructive criticism in comments is a good
start, but then what ? Even the Organised Editing guidelines only mention
"_plans for a "post-event clean up" to validate edits,
especially if the activity introduces new contributors to
OpenStreetMap_" but omit details.

The contributor is an ephemeral drive-by account set for a mapathon, the
contributor isn't aware of his Openstreeetmap inbox, the contributor
doesn't care that much about quality, the contributor understands that his
changeset doesn't satisfy quality expectations but has no idea how to
proceed... There are many reasons but the common result is that a
validation comment will lead to no action at all: most contributors of bad
data do not clean-up after themselves.

Some projects, such as
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Organised_Editing/Activities/Trains_of_Botswana_mapathon
have clear plans: _"A few days after the event, the core team will look at
the common QA tools (OSMI, Osmose, Keepright) to repair anything that
might have slipped through the cracks_" - but foisting janitorial
responsibilities upon experts doesn't scale: as much as some enjoy
strolling in the garden and pulling the occasional weed, it is not a
popular hobby. Worse, those rare resources spent correcting bad data may
easily make the net value negative.

I do not have a solution, but I wish to stress one observation: the
further upstream the quality assurance, the cheaper it is. I feel that an
onboarding environment (both technical and social) that glorifies quality
rather than quantity might be a step in that direction.
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