[Imports] "readonly" tag for imported data (ask "simple" editors to not modify)?

[Jaak Laineste]

On 26.04.2011, at 16:55, Richard Fairhurst wrote:

> Jorge Gustavo Rocha wrote:
>> [...]
>> No one is saying that it shouldn't be editable.
> 
> Jan said "pass the message to editors such as Potlatch that they need not
> bother editing these features". I'm replying that Potlatch will not honour
> such a request, and explaining why.

There are some pretty good reasons not to allow editing, some of them are already implemented like:
 - do not allow editing if your username is blocked
 - do not allow if you are not authenticated
 - do not allow editing if your IP is know to produce bad content (IP blocking)

 The common point of all of them is to keep map quality high, avoid vandalism. They say "do not change it - sorry, but we have reasons to think you cannot make the map better". Hopefully OSM will be significant enough to attract more and more users, including bad users, so there is need for some extra protection in long run. In some cases limiting some data edits to specific user group could be useful, in other cases something softer like confirmation message as suggested by "readonly" tag proposal, in some cases two-phase approval system. Something what you can see also in other crowd-sourced texts like Wikipedia. If these tools are not misused (also real danger), then it will not do OSM less editable.

Of course this kind of notifications/protections should be implemented in API level, not just in the editors.

 Enabling real user levels could be useful for the community development also: think of being honored as "OSM king of the city" with some (not too many) special rights and also moral obligations. I've mapped for years and still have same user level as any newcomer :(

Jaak