[Moderation] Rogue newbie mapper in Copenhagen

Mark Williams mark.666 at blueyonder.co.uk
Mon Nov 23 15:47:31 GMT 2009


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Peter Miller wrote:
> On 21 Nov 2009, at 15:10, Morten Kjeldgaard wrote:
> 
>> Hi,
>>
>> I sent the following message to osmf-talk, but only having received a
>> single reply, I am wondering whether it was the right place to send  
>> it.
>>
>> In the meantime, the email exchange on talk-dk has continued, and the
>> in face of even more requests to stop his actions, the rogue newbie
>> appears to be even more defiant.
> 
> Thank you for your post.
> 
> I instigated that list a while back and expected it to quickly become  
> the place where people would discuss responses to vandalism, suitable  
> software resources so support the patrolling of new mappers and  
> repairing the map after dodgy edits.
> 
> Unfortunately, it seems that the community is still waiting for  
> someone else to get seriously stuck into the whole issue.
> 
> There are scripts that people can run to revert change-sets that have  
> not had more work done on them afterwards. Can someone help out with  
> this?
> 
> Also, any suggestions of how to get more work going in this area in  
> general - or am I missing something?
> 
> 
> 
> Regards,
> 
> 
> Peter
> 
> 
>> Cheers,
>> Morten (mok0)
>>
>>
>> ---------
>>
>> We have in the last week or so had an intense diskussion with an
>> apparently rogue newbie [0] on the talk-dk list.
>>
>> He presented himself as someone who had done "the massive changes" in
>> the bicycle way system, and he would continue to go ahead "full speed"
>> no matter what anyone said. He said that he dislikes the (legal)
>> cycleway=track tags, and was going to change all those to parallel
>> highway=bicycle ways. His motivation is:
>>
>>> A seperat bike lane has a seperat life and should be:
>>>
>>> highway-cycleway
>>>
>>> That gives you a blue exctra line/road!
>> (cf. a single posting in english for some reason [1]).
>>
>> His edits are indeed massive and spread over the entire Copenhagen  
>> area.
>>
>> His attitude in the email discussion has been very defiant, and when
>> asked to hold back for having a discussion first, he has dismissed
>> that with "I am using the german and dutch method" (whatever that
>> means), and "please let me know why we should not do things like it's
>> done in Germany and Netherlands." He appears to ask for a discussion,
>> but apparently disregards objections and insists on compliance with
>> his approach.
>>
>> Inspecting his work, it is obvious that it is technically of poor
>> quality, and many artefacts have been introduced such as jagged
>> connections to crossing side roads, bumps on T-intersections etc. I am
>> suspecious that the edits are "living-room" edits without survey.
>>
>> It is true that cycleways in Denmark are sometimes tagged and
>> sometimes traced as parallel ways on the main road. The consensus is,
>> (in my interpretation) that a cycleway is defined the way it is for
>> some reason, and the decision of the original mapper should be
>> respected unless you perform a new survey and/or consult with the
>> original mapper.
>>
>> He has not responded to other mappers' statements that the cycleway
>> infrastructure in Denmark is different from some other countries, and
>> that the danish mapping community has not yet settled on common
>> guidelines on how
>> to do this.
>>
>> What is the experience of the readership of this list on how to deal
>> with rogue mappers? How do we decide whether or not to roll back his
>> edits? Is there a specific code of conduct or guidelines for the OSM
>> that can help in this regard?
>>
>> I am on purpose sending to the osmf-talk list and not osm-talk or  
>> talk-
>> dk because I do not want to unnecessarily fuel the fire at this point.
>>
>>
>> Regards,
>> Morten (mok0)

This is certainly a more appropriate forum for such things.

My inclination is to say we should revert him if a substantial number or
proportion of mappers in the area feel it to be appropriate to do so.

Certainly the observations above would support such an action, and
perhaps produce a rather more respectful attitude for the future in this
character who would thus see the loss of a fair bit of his work. On the
other hand, we might lose an energetic (well, within the living-room
perhaps) mapper - opinions may vary as to the best value here!

I think we have sort of foundered on having regular tools for this sort
of action, as it is largely in the hands of a few; not that I want every
Tom Dick & Heinrich to be reverting right left & centre.

Additionally despite considerable discussion, there remains no formal
plan of what criteria to apply, and we are still discussing individual
cases on their merits - perhaps that's good, but I for one would prefer
to see a line drawn, cross this & you get reverted if anyone requests
it, approach it & we'll consider the possibility.

Personally, I would suggest that the following conditions need meeting:
- - The changes have provoked a negative reaction in a number* of
established & relevant mappers.
- - There is a lack of backup (GPS traces, named sources) underpinning the
data - most constructive mappers will have this data, even if they
haven't posted it [yet].
- - The data fails to demonstrate a useful contribution to the map
overall, whether this is in terms of accuracy, relevance or other
applicable criteria.

* An absolute number or a proportion of those active in an area, such
that in a really busy / active area more people are needed than in a
one-man town.

These criteria would fit all the Liam123, RR8 characters I have seen to
date without being too onerous to prove. The Cyprus edit-war was less
clear, with a 1:1 argument, so that would still have been [rightly]
brought to discussion in the group.

If we had a body of opinion on what to do, preferably stated clearly on
the wiki, this might encourage a positive response where needed. Clearly
OSMF aren't banning people, so it appears that regular reversions are
the way to deter nuisances - there can't be much fun in making daft
edits if they vanish again, nor can anyone impose a unilateral view
should this happen.


In the meantime, perhaps if a number of the Conpenhagen-ites would like
to recommend this for a reversion...


Mark
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