[Rebuild] Incredible Self-Vandalism

[cenSORINg]

Some days ago an act of SELF-VANDALISM was performed by the OSM coordinators themselves. Under the claim that they wanted to brush off non-licenced data, they damaged or destroyed millions of kms of roads or lines, also points and areas/polygons. Most of the data they destroyed was legitimate! (input by "licenced" contributors)  That has happened because of the stupidly designed bot. Here are some examples of catastrophic results of the stupid algorithm designed by incompetent analysts:



1. The town of Negrești (RO) (http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=46.835&lon=27.4712&zoom=12&layers=M) (as a map point) was deleted. Probably the mapper who first generated the point was unlicenced. Later, a bot designed by Romanian licenced users put on the map all the Romanian localities with a lot of other data (such as the census). Because the 1st contribution was unlicenced, every later contribution was deleted even if it was licenced. (After all, what licence do you need to name a town on the map??) The stupid algorithm didn't consider that the later contributions confirmed and reinforced (therefore, "licenced") the former contribution. Many localities were deleted like that.



2. If an unlicensed member interrupted a valid highway to mark a bridge, that way is now with that fragment missing. Thousands of roads are now chopped in this way. The stupid bot didn’t even care to restore the continuous highways the way they were before the bridge insertion. Now the routing is damaged. 



More stupid outcome: if you try now to repair that road’s continuity by re-adding the deleted bridge, you are in big trouble, because OSM threatens you that you ARE NOT ALLOWED to “restore” (in a precise manner) what the stupid bot has deleted! If the bot deleted something like this:

[pointA-to-pointB]
Tags:
bridge = yes
highway = secondary

… the actual situation will lead you to re-insert exactly the same data! The bridge didn’t move. Or shall we slightly change the points’ coordinates so they don’t match the infamous deleted info?



3. One of the causes for this unbelievable mess lies deeper in the silly design of the very OSM HISTORY. One example of the rot: 


- Member A (having agreed to the licence) makes a way, a road between Paris and Geneva. That would be "version 1". 

- Member B (not having agreed to the license) decides for some reason to split the way at Dijon. Now the initial way has become 2 ways.

- Fragment A (Paris-Dijon) will be "version 2" of the initial way and will list contributors A and B, but fragment B (Dijon-Geneva) will be considered a new way (so "version 1") and ALL the contribution of member A to this fragment will be not recognized any more! 

- Then there comes the stupid bot and deletes the "unlicenced" fragment B, mocking the work of member A as well as of any user of the map. 

This way millions of "legitimate" kms of ways have been destroyed.  





Don't think these examples are minor. Multiply them by 10000 and understand the bombardment effect on the shredded map. I am sure other contributors may give a lot of examples of other catastrophic results of this unbelievable terrorist act.



Converted maps have become useless. The OSM layers or the compatible generated maps (such as in the Garmin format) have been used by local emergency services or transportation companies. Now the converted maps have become useless or even dangerously misleading. 



A lot of my 4-year long contributions are now destroyed by the stupid bot. My town and the surrounding area look now like after a bombardment. Street names that I collected with effort, one-way properties, POIs, buildings are a mess. Here is one example of what the map looks like after the brushoff (like many contributors can find in their areas): http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=47.16585&lon=27.55892&zoom=16&layers=M



A lot of hard work has been destroyed just because some “unlicenced” passing user only changed a point. It has killed roads, relations, transportation routes, rivers, POIs… 



This should be a reason to stop this mockery and to try to revert the effects and maybe design a more intelligent brushoff bot. I suppose now not even some massive revert is possible, since many users have begun the repair and then there will be a lot of duplicate ways, points, polygons. 



I've seen there were many who clapped their hands with joy when the bot started the self-vandalism. Stop applauding. Speak up to make the responsible ones repair the damage. (So OSM contributors won't leave for Google maps in bitterness.)



Sorin



 
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