[Talk-GB] User with long list of slow vandalism

[Tom Chance]

On 23 September 2013 16:01, OpenStreetmap HADW <osmhadw at gmail.com> wrote:

> > * changesets with the same comment that doesn't correspond with the
> > thing they have traced, like "This is a House"
>
> Unfortunately, like subjects on many PC support forums, the average
>  contributor doesn't seem to be able to make useful changeset comments.
> Whilst they are not useful comments, I'm not sure they are any worse
> than maybe the majority.
>

Have a look at them all. There is a difference between comments that are
not useful, and comments that have nothing to do with the edit at all. I
know all about comments because I contact every new user who makes an edit
in my part of London, and the suggestion I most often make is to leave
descriptive comments because they leave none, or useless ones. But this
user comes back every week or so and makes another damaging edit with a
misleading, identical changeset comment. That doesn't look like a string of
innocent mistakes to me.


>
> > * lots of features deleted, in a way that doesn't look like an accident
>
> I only looked in detail at one.


Have a look at more, then, as I have!

Some have no valid geometry at all, just noise. Some do, along with
deletions and bad geometry. What sort of person remains very confused over
many months, deleting and adding data in a useless way and adding comments
like "this is a house" or "this is a nursing home" again and again, and
ignores messages from another user offering help? I came to my conclusion
after looking through lots, and I appreciate it's a big step to block and
revert but I have been watching this user for some time and it looks to me
like vandalism. If I set out to vandalise OSM, the most clever way would be
to keep making lots of small, innocent changes that would probably be
missed.

Regards,
Tom

-- 
http://tom.acrewoods.net   http://twitter.com/tom_chance
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