[Talk-GB] Voting mechanical edit: UK shop names

Chris Hill osm at raggedred.net
Sat Nov 1 15:35:13 UTC 2014


On 01/11/14 13:36, Dan S wrote:
> 2014-11-01 12:50 GMT+00:00 Richard Fairhurst <richard at systemed.net>:
>> Matthijs Melissen wrote:
>>> Voting is now open for the proposal to unify the names of chain
>>> shops within the UK by renaming them.
>> No, it isn't.
>>
>> Mechanical edits stand or fall by their own merits. They cannot be ok-ed by
>> a vote.
>>
>>  From the Automated Edits Code of Conduct: "We do not require or recommend a
>> formal vote, but if there is significant objection to your plan - and even
>> minorities may be significant! - then change it or drop it altogether."
>>
>> We historically have a low tolerance of mechanical edits and imports in the
>> UK; we prefer to make large-scale changes by hand. That is one of the
>> reasons why the OSM map of the UK is so good. A "come one, come all" vote on
>> the wiki can be trivially gerrymandered into supporting your proposals
>> without any proof of approval by the people who are affected by such a bulk
>> change, i.e. UK mappers.
>>
>> I am not sure where you got the idea of a "vote" for mechanical edits
>> (Wikipedia? wiki.osm.org tag pages?), but there is no precedent for it in
>> OSM and I would ask you to withdraw it.
> The "rationale" part of the webpage* seems to me to set out Matthjis'
> perspective on why to ask for a vote.
>
> Also, Matthijs sent out an RFC email proposing this whole process - he
> got lots of feedback (which he has taken into consideration), but
> no-one objected to the voting mechanism. It's not your fault if you
> only just noticed this happening, of course, but it's a little rude to
> declare "No it isn't" in the sense of shutting him down when he's
> proceeding in such an open and consultative manner. Lots of people
> have discussed Matthijs' proposed changes in the RFC thread and now
> this thread. To me, it seems a good example of consultation.
>

I'm objecting to the voting process now.

I dislike votes to 'approve' tags on the wiki, however when such a tag 
is voted upon the main outcome is that the newly 'approved' tag is 
labelled as such in the wiki. Setting aside other consequences, we are 
all at least free to ignore such a new tag.

Voting on a mechanical edit is completely different. A mechanical edit 
imposes one person's idea of what is correct on other people's edits. 
This is, IMHO, wrong. A simple vote by a handful of people cannot be 
allowed to validate such a change.

If Matthijs were to create an overlay for the map or even a simple list 
showing the places he thinks are wrong, I would be glad check the ones 
in the area I usually edit in, but if he changes things here that are 
contrary to what is on the ground, I'll revert it and ask for Matthijs 
to be blocked from editing, as I would any other vandal.

-- 
Cheers, Chris
user: chillly




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