[Talk-GB] Hello world and automated change proposal: Add missing URL scheme on UK's Pubs websites

[Frederik Ramm]

Rodrigo,

On 27.09.20 17:28, Rodrigo Díez Villamuera wrote:
> After some time using OSM as a user, I decided to make my first step as
> a contributor, hence this email and the proposal inside.

If your first idea of "how to contribute to OSM" is "how to write a
script that runs an automated edit on the body of OSM data", then
something is amiss!

The change you plan to execute is of limited use. Yes, it ensures more
conformity in the data, but it will be a temporary fix (since new
"wrong" URLs can be added at any time). Anyone consuming OSM data must
be able to work with URLs that miss a schema, and indeed today any
browser can do that.

So what your edit does is, it "touches" lots of objects and adds no
meaningful information whatsoever. It creates load on the database; it
creates a new version of every object you touch which, informationally
speaking, is identical to the old version. It produces larger diff
files, larger history files, and on top of that runs the risk of making
data look more current than it is ("oh, this pub has last been changed
by someone two months ago, so surely it will still be in business" when
in fact the last OSMer who saw that pub with their own eyes did so five
years ago).

There are many, many better ways to contribute to OSM than runnning a
useless automated conformity edit. Take a notebook or mobile editor, go
outside, check if the phone booths on OSM are still there on the ground,
add a few opening times, or even trees for that matter - a single hour
of such original work is more useful to OSM that what you are proposing
here.

Remember: OSM is not an IT project.

Bye
Frederik

-- 
Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frederik at remote.org  ##  N49°00'09" E008°23'33"