[talk-ph] Media Coverage

maning sambale emmanuel.sambale at gmail.com
Mon Jan 19 03:56:58 GMT 2009


My take:
On attracting more contributors:
Yes! By all means.

On vandalism:
We all know OSM is a wiki.  So nobody can stop vandalism, in my
experience most newbie mappers do not really vandalize, they're just
making mistakes.  We all do at some point of our mapping.

That being said, "with more eyeballs, all bugs are shallow".
Currently there are no tools to effectively monitor perceived
vandalism (intentional or not).  The future api should be able to
address some of them:
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/OSM_Protocol_Version_0.6

>> Agree I am sick of seeing on maps "MY house" or "randy's house" listed..
I don't see a problem with this as long as we follow the addressing schema:
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Proposed_features/House_numbers/Karlsruhe_Schema

On moderating changes:
I don't think any tool for approving/rejecting changes could work.
Only more human eyes can work.  I use ito's osm mapper to monitor
changes in my mapping area.  On thing I can say for prospective
vandals.  Don't mess with my mapping area!  I will revert your edits
right away.  In most cases, wala pa namang nag-ba-vandal :).  Any mode
of policing might be futile.

On mistakes by newbies:
I usually contact them with a friendly message via the osm send
message function.  If I see them making mistakes, I contact them
directly and ask them to correct them.  I don't revert edits by other
especially if it's not around my immediate mapping area.  I also use
openstreetbugs to flag errors.

OSM is a self-service project anybody can do whatever they want.
Others may I ask then: So can I trust OSM data?  My take, can you
trust government data in the Philippines:
http://epsg4253.wordpress.com/2008/10/30/comparing-philippine-road-data/

Keep on mapping.


On Mon, Jan 19, 2009 at 10:37 AM, Jim Morgan <jim at datalude.com> wrote:
> ian lopez wrote, On Monday, January 19, 2009 10:12 AM:
>> The media coverage may be good for the Pinoy OSM community, but I'm
>> probably concerned that this would bring in "vandals". Hopefully, it
>> wouldn't happen.
>
> You know the saying .... there's no such thing as bad publicity.
>
> Well yes, I guess there is always a risk, but we can't have it both ways. We need more contributors, so we need more coverage. I think most people will just use the data to export maps in any case, but if they do that, then we also get exposure when people ask them where they got the map from. I think the actual mapping bit will only appeal to a certain kind of person.
>
> But this is an interesting point. What protection do we have against the deletion of information, accidental or otherwise? I remember when I started on OSM, a large area I'd worked on was deleted, but I think it was eventually restored from a backup. Can we roll back changes? Specifically, can we roll back changes made by a particular user? Are backups held at OSM central, or are we responsible for holding them ourselves.
>
> Its a tricky one to police. Should we have an identity check for people signing up? Verification by phone for example. Probably not, as its against the ethos of Open-ness.
>
> Should we have a moderator who needs to approve changes? This is how wikipedia copes with the problem. Maybe if we could  have moderator approval for changes over a certain number of nodes? Just thinking aloud here. I'm guessing none of this control is available within the OSM backend. But perhaps they could build it in if it is requested.
>
> Just for the record, I'm a professional paranoiac: I'm in IT security, so these are the sorts of questions I have to ask my clients every day.
>
> Jim
>
>
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-- 
cheers,
maning
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"Freedom is still the most radical idea of all" -N.Branden
wiki: http://esambale.wikispaces.com/
blog: http://epsg4253.wordpress.com/
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