[talk-ph] Vandalism by user Niwre Erv Apotseg

[Andy Townsend]

Hello,

Andy from OSM's Data Working Group here.

On 15/03/2020 07:24, Timeo Gut wrote:
> I just noticed that the user Niwre Erv Apotseg has been conducting rampant vandalism in Davao City and some Davao del Sur areas for the past 15 days or possibly longer. I've been looking through about 20 of his changesets and every single one is packed with edits that range from highly questionable to obviously intentional vandalism.

What I'd normally suggest in cases like this is to add at least one 
fairly detailed changeset discussion comment explaining that 
"OpenStreetMap is a map of the world as it really exists, not as you'd 
like it to be, and it is therefore not OK to add imaginary things to 
OpenStreetMap".  Also explain how you know that a certain feature is 
imaginary.

I'd also comment on other changesets as well explaining how X is 
obviously fake and does not belong in OpenStreetMap.  They've made 225 
changesets so I wouldn't suggest that you need to comment on all of 
them, but it helps if several different people politely comment on a few 
of them.

These comments will be emailed to the user and will also appear at 
http://resultmaps.neis-one.org/osm-discussion-comments?uid=10839391 and 
we (the DWG) can then initially block the user for not explaining why 
the features that they are adding are real.


>
> To systematically clean up this mess would take many days if not weeks. Is there any way to revert his changesets and to prevent this user from causing further damage?


It is possible to "revert everything by a particular user", though it 
will need manual intervention when someone else has editing something 
after the problem mapper did (this particularly affects relations, 
obviously).  For this reason it's easier to revert problem changes by a 
particular user if they haven't been "half cleaned up" first.

We can prevent this user account from accessing OpenStreetMap, either 
until they have read a message or for a period of time, but we can't 
easily prevent them from creating a different account and continuing 
from there.

Although we do get some vandals who create lots of accounts this is 
relatively rare in OSM, once actual human beings starting explaining to 
people why they shouldn't add rubbish to OSM they usually stop.

Best Regards,

Andy Townsend, from OSM's Data Working Group.