[Talk-us] Special issues in LA remap

[stevea]

>	I have been working on the LA remap, which mostly involves 
>correcting thousands and thousands of edits by a user named "blars."
>	The odd thing about the "edits" that "blars" did is that they 
>seem to have been done almost robotically. Although many 
>intersections have been changed enough to be marked "modified" by 
>the OSM Inspector, it's difficul to see what, if anything, was done. 
>The poor street alignments from TIGER have not been corrected. 
>Obvious issues, such as a street that no longer exists, have been 
>ignored. Almost every single dead-end street or those with turning 
>circles are "modified," as are many intersections, but, again, bad 
>alignment has not been touched.
>	All this plus the sheer volume of changes makes me think that 
>"blars" used some kind of bot to make these changes. These "edits" 
>corrected or added little, except to make the map "modified" for the 
>new license.
>	Perhaps someone who knows JOSM or other tools better than I 
>do could come up with a way to make these repairs on a mass basis. 
>Or, perhaps, there is a wasy to reverse just what blars did within a 
>certain time frame.
>	I appreciate any help you can give. I've put in hundreds of 
>hours on this and barely scratched the surface.

Hello Charlotte:

I have been watching the fine efforts in greater LA, with impressive 
progress and results (in a "slow and steady" way), so I first wanted 
to congratulate you on your efforts, and especially reaching out to 
this talk group.  You have done much more than scratch the surface, 
you (and others) are making real progress.

One method may be to revert changesets by blars.  Reverting 
changesets can be controversial (it is polite to ask / reach 
consensus with the original author, et cetera).  However, in the case 
of an editor who has not agreed to the new CT, it may be correct for 
OSM users who HAVE agreed to the new CT to establish if/when/how this 
is an OK/proper thing to do.  And then feel OK doing it, and then do 
it.

Technically, reverting a changeset is rather easily done with a JOSM 
plug-in, which you can read about on OSM's wiki.  There is the 
separate issue of IDENTIFYING which changeset to revert, which can be 
"more difficult" and then there is the rather straightforward 
procedure for doing it, which isn't difficult.

But "socially," or more properly stated, in the context of "reaching 
OSM consensus," what does our community think of (rather wholesale) 
reverts of a contributor who has not agreed to the CT?  Are we OK 
with that?  Apologies if this is already clearly stated somewhere. 
But if so, I haven't seen it and it is high time we freshen up 
how/where we are about this.

SteveA
California