[Talk-us] My personal Difficult USA Mapper situation update

[Clay Smalley]

In this specific case, I have been marking Texas frontage roads the same
way you have, and it annoys me as well when NE2 changes this.

I think, however, that it's more important to keep the data open and
editable by anyone. There needs to be a better way to solve disputes like
this, without imposing a blanket punishment on everyone, when the vast
majority of us have done nothing wrong.


On Thu, Nov 1, 2012 at 6:27 PM, Sam Iacullo <sjiacullo at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hello all,
>
> This email will be divided into two parts. The first contains specifics
> about the email that touched off the discussion about mapper issues, which
> I will call "COMPLAINT'. If you want to skip this section for my
> opinion/commentary about the issue at large, you can scroll down to "MY TWO
> CENTS"
>
> COMPLAINT
> Since my personal situation apparently lit up a bit of a firestorm, I'd
> just like to bring to light exactly what happened in my situation. In the
> spirit of keeping this entire discussion public, my request for him to
> refrain from editing things that were already edited was such.
>
>
> >On 2012-10-31 07:06:15 UTC homeslice60148 wrote: This is the second time
> you have ruined hours of work that I have put into my map with bots.
> Please, please, stop using bots, and stay out of places you don't live in
> and have no knowledge of.
>
>   >>On 31 October 2012 at 12:00 UTC NE2 wrote: What the fuck are you
> talking about?
> >>On 31 October 2012 at 12:01 UTC NE2 wrote: Wait, you mean this?
> http://www.openstreetmap.org/browse/way/131637116 Why the hell would you
> use a secondary to get between a motorway and a primary? It's you that's
> ruining work by changing every frontage road to secondary.
>
> >>>On 1 November 2012 at 22:26 UTC homeslice60148 wrote: From the Texas
> OSM wiki: "Primary: A highway that is a main thoroughfare or links larger
> cities and that does not meet any higher criteria. Business route through
> cities. May be multi-lane and have a lot of business’. A very busy and
> important road. 55mph or greater speed limit except in urban areas. In
> rural areas probably has shoulders or breakdown lanes. This covers State
> Highways.
>
> >>>Secondary: Urban arterials that connect to higher highway networks.
> Rural highways that connects smaller cities although may not be the most
> traveled route. Less busy than Primary with fewer business’. Blvd, Ave,
> most city thorough fairs, freeway feeder roads in urban areas, hard paved,
> striped, 2 or more lanes in each direction of travel, may or may not be
> divided and/or one-way, 45-55mph or greater. May or may not have shoulders.
> Grade crossings controlled by traffic lights with few if any stop signs."
>
> >>>By this very specific definition, the very vast majority of access
> roads in Texas are secondary roads. I do not expect you to know this, since
> you do not live in the state, and from the situation we had together in
> January, you have not read (or have read and disregarded) the common
> practices of mapping in this area. The road level system DOES NOT mean that
> the road between a motorway and a primary MUST be a primary. This is nearly
> the exact same problem we had in January.
>
> For those who do not know, there was another issue we had together in
> January where NE2 went around the entire state Farm-To-Market highway
> system and used bots to delete a MASSIVE amount of information (some edits
> were so severe that he just left a ref number and a highway tag) with no
> regard to the standard of tagging roads as per the Texas wiki. That's where
> it stands as of this minute.
>
>
> Now that's gone over, time for "MY TWO CENTS"
>
> It is my personal opinion that the "Open" part of OSM is a double-edged
> sword. The ease of data entry and usage, along with the flexibility of the
> project as a whole are the core of what OSM is about. Since mapping with
> OSM involves following "guidelines" more than actual rules or laws, there
> is no system of "punishment". Just to be clear, I am NOT advocating a
> system of justice, or laws, but there does seem to be a need for
> regulation. However, the more regulation and enforcement that are involved,
> the more restrictive the system becomes. Some of my ideas:
>
> -Gradually "unlocking" the world to new users (Since OSM is about mapping
> the areas we know best, start with a fixed radius around the person's home.
> This could involve a tutorial of sorts, such as, "This is your street. Are
> the spellings correct? Is there a speed limit? Is it lit at night? Are
> there houses or other buildings? Are there addresses?" etc. After a certain
> amount of time/tutorials passed, the amount of data, or the ability to
> delete data could be unlocked by the user? I would have no idea as to how
> to rank the validity of these new edits, but maybe linking them to a
> "buddy" existing user with experience? This would promote local community
> building, and improve not only the quality of the map, but the quantity.
>
> -Having a system of moderators based on areas of knowledge. (Say in
> descending order of power, "Local resident, former resident, tourist," etc.
> I will use myself for this example. I currently live in San Antonio, TX but
> I have lived in Madison, Wisconsin.  Should I edit an area in Madison, an
> "alert" of the changeset could be sent to a local resident to review and
> can give feedback to my username. Their review would not be an
> accept/reject level, but if the edit is ranked very poor, this could be
> noted in the offending user's profile. There could also be restrictions
> based on deleting/editing existing data vs. adding new data based on the
> person's "knowledge" of the area. This could also limit large-scale data
> edits or changesets with very large bounding boxes to those who are
> trusted/verified by admins. On the downside, this opens the door to rogue
> admins and or moderators, but maybe there could be additional safeguards
> put in place.
>
> -However, none of this could be possible without a system of user ranking.
> Feedback, types/validity of edits, ability to "buddy" users, edit larger
> areas, etc. could all be rolled into this. There would need to be some sort
> of leveling system built into this.
>
> I've been thinking about this for a long time, but have not brought them
> up because the need for them didn't seem to be there. However, with my
> email to the US group earlier this week showed that I am not necessarily
> alone in thinking that there needs to be some sort of additional levels of
> moderators. I realize that most of my ideas are impossible to implement,
> especially retroactively. Part of the beauty of OSM is that the mappers are
> mostly self-policing, but the ease of editing large amounts of data has
> shown that a few number of people can have a large impact.
>
> Sam Iacullo
>
> San Antonio, TX
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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>


-- 
Clay Smalley
University of Texas at Austin, Class of 2015
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