[Talk-us] take responsibility, not control.

[Steven Johnson]

Excellent post, Richard. +1 to your suggestion that we all "assume good faith". We should all collaborate and encourage camaraderie between mappers.  

--SEJ

Sent from my electronic tether. 

> On Nov 18, 2013, at 12:12, Richard Weait <richard at weait.com> wrote:
> 
> When you find a suspicious edit, try to be part of the solution,
> rather than merely a reporting system.  :-)
> 
> If you are experienced enough, attempt to determine which account
> introduced the suspicious data.  Contact that account through the user
> mail system.  Presume good faith; they may well be a new and
> enthusiastic mapper with an incomplete understanding of OpenStreetMap.
> They might also be more experienced than you are and be making some
> form of advanced edit with which you are unfamiliar.  Your goal is to
> make contact with the mapper in question, and find out what they
> intended with their edit.  Ideally, either they will learn something
> and become a better mapper, or you will.  :-)
> 
> If you aren't experienced enough to do this on your own, contact a
> more-experienced mapper who you trust for their judgement and ask for
> their assistance.  Follow along so that you can proceed with less help
> next time.
> 
> If you aren't able to get a satisfactory response within a reasonable
> time, say a week or two, consider asking other mappers for their
> opinion on the edits.  Are they really a problem, or simply rare or
> idiosyncratic?  Consider as a group if the data should stay or not.
> Please note that a "satisfactory response" is not restricted to
> another mapper agreeing with you.  :-)
> 
> Repair or revert data that is incorrect.  Get help from a
> more-experienced mapper if you haven't done this before.
> 
> All of this should happen before you consider reaching out to the Data
> Working Group.  The DWG and the OpenStreetMap sysadmins, do have
> additional tools for dealing with spammers, vandals and persistent,
> umm, "whackos".  But these tools are rather heavy and blunt
> instruments.  The DWG wield these tools with exquisite finesse and
> with surgical precision but you can help a great deal by solving
> problems before they require intervention from DWG.  Reserve the DWG
> for those things that you can not reasonably do for yourself.
> 
> You can make the initial contact and do the basic research.  Please do.
> 
> Take responsibility for improving the map (we all do), but also take
> responsibility for improving the mappers.  Temper this by
> understanding that the mapper who you improve may well be yourself.
> And that's just fine, too.  :-)
> 
> Best Regards and Happy Mapping,
> 
> Richard
> 
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