[Talk-us] user damages administrative boundaries around Rapid City

[Minh Nguyen]

arch_arch at ... <arch_arch at ...> writes:

> I've detected a user who damages administrative boundaries around Rapid
City. I've tried to contact the
> user but I got no reaction. I've told the mapper that iD editor is
inappropriate, as it has no built in
> validator but he didn't stop the edits.
> 
> I want to ask someone from the US to take care of the case and to involve
the Data Working Group if necessary.
> 
> This boundary got deleted: http://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/194816
> invalid geometry: http://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/195005
> invalid geometry: http://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/194808
> deleted relation: http://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/194807

It's clear that the user simply meant to remove the CDP boundaries (194816
and 194807), an action that many of us on this list (but maybe not all)
would approve of. [1] Unfortunately, the user removed the CDP boundaries by
deleting all the ways that belong to the CDP's relation, roping in members
of neighboring non-CDP boundary relations.

The good news is that Richard Fairhurst patched iD to prevent errors like
this in the future. [2] The bad news is that the fix didn't make it into
1.7.0, the version currently on osm.org. So in the meantime we'll have to
rely on user education.

Echoing Greg's comments, even experienced mappers sometimes hop into iD or
Potlatch to make quick edits. These editors may not be as mature as JOSM
when it comes to relations, but it isn't necessary to dismiss them out of
hand. When it comes to educating new mappers about data entry errors, I've
found them to be more receptive to messages like "please be careful; here's
what to watch out for".

Thanks for bringing up this topic. It's an opportunity to remind mappers new
and old to review their changesets before saving. iD's save panel lists
changes along with validator warnings for some common errors. [3] If iD's
validator is missing a check you consider useful, I'm sure the developers
would appreciate a bug report. [4]

[1] For example, see this thread:
<https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk-us/2015-January/014075.html>
[2] https://github.com/openstreetmap/iD/pull/2526
[3] https://github.com/openstreetmap/iD/blob/master/js/id/validate.js
[4] https://github.com/openstreetmap/iD/issues