[Talk-us] Sock-puppet accounts (was "More strangeness in Baltimore")

[Andy Townsend]

On 19/09/2015 22:59, Elliott Plack wrote:
> Hans: I saw they had been blocked but it expired: 
> https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/Police%20Department%20Of%20New%20York%20City%20Of%20New%20York/blocks
>
> On Sat, Sep 19, 2015 at 1:40 PM Hans De Kryger 
> <hans.dekryger13 at gmail.com <mailto:hans.dekryger13 at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>     Did his new account get blocked too?
>
>     On Sep 15, 2015 12:22 PM, "Elliott Plack" <elliott.plack at gmail.com
>     <mailto:elliott.plack at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>         This changeset has the exact same extent of the earlier ones
>         from the BmoreHomicide user. Seems like they made a new
>         account. Watch that one for any additional changesets.
>

(earlier contents snipped)

It's always a balance between blocking for a short time (after which a 
vandal might return with the same account) and blocking a long time into 
the future (which might just cause them to create a sock-puppet account 
that would be more difficult to detect). Ultimately we just have to 
ensure that we don't get bored dealing with problems until after the 
vandal gets bored creating them.

I mention this now because someone yesterday tried to recreate the World 
Trade Center as it was pre-2001:

https://www.openstreetmap.org/changeset/34271693

I reverted and blocked the user again after seeing comments on the 
changeset discussions via http://resultmaps.neis-one.org/osm-discussions 
.  The user in this case had already been creating fantasy / historical 
maps in the UK and elsewhere and (after trying to get them via other 
means to not do it) had been blocked previously.

It's possible that this particular user might return with a different 
user name, and detecting that they have done so will need mappers local 
to or familiar with an area to spot the problem and flag it up.

The majority of new users aren't vandals, and most "problematic 
changesets" aren't caused by vandals either, but by enthusiastic new 
users for whom something goes wrong in the editor, or well-meaning more 
experienced users trying to "search/replace the world" who don't really 
understand the nuances of the tags they're changing (actually changing 
meaning rather than just mispellings etc.), which means that any 
comments in the first instance need to "assume good faith", even when 
something went badly wrong with the edit.

One of the easiest ways to keep track of new users is probably

http://resultmaps.neis-one.org/newestosm.php?c=United%20States#2/43.6/-110.0

(zoom in on a map to see new users in the last 7 days in an area) and 
for new edits in an area an RSS feed from one of the 
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Quality_assurance#WhoDidIt instances.

Best Regards,

Andy Townsend (SomeoneElse)


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