[Talk-us] Undiscussed mass-revert by user Nakaner-repair

Sat Apr 21 13:27:14 UTC 2018

 blockquote, div.yahoo_quoted { margin-left: 0 !important; border-left:1px #715FFA solid !important; padding-left:1ex !important; background-color:white !important; } Nakaner
This is an epic effort and appreciated.
But there are two things that need to be cleared up.
> The choice was to either accept that OSM
is overrun by a army of sockpuppets who ignore us at all or to make the
time/money they invest into editing a waste of time/money by reverting their edits even if it removes good contributions. That's sad but what is the alternative?

It's not a binary choice. The alternative is to establish good dialogue with the communities you are monitoring (the US on this case), and make sure there is awareness and buy in to your proposed action. I don't think that would be difficult or time consuming but does take consideration of other mappers in OSM who you don't regularly communicate with.
> There is no formal policy yet but that doesn't mean that they can do what they want to do. If it is against the interests of the community, it's against the existing unwritten rules.
There is no such thing that gives anyone the right for large scale vigilante actions. There is enough justification to potentially take action (after discussion and with proper communication) -- sock puppets for one -- that you don't need to invoke organized editing.   If and when we do have a policy, we in the osmf will also need to develop clear guidance on how it is communicated and implemented.

Mikel

On Friday, April 20, 2018, 8:22 PM, Michael Reichert <osm-ml at michreichert.de> wrote:

Hi,

Am 20.04.2018 um 17:13 schrieb Ian Dees:
> I noticed that user Nakaner-repair just reverted 1000+ changesets
> throughout the United States without any discussion in the local community.
> Nakaner-repair points to a thread in the German forum [0] that seems to
> indicate that they think these edits were made by paid mappers. Having not
> heard from those suspected paid mappers, they went ahead and reverted
> without discussion from the local community.

TL;DR A group of mappers (presumeably from UTC+5) started adding
highway=service and doing wrong quality assurance on roads in Europe and
the U.S. in mid/end of March. British and later German mappers found
these strange edits last week, some German searched for more accounts,
SomeoneElse and myself wrote changeset comments and SomeoneElse (DWG)
blocked many on them.

Unfortunately, the 0-hour user blocks are not as useful as they are
usually (and I expected them to be). They have been ignored and they
continued editing or created sockpuppets. Longer blocks were ignored and
they continued editing after the block. Changeset comments were not
answered or the response did not answer the question.

Since this week, they don't do any QA on roads any more and only add
highway=service in the U.S. They create new accounts if their old
accounts are blocked. This pattern now repeats day by day and the last
resort was to revert their work because that causes financial damage (I
hope they get paid).

Please see some inline comments/responses on Ian's questions below.

-----------------
The full story:

On 2018-03-29 Will Phillips writes to the Talk-gb mailing list that he
observed "a series of edits with users removing or changing access and
oneway tags". He describes the quality of these edits as "very poor". At
that time "none of them has yet responded to changeset comments".
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk-gb/2018-March/021259.html

SomeoneElse suggests him to write an email to data at osmfoundation.org
(the DWG).
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk-gb/2018-March/021260.html

I am not subscribed to Talk-gb and did not notice it at that time.

On 2018-04-09 tux67 creates a new thread on the German forum because he
found two users (sri_harsha and Premsakhare) editing roads globally
without local knowledge. He asks other mappers to review their edits.
https://forum.openstreetmap.org/viewtopic.php?pid=693849#p693849
(contains changeset links)

Premsakhare had received multiple (!) user blocks at that time. The
oldes block was created after the discussion on Talk-gb.
https://www.openstreetmap.org/user_blocks/1831
He had been blocked because he did not answer changeset comments asking
for the sources being used. The block was removed automatically when
Premsakhare read it. Premsakhare uploaded more changesets but did not
answer the question, SomeoneElse blocked him again, the block expired,
Premsakhare started editing again, SomeoneElse blocked him again, …
https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/Premsakhare/blocks

One hour after tux67's posting on the German forum, user whb commented
that he observed multiple mappers editing roads and intersections
without local knowledge. He found patterns (editor, locale, mapped
features) making it possible to group them. He suspected that they are
accounts of employees of "Mapbox or at least any other company".
https://forum.openstreetmap.org/viewtopic.php?pid=693862#p693862

I asked Mapbox a few hours later. They denied (and I believe it). Mapbox
has been stating clearly if an accounts belongs to them.

Other users comment on the thread sharing the results of the reviews
they did in their local mapping areas. We (users at the forum) came to
the conclusion that they resolve some kind of routing "errors". However
these errors are not always errors. They erroneously

- made oneway streets bidirectional against local surveys and Mapillary
(e.g. https://www.openstreetmap.org/changeset/57929974 and
https://www.openstreetmap.org/changeset/57930358)
- added/deleted turn restrictions
- removed access restrictions or added them although Mapillary imagery
was available at some locations
(https://www.openstreetmap.org/changeset/57959190
- edits as if OSM were a map for cars, not for any type of vehicle

I have not fully checked all changesets but the users reporting that
changes are trustworthy and experienced.

User wambacher assumes that the mappers come from India or Pakistan
because their user names look like other user names from that region.
https://forum.openstreetmap.org/viewtopic.php?pid=693896#p693896
A few days later a mapper wrote a changeset comment using the Bengali
script.

The origin has not been proven but the times of activity are quite
interesting. They seem to be located in UTC+5 (or near that time zone)
and have five days of work per week.

On evening of 2018-04-09 and the day afterwards further user accounts
were found which had similar editing patterns.

Most changeset comments have not been answered at all. If any answer was
written, most questions has been left without any answer or indicated a
lack of training. For example, see
https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/26996470/history and the comments at
https://www.openstreetmap.org/changeset/57793900

On 2018-04-11 a group of mappers (myself, tux67, whb) asked a well known
person to run some queries on their database to search for other
accounts which belong to this group using quite fancy criteria. A huge
thanks goes to all those we found before because they were used to
optimize the query. :-) We found many of them. A similar search was
repeated later.

User list on 2018-04-11    22:16 UTC:
https://forum.openstreetmap.org/viewtopic.php?pid=694208#p694208

I asked the DWG to ask the OWG to look for patterns in the email
addresses and IP addresses used for signup on 2018-04-11 but have not
received any response. I myself doubt if it will really bring us forward
given the recreation of sockpuppets we can observe. But I am still
interested in the results.

At that time I started posting a changeset comment to any account I
found. The comment asked who pays/directs them and to add that answer to
the user profile page. In addition, I asked for the host of the iD
editor they used because they used a quite old iD at that time.

I usually received no answer at all. SomeoneElse (DWG) blocked all of
them who did not answer my question and uploaded more changesets more
than a few hours after my comment. He might have overseen some users but
he kept an eye on the blocked users and re-blocked those who continued
after their first 0-hour block.

On 2018-04-12 mvvieka answered such a comment
(https://www.openstreetmap.org/changeset/57994668). That's the whole answer:
> HI , i'm not working for any organization. Im just a freelancer and
> im just making edits as per the available imagery .

Another mapper wrote
(https://forum.openstreetmap.org/viewtopic.php?pid=694422#p694422):
> Freelance Map Analyst currently working with Point Inside

I continued searching for new users this week and it began to become a
regular task like writing welcome messages to newbies.

I found out at that time that some users downgraded motorways to trunks
in the U.S. I planned to write to Talk-us because I myself am not sure
what mappers in the U.S. define as highway=trunk.

List of users as of 2018-04-17:
https://forum.openstreetmap.org/viewtopic.php?pid=694878#p694878
+ https://forum.openstreetmap.org/viewtopic.php?pid=695171#p695171
+ https://forum.openstreetmap.org/viewtopic.php?pid=695215#p695215

I reverted all changesets of all known users in Europe, Africa, Asia and
Australia/Oceania on 2018-04-18 because the edits in that area where
mainly routing "QA" edits containing many errors (see above). That
revert was driven by their mistakes, not of them being unresponsive. I
decided to exclude North and South America at that time because the
edits there were mix of bad QA and addition of highway=service (good)
and the trunk vs. motorway/primary topic can be highly controversial
(see recent discussion on Talk-us).
The first (non-US) revert: https://www.openstreetmap.org/changeset/58217008

Once the mappers received a user block by SomeoneElse, they stopped
editing but new accounts were created on the next morning (UTC+5). This
happened every day this week. The choice was to either accept that OSM
is overrun by a army of sockpuppets who ignore us at all or to make the
time/money they invest into editing a waste of time/money by reverting
their edits even if it removes good contributions. That's sad but what
is the alternative?

It is up to you to decide if you want to be overrun or if working
communication with other mappers is important to you.

To see more accounts appearing next week, just watch Pascal Neis' list
of new contributors and the list of my changeset comments. Btw, many
spammers pop up there, too, but that's a different topic.

> Some questions:
> 
> Was this action made under the auspices of the Data Working Group?

No. Neither I am a member of DWG nor the changeset comment contains a
"on behalf of DWG". However, I requested requested lots of user blocks
in this case already.

> Has the "directed mapping" policy been approved by the OSMF?

The policy itself has not been formally approved. However, the survey
[1] shows that the community expects organised editors to inform the
community that they belong to [organisation]. There is no formal policy
yet but that doesn't mean that they can do what they want to do. If it
is against the interests of the community, it's against the existing
unwritten rules. The policy will mainly document good practice and
established rules.

> I'd be interested in seeing all of these reverts reverted (at least in the
> US) until discussion can take place.

I will pause reverting their edits in the U.S. Please keep in mind that
some users of that group did "road QA" in the U.S. which might be as
good as their QA in Europe. If you ask me to revert it, I will do it.

Best regards

Michael

[1]
https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Data_Working_Group/Results_of_Organised_Editing_Survey_2017

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