[OSM-talk] Re: privacy policy

Etienne 80n80n at gmail.com
Thu Jul 27 18:34:04 BST 2006


If we were to allow anonymous/casual users to add street names then it would
be OK, but only if we had some other controls in place.

Possible controls include:
- If a user adds a street name then the possibility to tag it with "I know
the name because I live/work near here".  Any IP address (or registered
account) that tags more than 20 street names this way would be suspect.
- The possibility to tag with some documentary evidence that can be
independently verified (a link to a public accessible photograph or voice
recording, etc).

While wikipedia allows anonymous contributions, it does *require* that
sources are verifiable (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Verifiability).
OSM should be equally, if not more, stringent about this.
Wikipedia's verifiability policy states:
1. Articles should contain only material that has been published by
reputable sources. 2. Editors adding new material to an article should cite
a reputable source, or it may be removed by any editor. 3. The obligation to
provide a reputable source lies with the editors wishing to include the
material, not on those seeking to remove it.Obviously point 1 is not
applicable to OSM, but the other two seem very relevant and we should be
thinking about how to ensure verfiablity.

For OSM the key point of verifiablity is that the source was copyright
free.  Tracklogs, photos, etc are all good verifiable sources.  If we take
the same view as wikipedia then the onus is on the contributor to *prove*,
to a reasonable degree, that they didn't just look it up on a map.

Etienne


On 7/27/06, Andy Robinson <Andy_J_Robinson at blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:
>
>
> Barnett, Phillip wrote:
> >Sent: 27 July 2006 17:17
> >To: Erik Johansson; Martyn Welch
> >Cc: talk at openstreetmap.org
> >Subject: RE: [OSM-talk] Re: privacy policy
> >
> >1) Anybody who's committed enough to collect GPS tracks, extract them
> >from his/her GPS device, upload them to OSM server, download an area and
> >edit it, and then upload the changes, surely isn't going to find logging
> >in a huge inconvenience.
>
> No for these users I don't think it's an issue to login. I think what
> others
> are interested in is making the process for less dedicated users much
> simpler and the need to login is a barrier to fully opening up and
> achieving
> simplicity for users. In the future users may not be focused upon map
> creation but on what extra things can be done using the map data as a
> basis.
>
> Andy
>
> >
> >-----Original Message-----
> >From: talk-bounces at openstreetmap.org
> >[mailto:talk-bounces at openstreetmap.org] On Behalf Of Erik Johansson
> >Sent: 27 July 2006 16:17
> >To: Martyn Welch
> >Cc: talk at openstreetmap.org
> >Subject: Re: [OSM-talk] Re: privacy policy
> >
> >On 7/27/06, Martyn Welch <martyn at welchs.me.uk> wrote:
> >> On Thursday 27 July 2006 13:11, Immanuel Scholz wrote:
> >> > Other than wikipedia, OSM does not allow the edit without a login
> >> > (anonymous).
> >> >
> >> > I like to have the possibility to edit data without to have to
> >> > create an account first. I don't care whether the IP address is used
> >
> >> > in this case (as wikipedia does) or not.
> >>
> >> I *really* don't think that this is a good idea and am supprised that
> >> it works so well for wikipedia.
> >
> >Well this is the point is it does work for Wikipedia, and your problems
> >can be used against OSM even with the current model with email accounts.
> >If they were used in that way, FUD would be it's name.
> >
> >
> >> Can you provide more reasons as to why anonymous write access would be
> >good?
> >
> >1. easy for user
> >2. easy for dev (e.g. 3rd party web interfaces) 3. same level of
> >security, with less hassel.
> >
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