[OSM-talk] Potlatch and the destruction of good work (N6 Ireland)

[Lester Caine]

Lars Aronsson wrote:
> Tom Hughes wrote:
> 
>> He's a little reluctant to post here because the archives (which 
>> he has read) include email addresses that are only fairly 
>> lightly obfuscated.
> 
> This happens all the time on Wikipedia.  People want to help, but 
> can't disclose who they are.  Perhaps because they are better 
> people than us who out ourselves?  Do they expect to be treated 
> with kindness?  In return for what?  I'm no big fan of anonymity.

I think the problem here is not simply wanting to remain anonymous but the 
fear of increasing spam because of 'publication' of email addresses.
( Actually THAT is yet another reason 'reply to' address should be the list 
for list posts - but I will not rake that hot potato - everyone posting here 
has already had their email address culled ;) ) Personally I have to live with 
the fact that my domain name is used without my permission simply because 
there is no way of controlling 'spoofing' and probably 80%+ of the traffic TO 
me is simply scrapped - amongst which I KNOW there ARE legitimate emails being 
culled by email relays simply because my email address has been spoofed. I 
can't help feeling that a small charge per message ( 0.005$ or so ) to send 
them would go a long way to killing a lot of the crap, but no doubt the 
'crappers' would work out how to benefit from that as well :( and would work 
out away to avoid paying.
I just live with the fact that just using my email address will get it on a 
list somewhere as even obfuscated names are no problem to cull automatically. 
There are people out there who get paid to build email lists, so a little 
'nospam' or <a> is fairly pointless now?

PERSONALLY - I see no reason that any submissions to the core data should be 
done anonymously and that MUST be set up as a rule going forward. If someone 
does not like it then to be honest - tough. Accessing things like email 
address FOR the identified commit is a different matter? And if people 
understand the difference between a display name and their identity EVERYBODY 
should be happier!

MESSAGING to users should be via the site so that email addresses do not need 
to be posted and I WOULD include the email list in that - although as I say it 
is purely academic. The historic situation needs to be resolved, but I think 
that there needs to be a little more messaging related to changes being 
posted. Like the CIA messaging or commit logs for code. I think that the N6 
type problems would be prevented if - when someone posts an anonymous change 
to an existing element - that has to be approved by the person who's work is 
being modified?

I still have not got round to finding out how I monitor who is making changes 
in my area so this may already be possible? Actually I still haven't found the 
time to update to a new set of tools that work with the current API so I can't 
get on updating my own data. :(

-- 
Lester Caine - G8HFL
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