[OSM-talk] Make OSM more Wiki-like

[Andy Robinson]

Dirk-Lüder Kreie wrote:
>Sent: 17 January 2007 1:16 AM
>To: talk at openstreetmap.org
>Subject: [OSM-talk] Make OSM more Wiki-like
>
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>Hi everyone
>
>I was wondering if there is a way to make OSM more wiki-like, especially
>with respect to the history of any item, allowing to see who has edited
>what and when for every contributor, that way if things happen like last
>year's auto-conversion of segments in Hamburg to highway=unclassified
>tagged ways, one can if not easily revert, then at least notify the
>person doing the conversions that he is doing more harm than good.
>Actually having a sort-of "watchlist" for the nodes, segments and ways
>one has created or modified would help even more.
>
>I'm bringing this issue up again, because a similar thing has happened
>in Bremen, where I and Etric Celine map, and there were segments that
>should be ways with railway=rail or railway=tram that had been converted
>to highway=unclassified ways. luckily all my ways that had
>highway=unclassified had also the name attribute, so selecting the
>automatically converted ways in JOSM was not too difficult, and I only
>accidentally killed 2 ways of Etric Celine which didn't have the name
>tag (I notified him of my proceedings).
>
>So in my eyes OSM basically needs a better vandalism control, of the
>sort of the "many eyeballs" principle, with adequate tools for everyone
>to at least identify the perpetrator of (accidental or willfull) vandalism.
>
>my 2 cents
>
>Dirk-Lüder "Deelkar" Kreie
>

This is something we would all like to see and it's been discussed several
times in the past. Access to the history information has always been
envisaged and the ability to manage that history aka wiki rollback functions
has always been part of the expected platform.

Till now its not been so pressing a need to get this resolved but with
nearly 300 editors making map edits each month (and rising) this probably
now needs to be resolved sooner rather than later.

I'm sure SteveC will say it will all be a lot easier under the Rails
implementation etc but there are other issues to put to bed, as I recall one
of the main ones was privacy concerns. There are some users here who wish
always to remain anonymous and believe that contributions should not require
their identification. Personally I feel that as long as we are identifiable
by the system (through a basic username - yes I do think registration should
continue for edits) and that communication is done through the system to
protect privacy, then there really isn’t any argument. This would ensure
that the process of mapping is transparent to all and we can all continue to
have confidence in the data. I've not had any doubts about data integrity at
all to date but at some point it may come and we should have the provisions
in place to deal with it should it happen before we have to deal with it by
fire fighting.

A first tentative step for me would be to see the history data implemented
in JOSM.

Cheers

Andy

Andy Robinson
Andy_J_Robinson at blueyonder.co.uk

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