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

Richard Fairhurst richard at systemeD.net
Thu Jul 26 09:46:51 BST 2007


You have no idea how much my heart sinks when I read a subject line  
like this. :|

Dermot McNally wrote:

> [...]
> My ideas for improvements in no particular order:
>
> * All Potlatch edits tagged with username, method of generating email
> to named user.
> * All edits tagged with username (how else can you enforce community spirit?)
> * Anonymous editing still possible, but not alteration of existing   
> ways or nodes
> * A read-only flag that we can lay down on data we consider stable,
> switchable by editors but fulfilling a "safety catch" function
> * UNDO FOR POTLATCH!!! (OK, I lied about the lack of priority)

As has already been observed, the issue isn't specific to Potlatch  
(phew!); and edits are already 'tagged', never anonymous.

I'm currently starting work on a rollback function for Potlatch, now  
that I've finished the unwayed segment support. I can't pretend it'll  
happen overnight because it's not a simple piece of coding. It will,  
as part of the same UI, tell you who has worked on a given way in the  
past (subject to them making their edits public, of course, which is a  
whole-OSM restriction and not a Potlatch-specific one); and this will  
be clickable so you can send them a message.

> Finally, I need some advice on how to go about fixing things without
> causing further strife. Somewhere out there is a mapper who thinks
> it's valid to tag a roadway that doesn't exist yet.

You could try contacting them, though it's a bit hacky:

1. Select the way in question to find its ID - let's say it's 567890
2. Go to http://www.openstreetmap.org/api/0.4/way/567890
3. Look for the person who last edited it, e.g. user="Richard"
4. If they have a proper username, try and work out who they are (via  
the wiki/lists?) and contact them
5. If they have a name of the form user_12345, go to  
http://www.openstreetmap.org/message/new/12345, and send them a message

Needs to be much easier. --> svn accounts are given out that way -->

cheers
Richard





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