[OSM-talk] gaining rights with experience, trust systems for on-line communities

[Dave Stubbs]

On 26/07/07, Peter Miller <peter.miller at itoworld.com> wrote:
> Other community systems allow people to build up trust over time (ebay for
> example).
>
> Possibly newbies might be restricted from altering the geometry of existing
> features until they have been accepted by other editors and haven't earned
> it.
>
> Until then they can either add new features in an existing areas, add tags
> to existing features or work in virgin territory.
>

The problem with this is that, once the map has been mostly completed,
most of the changes people will make will be tweaking existing stuff.
ie: I've completed most of putney, but someone notices I've misspelled
their street (typo say), so they go in to change it and are told they
have to do some major editing before they can correct their street.
That wouldn't make sense, and they'd probably leave and never return,
especially as they might have to travel many miles to find something
not done.

That's just an example, but there are hundreds of such minor changes
I'd expect people to want to make to somewhere, without having to get
involved in the project in any way.

I suppose the alternative there is to have some kind of request
system, where people report changes that should be made and a "mapper"
does it... but that's not really a wiki anymore.