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

[Tom Chance]

On Thu, 26 Jul 2007 14:50:48 +0100, "Dave Stubbs"
<osm.list at randomjunk.co.uk> wrote:
> 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.
> 
> 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.
> 
> 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.

And then the "mapper" has to go out and survey every little change, or you
get an abusive mapper blocking changes for personal / political / no good
reasons.


One thing is for sure... the current system is not good enough. What are
the systems we could use? These aren't all mutually exclusive, feel free to
complete.

- make it possible to contact the editor of any change, rather than the
current "voluntarily make your identity public" model
- a means of seeing all changes in an area between days x and y
- wiki/svn/cvs "rollback" functionality for specific
nodes/segments/ways/defined areas
- a moderation queue for new/inexperienced/untrusted/anonymous editors
- editing restrictions for new/inexperienced/untrusted/anonymous editors

All of these present their own particular problems except, so far as I can
see, the first two. They just need somebody to spend the time hacking them,
and would be a big step forward for those of us who consider ourselves
custodians of particular areas.

Kind regards,
Tom