[OSM-talk] Disallow Anonymous Edits NOW
Frederik Ramm
frederik at remote.org
Mon Oct 15 10:59:57 BST 2007
Hi,
> No, you're wrong. It is not hard to work out a semi-anonymous
> editor's identity from their gps traces and map edits.
We are *not* talking GPS traces here. GPS traces can be marked
"private" on upload even if your OSM edits are public, and I see no
problem with that - having to contact someone about a GPS trace is a
rare use case.
> It allows anybody (at any point in the future) to correllate all
> your movements, where you live, who your friends are, where you
> work, where you buy your milk. That is most certainly loss of freedom.
This argument is built on the assumption that GPS traces would be
automatically public. That assumption is false, so the argument does
not hold.
> I do agree that there should be a way to contact anonymous editors
> however, but sending a message to "most recent editor of node XYZ"
This has been discussed in the past but it is next to worthless. If
you are dealing with someone who has introduced errors in your area,
you want to see the full amount of what he/she did, and then you can
send him/her a meaningful message and start a dialogue. If all you
can do is guess that a number of edits were probably made by the same
person then you can't even define the full extent of the problem, you
might make wrong guesses, you might have to send the same message to
the "last editor of" 1000 objects just to be sure that you really get
all of them.
Such a feature might seem a compromise at first glance, but in my
eyes it is of next to no use. In any case it will not be suitable to
defuse the problem I was talking about initially. Having an
"anonymous user" ruining your work creates a lot of tension. Knowing
that it is "fred037" ruining your work helps a lot, psychologically.
Bye
Frederik
--
Frederik Ramm ## eMail frederik at remote.org ## N49°00.09' E008°23.33'
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