[OSM-talk] Undo just got a lot more complicated

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

Nic Roets wrote:
> Let's say a newbie messes up a region near you. A few weeks later you
> discover it and confronts the user who admits his mistake. So you fire up
> your undo script (if you're lucky enough to have one).
> 
> It will work where the newbie was the last user to edit stuff. Except it's
> impossible for a script to detect the difference between
> * a good user manually repairing the vandalism, perhaps adding a few things
> AND
> * a bot fixing spelling mistakes, a bot fixing potlatch mistakes and a bot
> fixing mistakes made by the previous two bots.

I believe that in serious cases, one would really have to revert the 
whole area to the last known good state and maybe send messages to 
everyone whose edits were reverted.

Reverting on any nontrivial scale is already an art form because we have 
so many contributors that unless the error is noticed extremely quickly, 
many add-on-edits or attempted manual repairs will always have happened 
before any automated revert can kick in.

As long as bots use their own accounts or another means of making 
themselves known (as is suggested in the code of conduct here: 
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/index.php/Automated_Edits/Code_of_Conduct), 
then any revert script can easily discern automated edits from human ones.

Bye
Frederik

-- 
Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frederik at remote.org  ##  N49°00'09" E008°23'33"