[OSM-talk] Code of conduct for automated (mass-) edits

[Philip Homburg]

In your letter dated Mon, 29 Sep 2008 01:08:50 +0200 you wrote:
>     as OpenStreetMap draws more and more sophisticated users, we're
>     also seeing more scripts or, as they would be called in Wikipedia,
> "bots", modifying data.
> 
> 1. Make a plan of what you want to change, and discuss in relevant
> forum (usu. mailing list). If there are many objections; drop the
> plan. If there are few objections, maybe exempt certain areas or
> objects created by certain people in order to respect their
> objections. Remember that they can easily change things back again
> if you act against their will, so don't even try to play the
> superiority card.  
> 
> I would also accompany this by the notion that if you see an
> automated edit that you believe has problems, and it has not been
> discussed or documented, it's ok to revert it.

I think there should be two technical things in place:

One thing is a structured way of rolling back edits. There should be a way
of reporting large scale edits, and getting them removed from the database. 

The second thing is a reporting script that reports on large scale edits in
a timely fashing.

As far as politics go, I think that it would a good idea to just re-use the
current structure for introducing new map features. Before you run a script
you first propose it and only run it when enough people cast a vote in favor
of running the script.

For example, a good way of completely destroying the JOSM/Validator's
duplicate node detection feature is to fill the database with a huge number of
aumatically generated duplicate nodes. :-(