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

[Andy Robinson (blackadder-lists)]

Frederik Ramm wrote:
>Sent: 29 September 2008 7:22 PM
>To: Hendrik T. Voelker
>Cc: Talk Openstreetmap
>Subject: Re: [OSM-talk] Code of conduct for automated (mass-) edits
>
>Hi,
>
>Hendrik T. Voelker wrote:
>> Guys, think about one of the most fundamental design principles for
>robust
>> code: Keep it simple.
>
>[...]
>
>> 1. Require scripts to use an SSL certificate that is signed by OSM for
>> authentication
>
>[...]
>
>> 2. As the first step request a Universally Unique Identifier (UUID) from
>the
>> OSM server which acts as transaction number for the batch process and tag
>each
>> Object with it
>
>Maybe everyone has misunderstood me.
>
>I was indeed trying to keep things simple, and the ONLY thing I wanted
>was to reach some agreement between HUMANS that can be communicated to
>potential bot users.
>
>Not a huge battery of technical measures that attempt to regulate bot
>usage, and are prone to fail.
>
>As has been pointed out, 0.6 will bring some advances in the grouping
>and tracking department so PLEASE let's not go overboard with some
>semi-0.6 ideas.
>


Agreed. I've been the victim of bot changes over the last few months which
have been wholly inappropriate and they are a pain in the ass to deal with,
mainly because they have to be sorted out manually, which takes up valuable
mapping/editing time. I'd be a little happier if there was plenty of
information written in the tags about the bot and what the bot was looking
for in the tags when it makes a change. If the user understands what the bot
is doing and its basis plus who to contact re bugs then its less of a
problem to revert or amend. I'd also like to see tags that have been changed
remaining in some format in the tags, perhaps with a bot_change: namespace
or something. Yes, I know the data is in the history but quite frankly I
don't have time to look at the history for each individual item to fix
problems. I want to map.

Cheers

Andy