[OSM-talk] [Spam] Revert a changeset

Teemu Koskinen teemu.koskinen at mbnet.fi
Tue Aug 18 20:08:41 BST 2009


On Tue, 18 Aug 2009 20:48:03 +0300, andrzej zaborowski <balrogg at gmail.com>  
wrote:

> 2009/8/18 Peter Miller <peter.miller at itoworld.com>:
>> On 18 Aug 2009, at 14:57, Teemu Koskinen wrote:
>>> Could somebody please revert this changeset:
>>> http://www.openstreetmap.org/browse/changeset/2168210
>>>
>>> The moving of the nodes across the Atlantic is obviously wrong.
>>
>> Do check out this page for guidance and the email address for requests
>> to the data working group.
>> http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Vandalism
>>

I don't think this case was deliberate vandalism, other edits from the  
user seems to be good.

>> Note that I have been working on this page today and have added a
>> section for 'speedy response' in cases where a failure to respond
>> within hours could lead to highly visible damage to the rendered maps
>> or changes in sensitive areas (for example Washington - particularly
>> sensitive given the support and visibility given to OSM by the
>> Whitehouse).
>
> Note that most incorrect edits spanning more than a few nodes need a
> speedy response because soon people start making edits on top of the
> unwanted changeset and reverting it becomes more difficult.
>

What we need, as has been previously discussed on the list, is a similar  
mechanism that wikipedia has that will revert an edit easily, maybe even  
 from the website ui.

> Since I had the setup for this ready, I reverted the changeset 2168210
> in my changeset
> http://www.openstreetmap.org/browse/changeset/2192016
> but I had to make a couple of edits before uploading it:
>
> * xybot had helpfully made an edit on top of some of the nodes
> removing a spurious tag and causing conflicts.
> * I did not revert the creation of node 469327157 (a parking) which
> seems genuine.
> * Something really strange: node
> http://www.openstreetmap.org/browse/node/270798013/history is edited
> two times inside the same changesets and revert.pl didn't deal
> correctly with this.
>

There still seems to be some problem, the way  
http://www.openstreetmap.org/browse/way/39175980 still goes across the  
Atlantic, but it looks different than before.


>>
>> Personally I think we need a huge effort to be ready for damaging
>> vandalism and much better tools to spot potential errors in a much
>> more sophisticated way.
>
> Agreed.
>

I spotted this with the Geofabriks OSM Inspector, but that's still a bit  
too slow to update, it would be much better if it updated at least hourly  
or even from the minute diffs.

The revert tools should also be made to look what exactly was modified in  
the changeset. Eg. if a node was moved, but tags were left untouched, and  
after that someone else modified only the tags but didn't move the node,  
reverting the first change should only move the node back to it's original  
position and not change the tags back as those were changed by someone  
else.


Teemu Koskinen




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