[OSM-talk] RR8 - Possible International Vandal (assistance required in various countries)

[Richard Fairhurst]

Dermot McNally wrote:
> FFS Tom, you can't have it both ways. I understand and respect 
> that you don't want the final decision resting, by default, with you 
> as the man with the stick. This being so, you have to be prepared 
> to assess the claims of individual mappers on their merits, having 
> regard to the facts.

No.

The "you" in "you have to be prepared to assess" is not Tom, it's OSMF. OSMF
is the nearest to a community-appointed arbiter that we have. In particular,
it's OSMF's Data Working Group:
    http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Data_working_group

There are two questions re: RR8; "should his edits be reverted?" and "should
he be banned?". We have unanimous agreement on the former, we have tools to
do it and people prepared to use them, so all it needs is someone, anyone,
to do it. You have suggested that in Ireland that's already happened, so
that's good.

(Reverts aren't really an issue, to be honest. Many of us do them every day
on an individual level - just clearing up a daft merge, an accidental
deletion, or a confused mistagging. I didn't ask the mailing list for
approval to revert the city of "Bournemouth Square" [sic] this morning, or
to reinstate NCN6 into Kendal yesterday, and so on. The problem comes from
edit wars, i.e. when a revert is followed by a reinstatement, and so on. We
have no indication that RR8 is engaging in an edit war.)

The second question, that of banning the user, is more difficult. In some
cases it's probably justified - generally when the user is damaging the map
(large-scale vandalism, infringement, edit war) on an ongoing basis, and has
not responded satisfactorily to attempts to get in touch and resolve the
situation. But this really has to be where OSMF makes the decision, and as
Tom posted earlier, no-one affected by RR8's edits appears to have contacted
OSMF on the issue yet.

cheers
Richard
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