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

[Dermot McNally]

2009/9/2 Richard Fairhurst <richard at systemed.net>:

> 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

Richard - yes, this is a fair catch. A better way to express it would
be "there has to be a 'you' that can assess...".

> (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.)

This is also true, though on his form, we can expect him to continue
making daft edits. Not an edit war, but it shares with edit wars the
prospect of continued damage.

> 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.

This is also fair. In OSM we get over-used to the fact that The Major
Players are reading what goes down on the lists or IRC. Which is not
reasonable.

Dermot

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