[OSM-talk] several vandals, one strategy?: RR8, Yasuthan, liam123

[Someoneelse]

Richard Weait wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> An addition to previous reports here regarding RR8 and liam123. User
> Yasuthan has exhibited similar behaviour:
> 
> ...
> 
> Thoughts?

Both Yathusan and RR8 seem to have a liking for making roads previously 
added as other than secondary into secondary roads, but beyond that I 
can't see an obvious correlation.

I would guess that RR8 may be based in England or Wales because of the 
times of activity through a public holiday weekend and perhaps in the NE 
Midlands because of the large number of changes there.

Other people have placed liam123 further south in the UK:
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk-gb/2009-July/004143.html


Whether or not they're linked online personas or not, I suspect that the 
project is going to need some sort of approach to deal with potential 
graffiti-artists and worse - many options were discussed on talk-gb back 
in July.  Other sites with user-contributed content all end up having to 
do something, but do take different approaches (think of what Wikipedia, 
Slashdot, Fark and the rest do).

If possible, I'd be keen to still allow people to create an account to 
e.g. "correct that streetname that's wrong" without having to jump 
through lots of hoops, but if someone creates an account, uploads no 
traces and enters 145 changesets over 3 days (as RR8 did) I think that 
it's fair to smell a rat (even if the changes weren't malicious, which 
is quite possible).

Cheers,
Andy