[OSM-talk] mass mailing osm mappers

[Frederik Ramm]

Robin,

Robin Paulson wrote:
> we would like to make as many NZ mappers aware of the import as
> possible, firstly to reduce these concerns, and to stop the potential
> outfux of NZ mappers who see themselves being replaced by bots and
> scripts. also, it would of course be beneficial to include more people
> in what we are doing

Do you not have a talk-nz list or something where this could be 
announced? A good idea would also be to create wiki page and link to 
this from the changeset comment or so, so that anyone investigating an 
edit through the web site will get to read your pamphlet.

> are there any issues with mass contacting either (a) everyone who has
> set their location as in NZ, or (b) everyone who has made an edit
> within NZ? is there an AUP for osm which forbids this?

Both of these are unwanted; (a) is not possible without actually moving 
your own location around in small increments - a certain Russ N. 
reputedly has a script that does that and got bollocked for it. (b) is 
possible and you might *just* get away with it if you're talking 10 or 
20 messages, but not if it is in the hundreds, and especially not if 
some of them complain.

I think it would be nice to have a feature where users can actually 
enable a check box in their profile "I wish to be contacted by other 
mappers in my area about mapping events or other things of relevance", 
and then an interface where you can simply draw a bounding box and say 
"send this message to all mappers in this box who have the checkbox ticked".

But as long as we don't have that, we don't normally mass-email mappers.

Bye
Frederik

-- 
Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frederik at remote.org  ##  N49°00'09" E008°23'33"