[OSM-talk] Bitcoin Spam

[Paul Norman]

> From: Frederik Ramm [mailto:frederik at remote.org]
> Sent: Tuesday, December 03, 2013 2:11 PM
> To: Talk Openstreetmap
> Subject: [OSM-talk] Bitcoin Spam
> 
> Hi,
> 
>    we're seeing a rising number of new ways and nodes which seem to be
> added by people who create an account for just one purpose, namely
> adding a business to the map.
> 
> This could be great - if every business were to add themselves to the
> map, we'd have a nice collection of POIs.
> 
> However, in the case at hand, it seems that the interest is not to
> improve OSM but instead we're just a vehicle for people to show up on
> the "coinmap", a business directory for bitcoin-accepting businesses.
> 
> It seems that a name and "payment:bitcoin=yes" is sufficient for that
> site, with an optional advertising slug in the "note" tag. But for us,
> not so much. First of all because advertising has no room in OSM; second
> because many of these businesses seem to be not really "on the ground"
> (but just a mail-order place that wants to have some marker somewhere),
> third because they often don't contain even minimal information that
> would make them useful to us. 

Thanks to Frederik for putting the required time together to document
what myself and others have been seeing, primarily from bitcoin edits.

http://overpass-turbo.eu/s/1G1 shows objects like this via overpass.

Some of the places I've been seeing exist solely as a service within a
private post office, where they may not even have a physical mailbox but
instead have their mail scanned and emailed.

OSM is great for a shop that has a physical presence ("bricks and mortar")
but we're not a general-purpose directory of online-only entities. This
is inherent in the "geo" part of "geodata".