[OSM-talk] Mechanical edits

Andrew MacKinnon andrewpmk at gmail.com
Mon Jun 29 15:22:06 UTC 2015


> A large bounding box of a changeset is not a proof that the edit is
> mechanical. There are also users at OSM who first edit an object in
> Europe and afterwards in America before they upload their changes. (This
> usually happens if the user uses JOSM oder Potlatch 2) On the other
> hand, it is possible that a users who performs a mechanical edit uploads
> his changes in small chunks, each having a small bounding box (few
> square kilometers).

There would have to be editor support for this feature, i.e. generate
a warning in this situation. The idea is that mechanical edits would
only be allowed for administrators/users with the "mechanical edits
allowed" flag/users with over 1000 edits and 1 month experience, etc.
There needs to be something to prevent particularly inexperienced
users from doing damaging mechanical edits or at least generate
warnings in editors to discourage them from doing so.

Maybe a less drastic method is for editors such as JOSM to generate a
warning when uploading a changeset with a large bounding box, or edits
that upload data coming from the XAPI/Overpass service, etc.



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