[OSM-talk] Fwd: Automated edits code of conduct

[Éric Gillet]

2016-07-11 2:16 GMT+02:00 Frederik Ramm <frederik at remote.org>:

> On 07/11/2016 02:02 AM, Éric Gillet wrote:
> > If you do a search-and-replace on 20 elements and review manually the
> > change, it is covered under the AE CoC.
>
> No, the document clearly states in the "Scope" section:
>
> "use of find-and-replace functionality using a standard editor such as
> JOSM or finding using services such as Overpass API and changing without
> reviewing cases individually;"
>
> Sadly, we often have people who run search-and-replace operations and
> *claim* that they have "reviewed cases individually", and then if you
> look at their edit, they have changed a tag on a POI that sits in the
> middle of a road or so - which means that they were either lying, or
> they have only done a very, very cursory "manual review" of their change.
>
> An automated, or mechanical, edit is when you do not look at the
> individual object you're editing.
>

When you add or correct some information on features are you responsible
for the data outside the original reach of the changeset ? If so, it's a
really important point for all contributions. I agree that ideally you
would review all the data, but sometimes it is not necessary or even
possible when you are not local.

I believe that changesets should try to be atomical, so when the point of
the changeset is to correct phone numbers for examples, you shouldn't touch
other tags.
In the case that the main subject of the changeset cause controversy, and
must be reversed, you wouldn't want to remove other unrelated changes (e.g.
node positions when editing phone numbers)

There is no similar policy covering manual edits. But of course if
> someone *manually* changes 500 landuse=wood to landuse=forest across the
> planet, it is still possible that they make a mistake and it needs
> fixing in some way, or if they do it repeatedly and cause problems with
> it, they might still be blocked. [...] However, causing trouble through
> manual edits is so much less
> frequent than causing trouble with mechanical edits that we have written
> up a policy on the latter.
>

Limiting the automation doesn't necessarily reduce the raw number of
errors. What it does is that in case of an mapper/software error, the error
may be applied to less content than a large edit.
But contributors can put a lot more focus and time in the "automated" edit
than on each one-by-one manual updates, so I don't think the net gain of
"automated" edits is negative.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk/attachments/20160711/95e7cc55/attachment.html>