[OSM-talk] Follow up on last summer discussion about the Automated Edits Code of Conduct and the DWG

[Roland Olbricht]

Hi,

> Here you will find an approximate/subjective summary + some thoughts +
> some proposals :
>
> https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/User:Tuxayo/Automated_edits_code_of_conduct_and_DWG:_Mailing_list_discussion_summary_and_proposals

Thank you for keeping track of the issue. But I deem the summary 
reflects neither the current situation nor the fidings of the discussion.

Some key points:

* There is no consent on what an automated edit is or not.

It is pretty clear that your example (changing all phone~"^http://" to 
"https://" worldwide) is an automated edit. The grey cases are things 
like the French buildings import, the MapRoulette challenge in the 
Antartic region, and even the edit without local knowledge of Passau 
main station (hence a pretty small changeset) of our company.

All of these edits have at least made some data worse and have therefore 
been discussed and partly fixed, partly kept for a reason. The fact that 
the word "automated" did cause confusion gave rise to the
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Organized_Editing_Policy

The two extreme positions are
- Any edit without local knowledge is by its nature flawed.
- We regulate only edits run by a bot.

I personally (or we as a company) do not endorse any of the two extremes.

They key point is that to be productive you should:
- define and publish your own criterion (e.g. one of
-- changesets of unusual large extent
-- unusual high activity per tag and day
-- changesets having "revert" in their comment)
- give it a specific name and set up a watch tool for it

* The DWG is not so special as you might think

The DWG members are indeed special in dedicating huge amounts of time to 
fix human misbehaviour, and we should be grateful for that. The DWGs job 
is communication, not pushing around data.

Most of the actual reverting is done by mappers outside the DWG. Also, 
DWG members do not have any special rights. Moderation (and possibly 
redaction) is essentially done by the sysadmins, not the DWG.

I agree that from outside, the DWG activity is hard to judge. The 
problem here is that nobody has found a magic solution how to make DWG 
activity public without asking the DWG for substantially more work, 
damaging the reputation of involved mappers, or both.


I therefore would suggest to make clear-cut rules:

a) If you can decide freely what to map, where to map, and how to map 
then OSM will trust all your edits that are based on local survey. Happy 
mapping!

b) If you are directed by an organization (regardless whether you are 
paid or voluntary) then use a dedicated account and put a line on your 
user profile, e.g.:
http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/drolbr_mdv
That organization should have a corresponding Wiki page, e.g.:
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/MENTZ_GmbH

c) If you run a software where you do not approve as a human every 
individual edit (every single change of a tag or change in geometry or 
topology) then you need to follow the Automated Edits Code of Conduct
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Automated_Edits_code_of_conduct

This still leaves open the case of Armchair Mapping of all shades. An 
example with net benefit for OSM is MapRoulette. Therefore I would 
suggest to ask Martijn first for his best practices and then start to 
make rules on that.

Best regards,

Roland

--
Dr. Roland Olbricht
MENTZ GmbH, Am Mittelhafen 10, 48155 Münster
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