[OSM-talk] "NRCS basic OSM training" - low quality changesets in Nepal

[Ben Discoe]

> The changeset comment quoted by Andy is on some sort of automated edits
> simplifying forests by user bdiscoe.

I haven't seen those changeset comments, but I did get a message from
a "marek kleciak" claiming that my cleanup operations were "destroying
work of other mappers."  I carefully explained to him all about the
edits I performed (they are semi-manual with full visual verification
(not automatic), nothing moved more than a meter, quality was
improved, and all the good reasons why such cleanup is important).

Bizarrely, they went ahead and reverted my quality-improvement edits,
which I suppose means that next time I'll need to do more research,
discussion and education before committing this type of cleanup, to
prevent this sort of pointless, inefficient thrashing of the database.
I am not used to there being anyone to communicate with when I clean
up large inefficient data (for example, the years I've spent cleaning
up NHD, or the week spent on the Peoria's imported buildings and
bloated woods) but in this case, it turns out there was someone, who
got needlessly alarmed at my cleanup.

> Based on the type of edits and
> http://hdyc.neis-one.org/?bdiscoe I think they probably are not associated
> with the NRCS training.

My edits are definitely not associated with mistakes made during
newbie training. :)  I do see newbie edits as important, and I am glad
to see somebody notice those issues and try to educate them.

BTW, the likely reason I didn't see changeset comments is that my
active OSM account ("bdiscoe") is registered to an old, hard-to-reach
email address (ben at vterrain.org), and (so far) OSM won't let me change
the email address associated with the account to my current address
(this one, bdiscoe at gmail.com), because that email is associated with
my old, unused OSM account ("Ben Discoe").  I'm not sure how to fix
that, but I'd really like to.

-Ben