[OSM-talk] New OSM Quick-Fix service

[Christoph Hormann]

On Monday 16 October 2017, Marc Gemis wrote:
> Would Yuri's tool be OK, if the proposed changes were limited to
> objects that were created/last edited after survey to the person that
> is using the tool ?
>
> I was thinking of a scenario where people try to help with a
> tag-renaming proposal.
> Such a tool would be handy to help them locate all objects that they
> know well and retag them.

I think you are missing the point here - this tool's only purpose is 
doing automated edits.  The discussion if and under what circumstances 
automated edits are OK for the community is not the issue here, this is 
already regulated by the automated edit policy.

Creating a tool for doing automated edits is perfectly fine, but 
designing it in a way and advertising it in a way that encourages 
automated edits in ignorance of existing rules is not.

You probably recall that we have had discussions in how far Maproulette 
encourages mechanical edits 
(http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/imagico/diary/40759) but Martijn has 
always demonstrated he is aware of the problem and tries to avoid such 
abuse, for example by not allowing anonymous challenges and not having 
simple click through tasks with already fully predetermined editing 
decisions.

In summary so far i think it can be said developers in the OSM context 
have overwhelmingly been responsible in the way they design tools in 
compliance with the spirit of the OSM community.  But this one is 
clearly different in that regard.

-- 
Christoph Hormann
http://www.imagico.de/