[OSM-talk] Sudden influx of bad HOTosm edits in West Bank

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

On 29.10.2017 19:42, Andy Townsend wrote:
> I'm sure that these new mappers mean well, but they
> clearly haven't understood the task that they've been asked to perform
> (or perhaps that task was somewhat inappropriate for brand-new users in
> a place as densely populated as the West Bank). Try and find out if
> they're volunteers (e.g. they're volunteered to give up their own time
> to help improve the mapping in this area) or if they've perhaps been
> told to "map 100 buildings as part of this HOT task" in order to gain a
> credit for part of a course they're doing.

Have we found out anything about this yet?

Maybe it is possible to do better QA, improve editing software, or
easily fix the broken data, as suggested in various posts in this
thread, but I'd like to find the root cause of this and work on that.

Why and how did one person or a group of people who apparently lacked
the capabilities to make this activity a success, start it in the first
place? What warnings, what training material, what message of caution
could have led them to seek advice from people with the relevant
experience - or what over-optimistic "everyone can do it, no training
required" message enticed them to carry on recklessly?

Bringing dozens of new people to OSM only to delete (or significantly
overhaul) 99% of their contribution later helps nobody; it causes
unnecessary work for experienced mappers (and the DWG), tarnishes the
reputation of HOT and OSM, and discourages these people (who would have
made a valuable contribution given proper training) from contributing
further.

Bye
Frederik

-- 
Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frederik at remote.org  ##  N49°00'09" E008°23'33"