[OSM-talk] Bot edits on the OSM wiki

[Christoph Hormann]

On Monday 25 February 2019, Tobias Knerr wrote:
>
> For the benefit of people who don't know the background, it's worth
> mentioning that these bot edits did not distort the actual meaning of
> the wiki pages, but were purely performing a trivial technical
> maintenance task.

Yes, the defense of these edits based on their merit was expected.  I am 
completely fine with you or others approving bot edits based on this 
argument.  But i also pointed out already that for me this is not a 
significant argument in this case.  I will simply not engage in 
cooperative writing of documentation and communication if i have to 
accept that bots are free to edit what i wrote - even if that is just 
fixing obvious typos or similar things.

If there is need for a platform for bot curated content in OSM that 
should be separated from where humans engage in cooperative writing and 
communication.

I am also completely at ease if the majority of the OSM community wants 
to embrace bots on the OSM wiki.  It would just not be a platform for 
me any more then.

There are several ethical concerns that motivate me here - the one that 
is easiest to understand is probably that allowing bots would create a 
two class system within the OSM community on the wiki - those who are 
able to develop and run bots would form a ruling class while the rest 
would be subject to this rule whether they agree with it or not.  And 
for this to happen bots would not need to be used on a regular basis, 
the mere possibility of this creates the hierarchy between those who 
can and those who cannot.

Now the question if aristocratic governance would be beneficial for the 
OSM wiki compared to the anarchy we currently have more or less is 
something i would be open to discuss.  But basing membership in the 
aristocratic class on the technical ability to develop and run bots is 
quite obviously a bad idea.

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