3 ms·

As an occasional OSM editor, I wouldn't really feel good about moderation. My edits are limited basically to my home town (10.000 inhabitants, about 10 sq km) w

As an occasional OSM editor, I wouldn't really feel good about moderation. My edits are limited basically to my home town (10.000 inhabitants, about 10 sq km) where I am adding unmapped roads (usually agricultural, sometimes new construction) that I "discover" while running. I started doing that simply because Runkeeper's website uses OSM and it was showing me running in the middle of nowhere, while there was actually a small road leading to my grandfather's place. (And FWIW Google doesn't have agricultural roads at all, which kinda sucks for running even slightly out of the beaten path). My edits are probably not perfect, but while somebody cared about mapping the town in the first place, it was out of date enough that probably nobody would bother to approve or perfect my changes. Having them rejected would probably have caused me to stop contributing too. What kinds of issues and vandalisms did you experience?

StudentStuff 9y ago
I'd be surprised if your edits would be rejected. More likely, whoever was doing QA would make a few minor alignment adjustments based on satellite data and any county data they could glean (the latter is likely where all the road data came from). Moderation isn't the worst idea, OSM in many areas basically has large scale edit wars, wasting editors time as they fight over road and building alignment with other editors that don't realize Microsoft's satellite data is 20ft off from reality.
smichel17 9y ago
I've contributed small-time to the Musicbrainz cd database, and I think they do it pretty well. New additions are automatically approved. Edits are accepted or rejected after a voting period (3 days, iirc). If nobody votes, they're approved by default; I believe (but am not certain) they are rejected in the case of a tie. I think the beauty of this system is that it gives complete autonomy with no oversight to individuals dealing with obscure data that nobody else cares about, while more popular data is subjected to higher scrutiny.
- maxerickson 9y ago
  This is more or less how OSM works now, except there is no waiting period. But undoing a recent edit is pretty straightforward, so there is a similar effect.
- Leo_Verto 9y ago
  I may be a bit late to this post but as a contributor to both projects, I think the main difference here is that MusicBrainz is all about trying to prevent data deletions in favour of data merges, which will be resolved to the new object while OSM pretty much only cares about the look in the end. So in OSM it's perfectly acceptable to delete an object and re-create it whereas in MusicBrainz deletions are very much frowned upon. This means that you often can't really track changes to a single OSM object which would be pretty much necessary for implementing robust rollback behaviour.
splonk 9y ago
I used to work on user generated content in maps. Business vandalism is a big problem once you reach a certain scale. It's possible that OSM doesn't have this problem yet because it's not as valuable a target as Google/Apple/Bing. I'm not super familiar with what's available on OSM these days, but an unscrupulous locksmith might try to make competing locksmiths unreachable by moving their address to a distant location (locksmiths and taxi companies were notorious for attempted vandalism in the past). Map additions are probably generally safe, although there are some spammy ones for various reasons. Map edits are basically all suspect because you never know when someone is trying to sabotage something.
- tordanik 9y ago
  Business vandalism is certainly a plausible threat for OSM. Something we've also had to deal with are political issues escalating into edit wars, i.e. where the border between countries is supposed to be, which language the labels on a contested part of the map should be in and so on. I think it's good to keep in mind that OSM already has moderation, though, just not in the shape of a formalized approval process. Instead, edits go live instantly – but are inspected, discussed and possibly undone afterwards. So while vandalism does get through at first, it will hopefully be short-lived enough that it does not pay off for the vandal. Ultimately, I believe it comes down to weighing priorities based on the project's current needs. OSM's current approach lowers the bar for contributors and rewards them with instant gratification when the change is visible on the map right away. Because of that, I believe it makes sense when your focus is on growing the community. Stricter moderation makes sense once the primary focus switches from growth to preserving the valuable database you've already built. Looking at Wikipedia, for example, they started out with a setup resembling OSM's current model, and switched to a more strict moderation process only once they had grown large enough to become the world's default encyclopedia. Based on my personal experiences in OSM, vandalism is not yet a big enough problem to justify stricter moderation practices. But of course that is a matter of opinion to some degree.
- zo1 9y ago
  It's already a problem. Go look at the history tab for any moderately large town in OSM. You'll find gigantic edits overlapping the area you're trying to look at. The reason for that is someone posting changes/additions onto map locations on separate countries and/or continents, so it intersects with your small town regardless if the changes were near it. Those edits are usually people adding useless businesses and phone-numbers. I've seen people advertising bitcoin-related business and general spam.

StudentStuff 9y ago

I'd be surprised if your edits would be rejected. More likely, whoever was doing QA would make a few minor alignment adjustments based on satellite data and any county data they could glean (the latter is likely where all the road data came from). Moderation isn't the worst idea, OSM in many areas basically has large scale edit wars, wasting editors time as they fight over road and building alignment with other editors that don't realize Microsoft's satellite data is 20ft off from reality.

smichel17 9y ago

I've contributed small-time to the Musicbrainz cd database, and I think they do it pretty well. New additions are automatically approved. Edits are accepted or rejected after a voting period (3 days, iirc). If nobody votes, they're approved by default; I believe (but am not certain) they are rejected in the case of a tie. I think the beauty of this system is that it gives complete autonomy with no oversight to individuals dealing with obscure data that nobody else cares about, while more popular data is subjected to higher scrutiny.

maxerickson 9y ago
This is more or less how OSM works now, except there is no waiting period. But undoing a recent edit is pretty straightforward, so there is a similar effect.
Leo_Verto 9y ago
I may be a bit late to this post but as a contributor to both projects, I think the main difference here is that MusicBrainz is all about trying to prevent data deletions in favour of data merges, which will be resolved to the new object while OSM pretty much only cares about the look in the end. So in OSM it's perfectly acceptable to delete an object and re-create it whereas in MusicBrainz deletions are very much frowned upon. This means that you often can't really track changes to a single OSM object which would be pretty much necessary for implementing robust rollback behaviour.

splonk 9y ago

I used to work on user generated content in maps. Business vandalism is a big problem once you reach a certain scale. It's possible that OSM doesn't have this problem yet because it's not as valuable a target as Google/Apple/Bing. I'm not super familiar with what's available on OSM these days, but an unscrupulous locksmith might try to make competing locksmiths unreachable by moving their address to a distant location (locksmiths and taxi companies were notorious for attempted vandalism in the past). Map additions are probably generally safe, although there are some spammy ones for various reasons. Map edits are basically all suspect because you never know when someone is trying to sabotage something.

tordanik 9y ago
Business vandalism is certainly a plausible threat for OSM. Something we've also had to deal with are political issues escalating into edit wars, i.e. where the border between countries is supposed to be, which language the labels on a contested part of the map should be in and so on. I think it's good to keep in mind that OSM already has moderation, though, just not in the shape of a formalized approval process. Instead, edits go live instantly – but are inspected, discussed and possibly undone afterwards. So while vandalism does get through at first, it will hopefully be short-lived enough that it does not pay off for the vandal. Ultimately, I believe it comes down to weighing priorities based on the project's current needs. OSM's current approach lowers the bar for contributors and rewards them with instant gratification when the change is visible on the map right away. Because of that, I believe it makes sense when your focus is on growing the community. Stricter moderation makes sense once the primary focus switches from growth to preserving the valuable database you've already built. Looking at Wikipedia, for example, they started out with a setup resembling OSM's current model, and switched to a more strict moderation process only once they had grown large enough to become the world's default encyclopedia. Based on my personal experiences in OSM, vandalism is not yet a big enough problem to justify stricter moderation practices. But of course that is a matter of opinion to some degree.
zo1 9y ago
It's already a problem. Go look at the history tab for any moderately large town in OSM. You'll find gigantic edits overlapping the area you're trying to look at. The reason for that is someone posting changes/additions onto map locations on separate countries and/or continents, so it intersects with your small town regardless if the changes were near it. Those edits are usually people adding useless businesses and phone-numbers. I've seen people advertising bitcoin-related business and general spam.