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Why did these contractors do that? It's not like they sweared on forums or watched porn. Vandalizing OSM is an effort-intensive task. You dont't do that becaus

Why did these contractors do that? It's not like they sweared on forums or watched porn. Vandalizing OSM is an effort-intensive task. You dont't do that because of lack of control. You do that because you were told to, or motivated to in any other way. I don't see how they could do that accidentally; therefore we should seek why they did that; who knew what they were doing; and how it could happen at all. What were their job? What were they brought in for?

lomegor 15y ago
I'm not sure, and I'm a Google fanboi, so don't just take my word, but this is just a theory: maybe the contractors had some kind of contract where they would get compensation for getting more users or for conversion. Something in that area.
- guard-of-terra 15y ago
  That is a possibility but requires a short-term reward for all that activity. Hurting OSM that nor terribly many people use yet is unlikely to deliver. So: what were their achievements tied to?
  - lftl 15y ago
    Suppose that you're sales person tasked with selling the new enterprise Google Maps service, and paid at least partially on commission. In a number of calls your leads mention how they're switching to OSM instead. You get the bright idea that you could SHOW your client how OSM is inferior because it contains incorrect information. Maybe you even incorporate it into your call routine: Look up where the lead works, edit OSM near their location, during the call point out to them how OSM is wrong.
    - guard-of-terra 15y ago
      This can certainly be true, but it also requires a process that, if exists, points that somebody should have known.
chc 15y ago
Say I bring you in to help promote certain properties versus rivals X, Y and Z. Now pretend you lack a good sense of ethics. Think of a few obvious ways to help my product beat these other products. I'm sure you can come up with something plausible that's similarly lousy. A company I worked for once hired a guy to help them build up a social media profile and agreed on a pay scheme similar to "$X for every 100 followers/friends". He followed every follow-back spammer he could find and got paid rather well for gaining about 20 actual readers. I guarantee you this was not what the company wanted, but it's easy to create perverse incentives if you're not careful.
- gcb 15y ago
  i think that's what the original commenter said. did google hired them to 'overcome OSM in that region?' or to 'improve google maps?'
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
- bmj 15y ago
  That's certainly plausible, but given everything we hear and know about Google screens its employees, is it indicative of a problem that their contractors pull off stuff like this, even if it wasn't condoned by Real Google Employees? If you hold your employees to high standards, why not hold your contractors to the same standards?
- stfu 15y ago
  But this is just the illustration of a high level management issue on a simpler level. As soon as there are some ultimate measurement tools in place the context is neglected an people focus on gaming up the numbers.
rmc 15y ago
Could just be common vandalism. People do it with lots of things, (graffiti on the street, abusive blog comments, defacing wikipedia). Just because they did it, doesn't mean Google paid for it.
- guard-of-terra 15y ago
  I don't know terrible many vandals who would enjoy breaking OSM (that not terrible many people use yet) of very distant lands by breaking it in subtle ways. Vandals usually do bright, bold things. Deface, draw over, swear. What they did here speaks either sabotage or personal hatred. I guess there are particularly devious people, but why a sizable number of those would suddenly contract for google india?
  - jrockway 15y ago
    This is simply not true. As someone who was very destructive growing up, I can tell you that it's fun to destroy things simply for the sake of destroying things. You may not understand it, but that's because you don't have that destructive tendency. As I've mentioned in other comments, I've vandalized wikis before. I did it because it was funny to people standing around. It doesn't involve much imagination to see someone opening up OpenStreetMap, clicking "reverse direction of street", and then gathering up some nearby coworkers to show. "Hey guys, watch this! Reverse! Reverse!" "Hahah, 8th Avenue doesn't go that way! Hilarious!"
    - guard-of-terra 15y ago
      Would you do a hundred of such changes over a time span without telling anyone? Would you do that in a map of city located on the other side of planet? That's psychologically improbable and becomes gravely improbable if there were more than one vandal.
      - jrockway 15y ago
        Well, I'll tell you this. There's no corporate mandate at Google telling employees that it's OK to vandalize OpenStreetMap. In fact, we even sponsor OSM as a Google Summer of Code project: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Google_Summer_of_Code http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Google_Summer_of_Code If you want some "Google is evil" fodder, this is not it. Sorry.
eli 15y ago
I couldn't disagree more. Plenty of people act like assholes all on their own without any encouragement.
- guard-of-terra 15y ago
  I couldn't repeat more a thing that you should have read while browsing thread: It's a very peculiar kind of vandalism: sneaky, personally unrewarding and affecting a niche service. Trolls like to do bold, rewarding and big moves.
  - eli 15y ago
    I don't think it's terribly peculiar. Spend some time on 4chan (or better yet, don't). Perhaps you only notice the trolls who did big, bold moves?
    - gcb 15y ago
      4chan (or more accurately, /b/) is irrelevant. it's just a forum for pre-teens and teens to shout obscenities at each other. rarely a good pun emerges. usually surrounded by porn and gore. anonymous and other small groups do troll, real trolling, occasionally... and attributing it to 4chan's /b/ is just the cherry on top of the cake for said trolling.
  - DanBC 15y ago
    NO. The trolls that you notice do big bold things; the bad trolls are the ones you notice. Good trolling is a dead art; the single post that started a 400 message flame filled cross-posted thread that caused everyone to kill-file everyone else? You just don't get that anymore. It is very easy to run into forum and post guro and yell obscenities. Making long lasting subtle changes is hard. But that is why it's fun, for a small number of trolls. (I should state that I don't think this is the case with the contractor; I think they're just stupid and misguided, and that Google needs to start thinking about how they provide oversight for this kind of stuff.)
    - 15y ago

lomegor 15y ago

I'm not sure, and I'm a Google fanboi, so don't just take my word, but this is just a theory: maybe the contractors had some kind of contract where they would get compensation for getting more users or for conversion. Something in that area.

guard-of-terra 15y ago
That is a possibility but requires a short-term reward for all that activity. Hurting OSM that nor terribly many people use yet is unlikely to deliver. So: what were their achievements tied to?
- lftl 15y ago
  Suppose that you're sales person tasked with selling the new enterprise Google Maps service, and paid at least partially on commission. In a number of calls your leads mention how they're switching to OSM instead. You get the bright idea that you could SHOW your client how OSM is inferior because it contains incorrect information. Maybe you even incorporate it into your call routine: Look up where the lead works, edit OSM near their location, during the call point out to them how OSM is wrong.
  - guard-of-terra 15y ago
    This can certainly be true, but it also requires a process that, if exists, points that somebody should have known.

chc 15y ago

Say I bring you in to help promote certain properties versus rivals X, Y and Z. Now pretend you lack a good sense of ethics. Think of a few obvious ways to help my product beat these other products. I'm sure you can come up with something plausible that's similarly lousy. A company I worked for once hired a guy to help them build up a social media profile and agreed on a pay scheme similar to "$X for every 100 followers/friends". He followed every follow-back spammer he could find and got paid rather well for gaining about 20 actual readers. I guarantee you this was not what the company wanted, but it's easy to create perverse incentives if you're not careful.

gcb 15y ago
i think that's what the original commenter said. did google hired them to 'overcome OSM in that region?' or to 'improve google maps?'
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
bmj 15y ago
That's certainly plausible, but given everything we hear and know about Google screens its employees, is it indicative of a problem that their contractors pull off stuff like this, even if it wasn't condoned by Real Google Employees? If you hold your employees to high standards, why not hold your contractors to the same standards?
stfu 15y ago
But this is just the illustration of a high level management issue on a simpler level. As soon as there are some ultimate measurement tools in place the context is neglected an people focus on gaming up the numbers.

rmc 15y ago

Could just be common vandalism. People do it with lots of things, (graffiti on the street, abusive blog comments, defacing wikipedia). Just because they did it, doesn't mean Google paid for it.

guard-of-terra 15y ago
I don't know terrible many vandals who would enjoy breaking OSM (that not terrible many people use yet) of very distant lands by breaking it in subtle ways. Vandals usually do bright, bold things. Deface, draw over, swear. What they did here speaks either sabotage or personal hatred. I guess there are particularly devious people, but why a sizable number of those would suddenly contract for google india?
- jrockway 15y ago
  This is simply not true. As someone who was very destructive growing up, I can tell you that it's fun to destroy things simply for the sake of destroying things. You may not understand it, but that's because you don't have that destructive tendency. As I've mentioned in other comments, I've vandalized wikis before. I did it because it was funny to people standing around. It doesn't involve much imagination to see someone opening up OpenStreetMap, clicking "reverse direction of street", and then gathering up some nearby coworkers to show. "Hey guys, watch this! Reverse! Reverse!" "Hahah, 8th Avenue doesn't go that way! Hilarious!"
  - guard-of-terra 15y ago
    Would you do a hundred of such changes over a time span without telling anyone? Would you do that in a map of city located on the other side of planet? That's psychologically improbable and becomes gravely improbable if there were more than one vandal.
    - jrockway 15y ago
      Well, I'll tell you this. There's no corporate mandate at Google telling employees that it's OK to vandalize OpenStreetMap. In fact, we even sponsor OSM as a Google Summer of Code project: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Google_Summer_of_Code http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Google_Summer_of_Code If you want some "Google is evil" fodder, this is not it. Sorry.

eli 15y ago

I couldn't disagree more. Plenty of people act like assholes all on their own without any encouragement.

guard-of-terra 15y ago
I couldn't repeat more a thing that you should have read while browsing thread: It's a very peculiar kind of vandalism: sneaky, personally unrewarding and affecting a niche service. Trolls like to do bold, rewarding and big moves.
- eli 15y ago
  I don't think it's terribly peculiar. Spend some time on 4chan (or better yet, don't). Perhaps you only notice the trolls who did big, bold moves?
  - gcb 15y ago
    4chan (or more accurately, /b/) is irrelevant. it's just a forum for pre-teens and teens to shout obscenities at each other. rarely a good pun emerges. usually surrounded by porn and gore. anonymous and other small groups do troll, real trolling, occasionally... and attributing it to 4chan's /b/ is just the cherry on top of the cake for said trolling.
- DanBC 15y ago
  NO. The trolls that you notice do big bold things; the bad trolls are the ones you notice. Good trolling is a dead art; the single post that started a 400 message flame filled cross-posted thread that caused everyone to kill-file everyone else? You just don't get that anymore. It is very easy to run into forum and post guro and yell obscenities. Making long lasting subtle changes is hard. But that is why it's fun, for a small number of trolls. (I should state that I don't think this is the case with the contractor; I think they're just stupid and misguided, and that Google needs to start thinking about how they provide oversight for this kind of stuff.)
  - 15y ago