On Thu, Aug 5, 2010 at 1:42 PM, SteveC <st...@asklater.com> wrote: > Ben if I read this right then you're hiding the users from OSM and we'll see > a stream of edits from NearMap which are actually from multiple users. This > is why CM/matt/others built the OAuth code so that mapzen etc didn't do that, > because it's horrific.
I agree, but for non-legal reasons. I know it's fashionable to only consider the licensing nowadays :-) Let's imagine nearmap have been running their new editor and 'cloaking' all their users under the one account for a couple of years, and that their editor is great and everyone wants to use it. * I want to run a mapping party in Sydney - who's been editing in the area? Ah, "nearmap". How many other people are there beyond just me? I can't find out. * Someone makes a change and I'm suspicious. What else has that person been doing? Oh, it's "nearmap" with about 1000 edits per hour. Hard to examine. * I'm looking at OWL and it looks like there's an edit war going on with the amenity key on the local restaurant/cafe. Who's doing that? "nearmap" and "nearmap", it seems. * I'm reading through the diary entries for OSM Things like this is what concerns me more than the legal aspects (which can be made bulletproof, but see below*) or the technical aspects around signing up. Cloaking the "nearmap users" from the rest of the community strikes a stake right into the heart of the community by separating it into two parts and putting nearmap as the gatekeepers. That's something I don't want to see - it's why I make sure OAuth existed, and why the small-screen work (for the iPhone) was implemented - every excuse I've seen for avoiding user-signups I've made sure it's been removed. And some other points: * If many edits are channelled through the one account we won't be able to ban it, it simple won't be allowed by the rest of the community. If we had vandals in Germany and the only way to stop them was to ban everyone else in Germany for 72hours there would be outrage. So lets not kid ourselves that we would have the moral authority to ban such an account. * Those of us who remember when anonymous editors made up a big chunk of activity remember that it was a really bad idea, and one that we changed our minds on for good reason. This is recreating the anonymous users, just calling them "nearmap" instead of anonymous. Cheers, Andy * Oh, and we should all be very, very suspicious of any entity who tries to build a community of OSM contributors where that entity has more rights over the contributions than OSM itself does. That's an obvious opportunity for a bait-and-switch if ever there was one. _______________________________________________ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
