Frederik Ramm wrote: > No, millions of Wikipedia contributors think it is a good thing (and > they even allow edits from people without an account) ;-)
Point taken, but Wikipedia isn't trying to position itself as a viable and reliable alternative for a mission critical commercial solution (I'm thinking about mapping for SatNav devices here). Sure, Wikipedia is the first place people go to, but anybody worth their salt will *always* check 'facts' with another resource if it is important. How many people do you know who carry two SatNavs with them in case the data on one of them is incorrect? I'd also argue that information on Wikipedia can be very easily reverted when a rogue edit is discovered. Because of the nature of the data, one can't just revert an OSM edit without causing more problems as a result (if we could, we wouldn't be having this discussion and Liam123 wouldn't be a problem). Comparing OSM and Wikipedia socially, technically or commercially just doesn't work, IMHO. >> The only reason we found out about Liam123 was because somebody said >> "This doesn't look right to me". How do we know there isn't another user >> who's messing about with things somewhere else? > > We don't. Indeed. FWIW, my answer would be "We don't and there probably is." >> To my mind, nobody ought to be able to edit live map data unless: <snip> > A rather draconian way of reducing the freedom of contributors. We *do* > want to give newcomers the rewarding experience of fixing a bug and > seeing it fixed on the map more or less immediately. Understood, but if OSM is ever to be taken seriously there needs to be more control. Without control, OSM is a toy. Note that I enjoy playing with OSM. I'm talking about the bigger picture. > A moderator approving something is surely the last thing we want (or > can handle technically for that matter). Understood. But there must be an effective way to stop this happening. What happens if there are 100 Liam123's appearing during the school holidays this summer? 100 would seriously trash the database wouldn't they? How would 100 be dealt with? At the moment we're lucky it's only one. Actually, another thought occurs to me... If I were Liam123, hell bent on trashing the database, I'd have two or more accounts - one headline one in which big edits will be made and the other ones for making lots and lots of small edits. This way, the firefighting would be on the big edits, but the damage would really be done by the massive number of small edits. Nick. _______________________________________________ Talk-GB mailing list [email protected] http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-gb
