On Fri, Aug 07, 2009 at 01:11:02PM +0100, Nick Barnes wrote: > To my mind, nobody ought to be able to edit live map data unless: > > 1 - They have uploaded n tracks, > 2 - They have had m edits approved by a moderator > 3 - They are vouched for by somebody who has made many many edits > > (insert 'and' or 'or' or 'and/or' as appropriate)
It has already been said, but I think raising the barrier to contribution is the wrong way to go. Instead, I’d like to see a way of saying someone has verified the data without changing it. This has been talked about by others before, and I think every State of the Map conference has had presentations on the subject. Multiple users should be able to indicate that they have verified the data. Subsequent edits would be unverified until somebody says they have verified it. Map users wanting a probably higher (but still not guaranteed) quality of data can then get a verified set, and they can choose how much verification they want, e.g. data that has been verified by at least two others. This doesn’t stop rogue editors creating extra accounts to verify the data. We can, however, limit who is able to verify the data without raising the barrier to contribution of (unverified) map data, although I’m not sure that’s necessary either. Taking this further would be to build up a trust network, and allow people to say “I trust edits made or verified by user X” and “I trust edits made by someone who has made more than N edits verified by someone I trust”. You can do this without digital signatures, but I would also like to see support for OpenPGP signed changesets and verifications, combining trust in people to correctly edit/verify data with trust that it was actually edited/verified by that person. The result maybe that if you apply all of the above, you get a very small amount of map data, and it may even be pretty worthless because there are so many gaps, but you get to choose how you deal with that. You can get a small amount of highly trusted data that may have gaps that make it less usable, through to a large amount of untrusted data that may have critical errors, or combine the two and possibly indicate where data is untrusted. Simon -- A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that works.—John Gall
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