On Fri, Mar 2, 2018 at 11:40 AM, Clifford Snow <cliff...@snowandsnow.us> wrote: > > To me that leaves us with a couple of choices. One, we continue to develop > more sophisticated tools to identify and revert the spam or two, we develop > tools to help SEO firms add data to OSM in a manner acceptable to us. Or > maybe some of both. Jason Remillard post has some positive recommendation > on how to do the first. We should listen to him. One recommendation - make > what we do very public. If SEO firms realize that they are wasting money > they may stop. Remember they are very good at figuring out how to > manipulate search engines. If they can do that, they can figure out how to > better mask their edits. >
My vote is both. Obviously the way things are now, they're not right, but they're not exactly wrong, either. Particularly in the US, where address data is a real pain in the butt to acquire (and something I recently posted extensively about <https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/7y69pp/why_openstreetmap_is_in_serious_trouble_emacsens/dueicrh/>, and I'm pretty certain I've covered here as well already). The biggest problems I see with SEO spam is that the tag values often don't conform to any accepted convention (phone numbers, opening hours, and amenity=* or shop=* tags seem especially problematic), and description=* or note=* getting used for really smarmy ad copy, and using a geocoder referencing a potentially copyrighted dataset we don't have a license to use. > As for the second suggestion, make it easier for SEO firms to add data, we > could create a policy and process to accept imports from SEO firms. The > other web map sites like Google, Bing, Apple etc. all have a process for > bulk loading data. (And none are the same.) We could do something similar. > A policy and specialized import guidelines would need to be created. > I'm OK with this. I think two rules definitely should be included as minimums: 1. All SEO edits from such companies must come from clearly identified accounts. 2. These accounts must be responsive to comments via the message system and changeset comments. I think we're all in agreement the level of communication we're getting with the flood of one-off SEO accounts is, to put it generously, terrible. One of my beliefs from looking at SEO spam is that I believe the work is > likely being outsourced. Two many similarities exist that to me suggest > these are coming from a common source. The user name, the changeset > comments, etc. I did ask Margaret Seksinski with Brandity if she could help > us learn who might be behind this spam. I have yet to hear from her. > Unfortunately, it appears Brandify doesn't want to be a part of the > community, just use us for their gains. > If they don't want to play ball, then how about redirecting their entire IP space to a message explaining our concerns, so it can't be ignored? As much as I hate the spam in the description tag (should rename it spam=*) > it is helpful in attempting to determine the correct tags. After which, > it's no longer useful and can be deleted. > Not a bad option. Maybe document that in the wiki? > Finally let's not lump all SEO firms together. The Laua Group is doing a > great job for Hilton Hotels. We should encourage more firms to be good > community members. > Hip hop hooray! Granted, though, we can't reasonably expect them to police the entire industry on our database.
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