There is a user who until yesterday was called CirillaOSM, but changed their name to Nathan Hadley, and now ¬¬¬. I suppose the corresponding forum account is @Nathan_Hadley.
A year ago we saw a number of edits where ID’s tag fix suggestions were blindly accepted. This led to valid tagging for shops being removed. For example, franchisers who use their own name for their branch had their name removed in favour of the generic brand name.
Last week this user popped up again with a few edits in the Netherlands, for example:
There are a number of issues with this type of edit:
Valid tagging is removed. Often tiny things like changing cuisine=regional;sandwich to cuisine=sandwich (for a place selling worstenbroodjes and other regional sandwich creations).
Tags are updated without checking if the POI even exists. Mango Man got changed into Mango, but there no longer seem to be any Mango Man stores at all. This edit resulted in two Mango stores in the same street. The change was blindly applied, and now the object history makes it look as if this store was confirmed present in February 2025.
Multivlaai was turned into shop=bakery (again), despite selling no bread, just odd flat cake (shop=pastry!).
Last year we saw the same thing happen with certain train lines getting placed in the wrong concession (@A67-A67 caught this).
This user seems to be very selective about which changeset comments they respond to:
I have sent them a message, but got no response, so I have tagged them here as well (hence the English). If I get no response at all I’ll report the account. This user’s changeset history is huge, and I worry that all these tiny fixes worldwide add up to a lot of valid tagging getting mangled or erased.
I’m considering reverting their recent edits in the Netherlands. Some of the changes will be correct, but I’m seeing too many errors, and all of these changes seem to be nothing more than hitting the quick-fix button in ID. What do you think?
This issue with franchisers is a recurring one by the way. This bicycle shop had its name removed twice in the history of that node (once by the above user):
Even though the franchiser is very clear in their own branding:
I don’t think @Nathan_Hadley is the only one at fault here (except for the ignoring of changeset comments which is rude and leads to repeated mistakes). ID’s presets for brands often amount to erasing independent franchisers. When you look at that node in ID you get a warning dialogue with three options:
Change to Bike Totaal (wrong)
Not this brand (brand:wikidata is removed and not:brand:wikidata is added) (wrong)
Ignore (OK, but only ignored for the current mapper, anyone else will still get that dialogue)
Deze mapper reageert niet op wijzigingen en maakt steeds dezelfde fouten (verkeerde brand-tags op basis van niet-gecontroleerde iD-suggesties, bicycle=designated op fietspad, foutief wijzigen van name-tags, etc.). Het idee van quality assurance is niet het zo snel mogelijk afwerken van lijstjes met mogelijke fouten en dat is wel wat deze mapper doet.
Een revert (en eigenlijk ook een block) lijkt me op zijn plaats.
Toevoeging: De volgende wijzigingen zijn recent in Nederland uitgevoerd. Deze kunnen allemaal teruggedraaid worden:
Mapper is now called Nathan Hadley again and has happily resumed mapping after, presumably, reading the message accompanying the ban.
No ‘qa tagging’ edits so far, but unfortunately also no response here, nor to the private message I sent, or the changesets with comments but no reply from the mapper themself.
I can no longer tag them here on the forums as I did above. Their account here has either changed names, was set to some private mode, or is deleted.
All in all I’m not getting the impression the message about communicating with others got picked up.
Newer changesets now do get a response when a comment is made:
Sorry about the issue with the tag qa. The technicalities of OSM like tags are more than a little beyond me. In retrospect, I clearly shouldn’t have gotten involved in stuff I don’t understand. I never wanted to damage the map or waste anyone’s time. From now on, I’ll stick to easier things like adding buildings and doing StreetComplete. Sorry again and thank you for your time
So concerning this mapper this issue seems resolved.
The bigger problem is persuading the next new mapper, and the next one after that, that just remotely visiting an area in iD and clicking the “fix” button several times is likely making OSM’s data quality worse, not better.
Unfortunately I can’t think of a way of doing that without putting new mappers off altogether…
Maybe if some of iD’s “improvements” were hidden from new mappers and required them to switch on an advanced/expert mode in settings?
We’ve got lots of features with silly layer=±1 tags, because iD is effectively saying to inexperienced users “don’t worry about what this means, just click on one of the first two options and not only will the warning go away, but you can also hide it from people who might otherwise have spotted and fixed it.”
That doesn’t even suggest the actual fix, which is to intersect the road and the building, and to mark the part of the road going through the building as a tunnel=building_passage.
