Dear all,
is it possible to flag particular revisions of data as “screened” and / or “verified” to inure data quality and avoid vandalism?
Is there any discussion dealing with this sensitive issue?
Thanks for advise!
Cheers,
Willy
Afaik there is no such option. We in the Netherlands have such a discussion running where we might make some sort of verified-osm or osm-pro (:D) branch which will be updated from the main osm database through some experienced moderators. The idea here is to provide this ‘pro’ map to e.g. (semi) government instances like rescue services. But till now the project has not actually been running (it’s in the discussion phase).
There two methods of verifiing maps:
- use government maps/existing maps
- go out on the field yourself and survey more
- watch the change log for your area or OSM mapper RSS feed
Not going to touch the first one, the second one should, in best cases, be done by mappers as time goes. Sadly at the moment the most of our data is only edited by one person, and very seldomly controlled. So even though the result is the same I think the concentration shouldn’t be on verifying the data by experts but rather highlight areas which should be controlled.
The third option is how wikipedia control vandalism, there actually is a “this edit is ok” option is mediawiki, haven’t seen it working especially well though…
Maybe OSM can succede where wikipedia failed, but I’m sceptical. Useful idiots^W^W Crowsourcing is the way to go, and they are hard to controll. 