Recently, I found a mapper in my local area who made some erroneous edits. I corrected the mistake and wrote a comment in the changeset discussion section saying, “Please provide a description of your edits. You accidentally moved a node, which I have fixed.“.
After a week, I came across another changeset from the user that was changing the name values of some roads that had recently changed name in real life. And I wanted to discuss whether we should add the old name with old_name key so, I wrote another comment saying this.
After four days, I found another changest that changed the name of a road, which was incorrect according to local sources. Additionally, there was no source listed in the source key of the changeset. I wanted to ask about the source of the name along with another road tagging question.
But the user did not respond to any of these. Because of that, I followed Wiki guidelines and wrote to the DWG, stating that the user is not responding to the questions given and is not providing a changeset description.
I’d like to ask the community for advice on my current situation. Was I too overwhelming? How should I respond to the mapper who hasn’t replied? Would it be better to showing correct way to edit or to ask if they have any questions? Or is there something else I might be missing?
Note: I asked Andy (@SomeoneElse) for permission to post this.
Reading that in translation, none of the comments seem very welcoming - rather than saying “you’re doing it wrong” ask them if they have any questions about editing OSM?
a bit had to say, given that messages are in a different language (and I would not trust autotranslate to handle tone well)
but in situation like this I would hope for 0-hour block from DWG
(disclaimer: I am not in DWG and DWG has more experience in dealing with problematic user than myself and they consistently were less aggressive than I hoped for in handling various users. Sometimes it resulted in bad users causing more problems, but some of them unexpectedly to me were reformed)
What about, if on the other hand they are the most experienced user with millions of imports and edits, but just like you say, don’t respond to any changeset comments.
You could send them a direct message first. Unlike a comment on a changeset, you get a notification next to your username if there are unread direct messages:
Overwhelming-ness is something someone else feels, not something you do. Andy is probably saying that some people find so many messages overwhelming, rather than that you’re acting to overwhelm them. Different people, different brains and all that.
A change of strategy - step back, re-engage differently - seems pragmatic as a way to achieve your goals. Are there other Turkish mappers who could weigh in? Ultimately a mod action would be effective but could also put off a mapper and make them feel like they’re being attacked.
Andy said similar as well, suggesting a more welcoming approach[1]. However, in the current situtation, I doubt that asking this will change anything, as I suspect the user may not read comments at all.
keyyushi (me):
Is it okay to write this on user’s changeset comment?
Hello AliKarabulut, thank you for your edits. If you have any question you can ask us.
On your previous changesets some mappers asked you question. Can you please answer them?
Are they overall making good-faith changes that improve the map? The edits seem to all be in the Ankara area, so possibly local knowledge informing this?
They definitely need to start writing proper changeset comments, . is clearly insufficient. And as you say, a simple source key tagged “survey” or “local knowledge” would be valuable.
They made some changes a couple of years ago, then went away for a bit, and have made a couple of dozen changes since October. In the last 10 days, they’ve made one change.
It’s possible that they’re “just not getting emails” due to a misconfiguration of their email account, but the direct message should be waiting for them the next time they login to OSM. However, given that they’ve only made one change.in the last 10 days, it might be a while before they log in.
I’m reading the changeset discussion comments in translation, and that won’t account for how people usually communicate with each other in a particular culture**, but those comments do read to me like “you’re doing it wrong” rather than “how can we help you do what you are trying to do?”.
Given one edit in the last 10 days, I wouldn’t be surprised by no replies. They might go away for 2 years again, or they might continue. Doing things in a less than idea way is entirely to be expected after 43 changesets. If they’re still doing it after 100, or 200, or if they definitely causing problems with data, then yes, we may need to intervene, but I’m not convinced yet. We can’t make them reply, and I’m worried that any action that we might take might stop them contributing altogether.
There could be a misconfiguration of the email account, but as I mentioned above, my friend sent a direct message to the user on December 9, and the user made an edit on December 14 without responding to the direct message.
Actually, it’s more like ‘You’re doing it wrong; please check here for better/correct edits.’
Honestly, I believe this approach is better than asking, ‘How can we help you do what you’re trying to do?’ because the user has already made erroneous edits, and there are sources available for correcting them (for example, OSM Wiki).
Is it bad practice to add a 0-hour block when a user might not return anytime soon? What are the downsides of doing this?
We want to nurture all the new contributors that we can.
Sometimes OSM comments that are genuinely trying to be helpful remind me of the Troggs Tape (the “yer doing it … wrong” part).
You would like the mapper to respond, and to start using nice changeset comments, and so would I. Unfortunately, we can’t make them do that. What we can do (and what I don’t want to do) is put them off contributing to OSM in the future.
Can you please tell me what the difference was between this user and the user mentioned above? The former received a 0-hour block, while the latter did not.
The main issue is not adding a changeset comment. While that is important, the other aspects are more pressing right now. The user does not provide any sources or respond to source questions in the comments (or direct messages). They also make incorrect taggings despite having the correct tagging Wiki page available in their changeset comments (or direct messages).
Although the current approach might work for this user, should we ignore their wrong edits?
Unfortunately not - that one’s related to a different DWG ticket, and there are other issues going on there - it would be unfair to all sides there to discuss further in public, beyond what is already public in changeset comments and block messages, anyway.
I think that OSM’s biggest problem in general is not an excess of contributors.
The most important thing in this case is to remain positive and welcoming towards new contributors.
The ‘preventable’ hassle for experienced editors to undo some incorrect edits or contributions from newcomers is (for >99% of the newby’s) much less significant than the benefits of their future contributions if we do not scare them away after their first few edits.
on topic: I don’t think your 3 comments are a real overload to the new user, especially when 2rd or 3th comments were made on edits done by the newby after your initial feedback
Before I do that, I have one other thing to say. I find your approach here incredibly rude and it definitely supports my initial thoughts to give the user more time to respond.
What may be extremely important and urgent to you may not be to them. They may have made a mistake about what OSM is for, or even what it is. They probably didn’t expect it to start bombarding them with questions.
We (the DWG) may need to take further action to try and get in contact with the user, but let’s see what happens next.
To answer your question: If someone has made an edit that you know to be incorrect due to local knowledge and they haven’t replied to you about it then yes, it absolutely makes sense to correct the data (with a polite changeset comment explaining what happened).
jumping over and being hostile/complaining/unfriendly toward new mappers reduces chance they will stay
expecting to be friendly/welcoming toward new people breaking stuff damaging data (or simply data being broken) may be wearing on existing mappers
Ideally vandals and trolls would be immediately blocked, reverted and thrown away.
And all good-faith contributors would have very friendly welcome with nice and polite explanation of how they can improve mapping, in amount that will not overwhelm them.
.