There is a ton of great knowledge out there on how to help your community to become happier and more productive.
Giving positive feedback is a simple way to create a more happy mapper. This also has the effect, and we know this from the many other places that implement social structures, that those mappers “grow up” to become people that feel more secure about their knowledge and are willing to pass on that knowledge.
So, yeah, reviewing new people’s changesets is really something that I feel we have been lacking in. Especially in the case of people asking for a review and never even getting any reply.
The never getting any reply stems from the social problem of not feeling empowered. If someone sees a changeset that asks for a review, they can find fault and comment, but how many will be commenting that the changeset is good? Fearing that someone else might find fault later is a fear of being exposed as an imposer. Fake it till you make it is real in this community.
I feel these problems have grown so long that they won’t be possible to change unless we force people to acknowledge that they need to become a team. Force new people to ask, and force experienced people to answer.
And, yeah, this topic is indeed only partially related to the recent vandalism. It is related because those would not have happened if this social system was in place. But this is not meant as a solution to the vandalism, it is meant as a re-thinking of what it means to be part of openstreetmap.
I think the social structures are needed, the idea to not just work in isolation and without support (unless you really mess up). And I hope others agree that this is the case.
As I understand (based on info from Ticket#2023072610000127 ) admins and DWG are already in contact and there are possibilities to block this specific exploit.
But only that specific ones, solving this problem in general is far trickier. But it may help already and make vandalising harder.
I definitely want to thank everyone helping with cleanup after this troll! And other vandals.
Though not promising blog post or similar specifically about this, getting largest possible reaction of any kind may be what they are trying to get.
(again, not an official OSMF statement, commenting in a personal capacity)
I find it to be both friendly, “good OSM ambassadorship” and quite positive going forward to (occasionally, yet when deserved) offer “hello, I see your recent editing, and it is really nice!” accolades to especially newer OSM contributors. It’s a small gesture, yes, but just as my mother taught me, “treat people as you yourself would like to be treated.”
Many of these people and I go on to Friend each other, keep tabs on each others edits, inspire each other, turn into learning opportunities to become better, more-skilled or more-knowledgeable mappers. And that’s a good thing. I realize not everybody will do this, I merely want to share how I do, and its results are overwhelmingly positive. Rather than “forcing” people to be a team, I find that by simply acting like one, by offering praise where it is well-deserved, goes a long way towards empowerment, and reducing the social isolation many can feel in our project. We are a “somewhat” social project (true, some people map in relative isolation, and like that very much), so “lubricating” the social gears usually does nothing but help.
I realize this might seem off-topic, or “the other side of the coin,” but, while it is certainly important to limit damage (whether intentional or not) to our map, it really does improve our social structure when there is a spirit of “hey, I noticed your mapping and you are certainly on the right track to becoming another great mapper in OSM.” As I say that (again, especially to newbies), I offer the ability to contact me with any questions, and the fabric of our project (both our data AND our community) knits together a bit more strongly.
Unfortunately using different emails is much easier than you think. Take a Gmail address and simply put dots wherever you want and you have a new email without creating another account.
For clarification, you suggested “We could limit only 2 accounts by email address, or block new account creation with email addresses of users who received blocks”. There’s a long way between “2” (which I said there “would impact lots of people negatively”) and “several thousand” (a restriction on which wouldn’t impact any legitimate users). See (waves vaguely above).
Also worth revisiting in hindsight is your other suggestion - “block new account creation with email addresses of users who received blocks”.
Today, a user that babysits a neighborhood or town would either need to be pretty good with 3rd party websites or spend a huge amount of time on OSM org.
It might be a US specific term. In the US if you want to go out to a restaurant (for example) without your children, you can hire someone to watch the children. This person is referred to as the “babysitter” (sits and watches the baby [or child] to make sure they are ok). In the context of this post, it means an experienced OSM mapper watching an area of the map (neighborhood) to make sure new mappers don’t make mistakes (and hopefully gently provides feedback if mistakes are found).
Forcing users to socialize and adapt into a hierarchical structure is not good. It will further cultivate internal politics within OSM. If I was forced into such a model, I would quit editing.
Being a loner (i.e.: working alone by choice) should not be punished.
Nobody in OSM is forcing anybody in OSM to “socialize.” Nor have I ever considered something as diverse and even anarchic as “hierarchical,” as what is not inherently hierarchical cannot be made so. What OSM does is foster cooperation, collaboration and “good growth” among the people who share editing in any given area (could be very small like a neighborhood, medium-sized like a decent-sized city, or large-scale like a whole state/province or even small country). This isn’t “socialization,” it is a bit like all the medieval-era workers on a cathedral (stonemasons, carpenters, glaziers…) being aware of what “others around them” are doing so that the “integrated whole” can be as good as, or even better, the very best possible.
You can “work alone” doing this, but you are truly missing out on the best that OSM has to offer: the collaboration of other, like-minded mappers. I have met dazzlingly talented people via OSM, both “in the map” and socially / in-person at events like Mapping Parties, Mappy Hours (monthly chapter videoconferences) and at our national State Of The Map conferences (where sometimes I am asked to be a speaker). These human interactions of other people discovering what they discover (how to map, how to better map in an area we share…) are (in my opinion) “the best part” of the whole project.
OpenStreetMap is an amazing project, it is practically a worldwide movement empowering people to learn more about our environment, communities, infrastructure, architecture and more, while positively contributing with others doing the same.
In case people haven’t noticed, there’s another wave of vandalism ongoing. I’m in the process of blocking the accounts that I can identify (currently ~4500, but may increase), and a number of other people have reverted obviously problematic changesets. The block messages, like this one, are deliberately non-accusatory, even though some of the accounts have been used for vandalism already.
I have said it before and I must say it again because I feel it so strongly: thank you immensely to all who “bolster our map” against vandalism and wrong / bad edits. While we as individual contributors (if we are experienced, have community consensus behind us and absolutely know we are “doing the right thing”) CAN (occasionally) help the anti-bad-map-data / anti-vandalism trend and we CAN sometimes redact bad edits or some other helpful act, I continue to be both amazed by and am supportive of the many hands who “watch and keep clean” our (important to the world) data. I salute you (us, really) and contribute when and how I am able to do so (locally, sometimes, it can be a challenge to watch and respond, but I will and do and have when necessary).
Sometimes, this is simple “editing back to a level of sane.” Sometimes, this is a carefully-crafted redaction, regression or tool-oriented removal of data. However it is done, there are a lot of steps (technical, social, procedural…) involved and I salute the efforts and results of those of us who do this important work.
Keep your / our ears open, everybody: you might be able to help, too.
Yup, I just noticed reverts that occurred few hours ago for Greek places with name:ru tags. It’s sad that this vandalism wave still occurs, and the discussion here still continues as it’s not easy to find and implement measures that wouldn’t affect much genuine new accounts…
Thank you again for all the actions you take all the time, when exactly you are volunteers and spend your own time to take care of the vandalism others create for their own amusement…
There is a wave of russophobia-based vandalism of deleting name:ru. I report the users when I notice one such malicious edit. It is not possible to reason with them because they are driven by hatred.
Reading this thread and the 2019 GitHub issue that Mateusz linked near the top, it seems like everyone participating in the discussion agrees that something should be done, but both threads show it’s complicated. I’m skeptical we’ll find agreement through normal community discussion. Based on what I’ve read, I’m wondering if one way the board could help us is to form a working group on this topic - specifically covering needed tools and ecosystem changes to address vandalism and accidental and consequential edits from new users, but maybe more broadly construed to also cover the suite of tools and incentives for reviewers of edits too. It could maybe also cover social aspects and potential solutions discussed here. I agree with Steve that it affects the fundamental nature of the project, so it should be deliberate and thoughtful, and I think an organized group on the issue could do that.
I’d think a group working on this should have representative from operations, website development, API development, editor developers, DWG, and various community members based upon these existing discussions. A thread like this provides potential options, but a working group could dive deep to find solutions that solve the issues mentioned here that are blocking us from dealing with the problem, make recommendations, and suggest a timeline for each of that parties involved.
If that’s just more overhead on this issue and not helpful, I don’t need to push the idea further, but it’s what I was thinking as I read through all of this. It needs a concerted long-term push that involves people from all parts of the OSM community if we hope to actually address the problem.
