Is continued vandalism why OSM is 150,000 instances of name:ru down, have removals not been reverted or is there a proper reason for the reductions?
changesets=> select distinct user_name from osm_changeset where user_id = 20481051;
user_name
-------------------
Asantera Leppo
POaoOphoRAnsignia
user_20481051
(3 rows)
changesets=> select count(*) from osm_changeset where user_id = 20481051;
count
-------
468
(1 row)
DWG Ticket#2023101810000011
changesets=> select distinct user_name from osm_changeset where user_id = 20481052;
user_name
--------------------
miEBbes
user_20481052
salvadore sziciero
(3 rows)
changesets=> select count(*) from osm_changeset where user_id = 20481052;
count
-------
1526
(1 row)
DWG Ticket#2023101810000029
At this time these have not yet been. DWG ticket numbers exist, see above.
Since the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine that in 2022, some names such as street names no longer have a Russian alternative. A further complication was that in some cases Russian “names” were just poor transliterations of existing Ukrainian names. A suggestion to remove these en masse was discussed in the country forum here; and I think it’s fair to say that that approach was broadly rejected (the community was at least against mass edits by that editor).
However, there certainly have been name:ru removals as part of other name changes that have been discussed within the community (something like “we’ve got the list of updated names from XYZ place; the new names take effect from Monday”) on the forum or Telegram.
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I really wish people who don’t know how to do reverts properly wouldn’t do it. For example, here the object is reverted to the old version and the work of other mappers is lost. It brings no less damage than the actions of that vandal. Such edits are difficult to track because there are so many of them now
https://pewu.github.io/osm-history/#/way/636788737
I also want to remind once again that OSM is not a place for provocations based on racial, gender or national grounds. Such usernames harm the reputation of the project
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Using external auth is fine in my opinion, but only if you accept a lot of them, like if you accept fb, google, microsoft, apple, github and openid, then I have no issue with it. However, if you only accept google and fb or only microsoft and apple, than this is problematic, because you’re choosing the ones you prefer for users to use.
For info, https://www.openstreetmap.org/user_blocks/15187.
Edit: The new names for the ways were re-added in https://www.openstreetmap.org/changeset/142933152. I also re-added the old_name:ru and also changed the new names for the relation (which had been missed) in https://www.openstreetmap.org/changeset/142961515
3 Likes
Would it have been better to keep the name in old_name and old_name:language?
For information, we’re still seeing waves of undiscussed mechanical edit (removing name:ru from all sorts of objects in Ukraine). The previously mentioned OSM history link shows the problem - in this case 3 deleted accounts have removed @Barroszt’s obsolete name:ru and (along with many other edits) were reverted by DWG accounts including mine**.
The rate limiting that @Mateusz_Konieczny wrote about here is still working, but it is still possible for a “new” user to sign up mechanically, make a very large number problem edits and then, because this issue remains unaddressed, delete their account.
** We (the DWG) will need to go through @Barroszt’s edits to try and unpick the mess to make sure that edits like this one are reapplied.
Following https://www.openstreetmap.org/user_blocks/15187 that user has been in contact with the DWG about removing their block - I’ve emailed them to clarify the sorts of edits they’ll want to make if we do so.
Edit: I’ve raised https://github.com/openstreetmap/openstreetmap-website/issues/4307 as an issue, since I couldn’t see exactly the same issue elsewhere. It will need discussion since there are a number of existing conflicting requests here.
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If you look carefully, in the example that I showed everything was done very well and the names were transferred to old_name:*. Sometimes happens that users, especially beginners, do not do this due to lack of experience. We are periodically reminded that this is important, sometimes I put old names myself after such edits
2 Likes
There are new waves of vandalism by new users. This time it is about the existence of Israel.
I see it’s already been reverted and the users blocked.
Unfortunately the node got deleted again by vandalism (#68) which is not reverted yet. So this is ongoing.
1 Like
Some of that user’s edits had already been reverted, but I’ve started off a “complex revert” of that user in https://www.openstreetmap.org/changeset/142963083 which should mop up the stragglers. There may be edge cases that need manual intervention, and given the state of the war there may be “new accounts” responsible for more vandalism later, so once these reverts are complete it would be worth people looking at what may be still wrong.
Edit: Just looking at the node data just now, and there is still quite a bit to untangle.
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And looking at https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/SomeoneElse_Revert/history - revert is still ongoing as of now.
Thank You DWG 
.
You are THE group that keeps me motivated 
.
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For very related restriction: maybe we should no longer allow anonymous notes to be created? I am unsure is it worth allowing it.
(anonymous comments got disabled already, anonymous edits used to be present and are gone for loooong time now)
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I agree, but let’s have a separate thread about it. It’s not the most acute problem that doesn’t corrupt data.
Plus we have several applications that actively use it and we need to warn their developers.
Let’s get back to limiting the size of edits for new users.
We see again edits of 10000 objects already in Israel. Let’s limit the size of edits for new accounts to 1000-2000 changes. That way we’ll make DWG work a little easier.
At the DWG level, I would suggest the idea of trap objects. If some newcomer made a large (in area and/or size) changeset and affected some important established object, then automatically block it for a couple of hours. In the case of name:ru tag vandalism, this should work well.
3 Likes
That’s part of the problem, true, but the sheer volume of edits by new users (which was your first point) means that quite a lot of damage can be done before something is detected. Also, some edits are “indiscriminate” - watching objects does not help there. For example, the most recent vandalism of e.g. this object was spotted “by accident” (well I was half expecting problems in that area, saw it, and blocked and reverted the user (mostly**) cleanly).
Edit: the relevant github issue is this one.
** Some relation edits (maybe a couple of dozen?) require further work.
How can non-DWG users help with this process? It seems like partial reverts have really complicated the process. Should we be trying to spread the word not to do these reverts at all when the DWG is already involved?
1 Like