I decided that ‘stay on topic’ was not the best response. My existing response stands. Please don’t maintain the continuity of a disagreement between two different threads. It makes it more difficult to follow what the points of contention are. So, please continue your debate in the Ukrainian forum instead of going back and forth. This goes for all participants.
That’s perfectly fair. My message posted right before you changed yours and I thought it would look weird to drastically edit or delete it after the fact. Otherwise I would have either phrased it completely differently or not written it in the first place. I’ll try not to go back and forth with the debates though. It’s already hard enough to keep track of the whole thing as it is without any cross talk being involved 
Hello everyone. It’s been a while since this topic has seen some activity, but malicious edits in Ukraine are still very much a thing. I checked for the first time in weeks and immediately I find something: Changeset: 131836855 | OpenStreetMap
Please help to keep Ukraine clean from edits that are related to the ongoing war.
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While I agree with you in the sense that there isn’t any particular reason to follow the urges of any “ukrainian community” at a place where the local people might have different point of view and where the frontlines keep moving back and forth, this guideline makes absolutely sense. None of this is stable and it keeps changing. It doesn’t make sense to map until the situations stabilizes.
Where has anyone in either one of these discussions advocated for laissez faire, unrestricted mapping on the front lines? I don’t think anyone would care if there was a recommendation not to map at the front. Nor would anyone probably mind if people like @Friendly_Ghost was reviewing edits there. I know I wouldn’t. That’s not what this discussion or the “guideline” that people are asking for clarification on is about though.
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You are right. But I believe the that the same principle (not mapping until it stabilizes) should be extended to place names and most stuff related to the ongoing conflict such as military trenches. Not because a self proclaimed community “urges” to do so but simply because this is a fluid and evolving situation.
Totally antidotal, but I watch a news anchor who does stories from Ukraine about the war. Sometimes he’ll do live streams or post pre-recorded commentary videos. In all honesty, most of the time the dude is sitting in an internet café somewhere drinking lattes while a bunch of people fart around on their MacBooks. Sure, the front line is fluid and evolving, but a lot of the country is perfectly fine. Don’t map where things are fluid, and map where they aren’t. That’s no different then anywhere else. Like if there’s a hurricane in Florida it’s probably better not to map the active disaster area. It’s perfectly fine to map the areas of Florida that the hurricane has zero effect on though.
So the question is what’s unique about Ukraine that it warrants making special exception for that no other situation or country is granted. Personally, I don’t see anything unique about it. There’s zero reason the news anchor shouldn’t be able to tag the café he’s hanging out in as takeaway=yes or whatever if he wants to. Acting like he can’t or shouldn’t just because 200 miles away the front line is fluid or whatever is just dishonest.
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And another edit that broke multiple borders in Crimea at once: Changeset: 131892614 | OpenStreetMap
(Yes, I reverted it)
We really need to keep our eyes on this area to respond effectively to problematic edits like this one.
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- The local community asked for it and if you trust local communities, you accept it. In the case of the Florida hurricane and other natural disasters, the local community also asked for help!
- OSM core value: “OSM is powered by its Community. Engage positively with the Community, be a good and respectful neighbour and assume good intent.”
- Even if you don’t see anything unique about it, a good decision always requires second-order thinking → “Chesterton’s Fence” problem.
“When we seek to intervene in any system created by someone, it’s not enough to view their decisions and choices simply as the consequences of first-order thinking because we can inadvertently create serious problems. Before changing anything, we should wonder whether they were using second-order thinking. Their reasons for making certain choices might be more complex than they seem at first. It’s best to assume they knew things we don’t or had experience we can’t fathom, so we don’t go for quick fixes and end up making things worse.” https://fs.blog/chestertons-fence/
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Sure. That doesn’t mean local communities can do whatever they want regardless of the broader consensus though and it’s not like anyone here is saying the local Ukrainian community shouldn’t be able to dictate mapping there. Just that their rules for what can or can’t be mapped and where mapping can or can’t happen need clarification. I’m sure you get the difference between asking a local community to clarify their standards versus saying they don’t matter.
In the meantime we are literally engaging with them positively by asking them to clarify things. It would 100% be a positive thing if the guideline about when, where, and what to map in Ukraine was clear and didn’t contradict itself in multiple places. That said, the Ukrainian community isn’t engaging with us by ignoring the request for clarification. So maybe cite the whole Engage positively with the Community, be a good and respectful neighbour and assume good intent.” thing to the Ukrainian community since their the ones not following it and acting like our request for clarification is bad intentioned.
Can you all take your meta arguments elsewhere, please? I’m trying to highlight dubious map edits in the Ukrainian war zone here, like the many edits to waterways and power infrastructure by olehz | OpenStreetMap.
See for example this edit to power infrastructure with a false changeset comment, long after I had informed them that mapping in Ukraine during the war is discouraged (see Changeset: 126389334 | OpenStreetMap). Other than my single revert and comment, their edits have happened completely unnoticed and unopposed. See for example Changeset: 130865525 | OpenStreetMap.
olehz is currently the last editor of about 7,500 power=* objects, 2,300 place=* objects and 13.3k waterway=* objects in Ukraine since 2022-04-01 (source: Overpass). I find this concerning and I would appreciate some community input on the matter.
P.s. Their OSM heatmap is noteworthy. I also noticed many recent edits of infrastructure just outside the borders of Ukraine.
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@Pan is right. Quite a bit of data contributed to the eastern part of Ukraine under the current status quo could be rendered invalid. This goes for data contributed to the territory of the Russian border oblasts as well. Probably the end result will not be what either side expects.