I’m making this post on advice from the DWG, to make the community aware of large-scale deletions of buildings, roads, pois etc within the Gaza Strip, which didn’t seem to be backed up by any community consensus. Hopefully, people with knowledge of humanitarian, conflict or lifecycle mapping can suggest the best way to handle mapping in the Gaza Strip, now that newer Esri imagery is available. I don’t have any personal experience with this subject, which is why I originally referred this matter to the DWG.
Some details about the edits: They seem to be low-quality and broad deletions of the above features, with no attempt to use lifecycle prefixes. The deletions seem to have been careless or rushed, as they have in some cases only removed half of some buildings, leading to some remaining with impossible shapes such as https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/1303855469. The total number of changes is in the tens of thousands, taking place over the last 3 months, mainly with changeset comment ‘Gaza perimeter’. There’s no explanation of the changes or links to a discussion backing them up. While deletion may be technically correct when comparing with recent Esri imagery, there’s a clear precedent to use lifecycle prefixes for recently destroyed or demolished buildings.
Deleting parts of buildings for me indicates that no care was applied at all, and it also means that actual state of this buildings was almost certainly not verified.
I support wholesale reverts of such edits. Note that reverts should happen earlier than later as some broken buildings already got edited since. See say linked Way History: 1303855469 | OpenStreetMap
If I would be reverting (not really planning right now) I would revert those as reverting undiscussed and badly done mass edit, that was done in violation of Automated Edits code of conduct - OpenStreetMap Wiki
As a reminder, we do encourage following OSM guidelines and avoid mass deletions and using lifecycle prefixes where appropriate instead. Keen to follow the advice of the DWG here and happy to chat more.
I would not assume so, it is rather russicism or outhright in Russian. They have ru language set and AFAIK “perimeter” has a bit wider meaning in Russian.
Though may or may not be associated with military slang.
To me the workflow that Jessie describes in her diary would a good way ahead! Better that it seems was done now. Mapping damage and destroyed buildings is as such very useful for people living and working in the area, but it is important that it is done with care.
I however want to point out that it is at the moment not very easy to use the prefixes for damaged and destroyed buildings. There is a lot of unclarities around their exact use. See these two forum discussions about that - and feel free to contribute to the discussions!
Another reflection that I am making is as well that there are currently also a lot of new housing that was build in Gaza. Some people would call it ‘temporarily shelters’ but a lot of people are calling these shelters their house already for a long time! For people living and working in these areas, having the new housing mapped, would also be very useful!
