I’ve also had a periodic look here and yes, there are “new accounts” popping up. I’d expect most of those to be genuinely new users though - we shouldn’t treat them with suspicion until we have some evidence that they are just more sockpuppets. It’d be unfair on genuine new users in Italy to not assume good faith, just because Martino is behaving like an arsehole.
A user that creates an account, makes one set of edits and then immediately deletes their account (following a long-line of such behaviour) is not acting in good faith. If anyone needs any help reverting this please let the DWG know - email data@openstreetmap.org with a subject of “[Ticket#2023041110000115] [OpenStreetMap] deleted account”.
The gentlemen goes around, still, the explanation of why the edit was made is useless “fixed town”
Changes city to town and the population to a round 80000, which is the coincidental threshold to distinct between city and town. The node is representing is seems the district and not the main residential area by itself. Think a revert is in order,
There definitely have been severe problems with this city on the carto rendering, as it made disappear Naples in certain zoom levels, but this is something I would expect to be fixed in Carto and not necessarily in the data. If Giugliano is better represented as city or town is something that can be discussed but should be discussed and not just changed.
Would it help if I reverted those on principle (to make it clear to @Martino_Scaglione that this sort of behaviour isn’t OK (who, for the avoidance of doubt, has denied that some of this behaviour isn’t theirs, but the changes above are “somewhat characteristic”).
Sorry, I read this message only now (after I reverted the edits myself already). The reasons are the same I stated already in the past, the user can use his main account instead of creating disposable accounts non-stop. This make difficult to take track of discussions, understand what’s going on ecc. as stated many times.
For the record I reverted this sockpuppet also: user_19193084
Since people from other communities (New York, Andorra, Spain, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and San Marino mainly) have posted or are following this topic, I want to make it clear that I’m only tracking new sockpuppets in Italy. Therefore, I don’t know if there are any others in those places/countries.
Reverting edits from ban evading accounts seems a good idea in general (without applying it blindly to all edits before block).
And in general I would treat editing and then immediately deleting account as admission to vandalism and a request to revert all their edits.
And in cases where user was repeatedly requested to cease such behaviour as a malicious trolling, intentional attempt to waste time of others and in general being rude and annoying and breaking OSM rules.
So +1 to reverts on sight in such cases.
Obviously some effort is needed to avoid affecting unrelated editors, but edit+self deleting account is quite revealing.
For the record, this is the message I left to the user when the last sockpuppet was created: “Ciao, come richiesto numerose volte, perché non usi il tuo account principale?” (DeepL: “Hi, as requested numerous times, why don’t you use your main account?”). He played dumb in response. I think I’ve been polite enough, his main account is still not blocked and he can use it without limits.
Now I find out that a brand new account has been created and performed a complete revert again:
Meanwhile he keeps editing with other sockpuppets, such as:
An overpass query that can find data by one of the sockpuppet accounts created by @Martino_Scaglione here is https://overpass-turbo.eu/s/1vHF. The userid in that search is the one for the first of the “freddieforbes” accounts.
Also note that I’ve blocked Martino’s main account until they contact us: https://www.openstreetmap.org/user_blocks/7168. They won’t be able to post here after any authentication they have in a browser expires. However, I’ve said that if they wish to continue as part of the OSM community they should email the DWG and we’ll revoke that block.
Edit: Somewhat later, the third “gapathys” account was deleted, and @Martino_Scaglione has created and deleted a fourth with userid 19480213. Revert of that is complete in https://www.openstreetmap.org/changeset/136934793. Some nodes gave 400 errors, but I suspect that is just a difference between how JOSM and other edit methods treat null changes:
cannot restore node 10951331381 to version 2 (put): 400 Bad Request
cannot restore node 10951331383 to version 2 (put): 400 Bad Request
cannot restore node 10951331384 to version 2 (put): 400 Bad Request
cannot restore node 10951331382 to version 2 (put): 400 Bad Request
Edit: likewise a fourth account, 19480843.
Edit: likewise a fifth account, 19481216
Edit: Likewise a sixth account, 19486309
(and several more - see below)
If there are any other accounts I have missed, please email data@openstreetmap.org with a subject of “[Ticket#2023041110000115] other accounts” to let us know. If any accounts are on this list in error, please email data@openstreetmap.org with a subject of “[Ticket#2023041110000115] account on list in error” to let us know (although most of the block messages say that already).
The whole section (not just this way) needs looking at - see this changeset by “saifanjahmal”. I have not reverted 136985265 by “jareth-joden” (now deleted, likely a Martino sock-puppet) because I suspect that more work is required.
While I can understand the initial desire to get the user to use their main account instead of the throwaway ones, what they are doing violates the ToS for openstreetmap.org and there is no reason why that account cannot be blocked for that on its own.
Absolutely - we (the DWG) have been in contact with the admins a couple of times to try and see what options there are to restrict them technically. Here “everyone knows” who the bad actor is, but see also https://github.com/openstreetmap/openstreetmap-website/issues/4018#issuecomment-1576835352 which explains how currently the osm.org website allows an account name to “sidestep” blocks, comments (and probably OsmCha etc. reactions) rather too easily.
What appears to be happening is that Martino is creating a new account (with a disposable email address), giving it an account name that has been used before, and then deleting that account. The userid (“19493588” in the latest example) is new but the user name (“gapathys” in this case) corresponds to an old deleted user - actually 14 different old, deleted users!. As far as OSM is concerned the “new” gapathys is an entirely new account (notwithstanding the ToS violation mentioned by Simon).