Rock glaciers are unique and distinct landforms composed partly of ice and partly of rocks that vary in size from boulders to scree. They are neither glaciers nor landslides, but something in between.
Rock glaciers are typically mapped using the natural=glacier + glacier:type=rock tags as documented in the Wiki. However, some mappers have used natural=rock_glacier or geological=rock_glacier for these features.
Over the past month or so, five changesets converted all the natural=rock_glacier and geological=rock_glacier tags in OSM to natural=moraine or geological=moraine.
A moraine is a very different type of feature composed of glacial till carried and deposited by an icy glacier. I think the retagging may have been a misunderstanding of the difference between the two landforms. But in the process OSM has lost some information about previously mapped rock glaciers.
Should the changes to the tags in these changesets be partially reverted, so that the original natural=rock_glacier and geological=rock_glacier tags are restored?
From the comment history it looks like DWG has been involved in that past. It might be worth running this other set of changes past them.
Unless someone with more geological knowledge can poke holes in what you describe in your original post then it sounds like we’ve lost detail by conflating these feature types and a revert is in order.
there is no need to start such thread in this case, though if they systematically ignore changeset comments you can contact DWG and complain about this (typically they remind them about communication in way that cannot be ignored)
If you are unfamiliar with how reverts can be done feel free to ask
If someone mass edits tags and ignores changeset comments and continues to edit then burden of discussing changes should not be on others, at least in my 100% private opinion.
Especially if they continue to do this on large scale (and I am writing it as a person who engages in large scale tag fiddling and recently went too far and needed to revert some edits of my bot due to miscommunication)
But if that is wanted, thenbased on Rock glacier - Wikipedia - tagging them as moraine is obviously wrong
personally natural=rock_glacier seems inferior to natural=glacier + glacier:type=rock but it is not wrong, unlike tagging it as a moraine
DWG hasn’t offered me any more support with these issues, but that might change if other mappers were to contact them.
I have been doing reverts in JOSM, sometimes using the reverter plugin, sometimes by hand, depending on the particular case. If you have other tips, I’d certainly be interested!
geological=plate_boundary => geological=fault — 1 changeset but in this case @MichaelCollinson was kind enough to confirm that the original tag was more precise.
wetland=saltern and similar features retagged — 12 changesets
In some cases, the original tags may not have been ideal, but it doesn’t seem appropriate to completely retag all the features that use a certain tag without some discussion.
Thanks for the changeset comment. The mapper has only missed one day of mapping in the last six months, but we can certainly give them some more time to join the discussion.
if they would be inactive then waiting even month is fine
but they were actively editing and retagging more things while ignoring changeset comments about other remote retagged things and at least one PM
For example Changeset: 138356650 | OpenStreetMap remains unaswered, asked before other series of questionable remote edits happened (" natural=boulders => natural=stone + field=yes (or other variations) — 4 changesets " )
I think it’s worth publicly mentioning that behind Krako73 is the blocked user SHARCRASH, who is now also active as Digital-line. A very problematic user. Read his comments, there’s no doubt. He’s no bored teen or retiree btw (birthdate online).
revert highly dubious change, user who made them ignored changeset comments and my PM and proceeded to make more dubious changes - current volume of their dubious changes is so large that other users cannot keep up
I would propose to revert the boulders, glacial lake, plate boundary, saltern, and rock shelter changesets I mentioned above, but DWG just sent a block message to the mapper and encouraged them to discuss proposed tag changes before making them.
Let’s give them some time join the discussions here if they’d like to do so.
Behavior suggests that user who made this edits will return shortly with a new account even if this specific ones are not used by them. And it is quite clear they did it already with Krako73 account.
That is why in my opinion someone who refuses to communicate and continues problematic edits should not be given days to respond, they should respond before making any further edits, especially of the same type.
I agree that this suggests the mapper will return shortly with a new account to continue the pattern of changes. So I suppose we’ll need to look for that.
The mapper clearly does not intend to discuss their changes, so unless there are objections, I propose to revert all the remaining changesets discussed above and in the Various landslide tags replaced with hazard=landslide thread.
I would advise some caution against jumping to conclusions here.
It is true that “SHARCRASH” was a difficult mapper who not only had problematic mapping habits but also frequently resorted to ad-hominem attacks against other mappers for which they were ultimately blocked.
Usually, when DWG blocks a user because of bad behaviour, we will tolerate it if they come back as a new user - if they change their ways sufficiently that the community can accept the “new person” then that’s ok; everybody deserves a second chance. Once the second and third chances have been thrown away, we tend to become less tolerant and block new instances on sight.
Now SHARCRASH, in their time, have made some enemies who are not much better than SHARCRASH themselves and have indeed occasionally been blocked for being dicks. It appears that some of them are bitter enough to smell SHARCRASH behind everything and then go around and smear them, sending private messages to other mappers about how SHARCRASH is behind this account and that, and salting that with derogatory comments about that mapper’s personal circumstances, and so on.
I recommend that everyone ignore such rumours, especially where spread by private message, and judge an account by what they do instead of by what they have allegedly done in an “earlier OSM life”, or where and how they live, etc.