I wonder, how many more scares are needed before we recognise the growing threat? It is painfully easy to disrupt the OSM ecosystem, and even if the central repairs after a few similar attacks become quick and effective, the damage lingers on for weeks. This hurts the entire project, mainly by affecting the trust people have in OSM.
Suppose it takes a year and then someone launches a different attack, of course avoiding the detections now activated. Would that be hard? Mmmm…
Will the ‘powers that will be’ say: we didn’t see that coming, we couldn’t know, we trying our best? Sure. Will some people say: you’ve had a warning and then decided to remain a sitting duck? Sure.
Ah well. It is what it is. Even OSM is not forever.
Frustration with Google’s approval based system is one of the reasons I started editing OSM in the first place. I ended up not being able to implement a new roundabout because I hit their limits for number of changes in a single edit.
I doubt we’d be quite that restrictive, but if they can’t make their second edit because their first edit is pending review then that could be an issue.
I have known since joining OSM in 2009 that vandalism is bad for the project.
We, as OSM, I believe (but do not know) have built many reactions and defenses to vandalism, and I salute all who do. Fighting against it is truly is something which all of us do, however small or large. To wit, this dialog is an important part of it…
As long as we keep talking about best strategies to address vandalism, good. Let’s see vandalism as an existential threat, because it is. There is nothing wrong with getting ahead of the curve of any threat. Consensus, especially as it may strengthen the effects of that and as it makes itself better known to others catches on, as it appears it is doing (again); wonderful.
But agreement takes agreement, so let’s start agreeing on things. “Vandalism = existential threat”, anyone?
I didn’t pull this fire alarm; there are such things as fire alarms.
Maybe powers-that-be have vandalism under control (I doubt that, I also salute the “good saves” of many and recent events), maybe vandalism is getting out of control (what Andy said). We continue good dialog here. I remain in listening mode again.
It really is difficult to stay on topic here, maybe mods break this apart a bit.
Edit: If you scroll back to the original post on this topic, you’ll see at least a dozen or more “splits” into many sub-topics here. I don’t think I’ve ever seen quite that extent of splitting into many sub-topics. This really is an important topic (with many sub-topics) and I hope our moderators can help “capture” the many (hundreds of) sentiments into the various directions this topic has split into. Thanks to everybody for continuiing contributions to this topic.
It’s definitely a threat to OSM and it’s getting existential for me, if I as a ordinary mapper can’t use “my” data anymore. That’s the case if I can’t simply use the data, if today’s European data is useless, tomorrow American data,… if I would need to do a huge amount of work to clean up the data before having something useful. Work a single hobbyist can’t do. If I depend on a 3rd party to use the data. That I can get elsewhere without putting mapping effort in.
Click to open
I wonder what their ulterior motive is and who's behind it. It could be related to the [mechanical edits mentioned in comment 10](https://community.openstreetmap.org/t/the-osm-standard-tile-layer-looks-wrong-white-lines-abusive-comments-etc/111583) However, [they got back at it](https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/Kizilens). This doesn't tie up. Why would they get back? Maybe another set of mechanical edits? What do they mean by "Andy Townsend is playing a game"? Hopefully, what the ["investigation"](https://www.openstreetmap.org/user_blocks/16052#:~:text=blocked%20for-,investigation) entails means we will know the motive.
*typo fixed
Please note, it’s highly controversial, and the formatting is broken
Some people are just [insert word here that I couldn’t possibly use without upsetting some readers].
They’re human, and human beings do things for all sorts of reasons. Not all of those look sensible to outsiders or to people without a bit of the background around what led to them doing that.
I agree. I hate to say it, but it might be prudent to temporarily halt new changes until all of the vandalism is cleaned up. It’s a drastic measure to be sure, but drastic (existentially threatening) things are happening to the map.
It would be indeed a good way for to deliver cleaner map data, but it won’t take away the almost certain return of the same vandalists afterwards to continue this illogical provoke.
Though, this would have a greater effect if at the same time new anti-vandalism features get implemented (if feasible ones can ever get planned and implemented that is).
That could be necessary one time, but it gives attackers the power to halt the entire process. I think we need a mechanism to allow and process ongoing changes to the database, while holding propagation of potentially unsafe object versions.
I don’t see how this helps. If there is an algorithm, it needs to stop potential harmful edits and release them only after manual review of a trustworthy mapper. Stopping OSM for cleaning up the data will be worse compared to current situation.
Especially as this comment looks accurate and not offensive/problematic/aggressive or otherwise problematic.
Yes, some people have weird/evil/confusing goals (at least from our perspective) and will do weird/evil/pointless/insane things. Sometimes it involves vandalising OpenStreetMap, sometimes it involves other acts.
there are so many accounts doing this its actually insane, apparently its some sort of anti-russian propaganda but if thats the case this is a pretty weird way of spreading consciousness about the war.
If they did, loaded it ATM of my post into JOSM and tried a revert, frozen at step 9 of 46 of the validation cycle, then maxed out on memory as my JOSM is only allowed to use 4GB and it wss at 4.328. I’ll cancel since not wanting to cause a conflict.
Yeah, I’ve witnessed that too (and reported as many accounts as I can). Also considered doing reverting it (since I myself also did reverts) but decided to leave for the experts.
In fact, I was wondering how long it took before someone posts here.
I found one clearly vandalistic changeset, Changeset: 152614038 | OpenStreetMap , and reverted it using osm-revert, however it is only one of many: more work will be needed to go back to an actually clean state
