What constitutes an editing endeavour that needs to be discussed with the community?

[Jarek_Piórkowski]

@wielandb

Through recent discussion

To make a link for others in the future, this is likely MapRoulette Critique - #23 by wielandb

@wielandb

I was always thinking that any mechanism that edits without a human reviewing every change that is about to be made is considered automated editing. Which I completely understand because the OSM Database is so complex that it is nearly impossible to automatically do any edit without side effects. That’s why a human needs to review every change that should be made and decide for every object individually if the proposed changes make sense.

But now I have heard about a new understanding of this rule. It was unfortunately not possible to find a clear definition, but the definition I destilled for myself was
“Everything that significantly impacts the mapping of at least one feature as a whole is considered automated editing and needs to be discussed before doing.”

But that is still not clear cut enough for me and I would apprechiate your words on what I should discuss with the community before doing.

I don’t know if there’ll be a 100% clear definition. This might be a “I know it when I see it” situation.

I would suggest that challenges that have the potential of ending up being bot editing should be consulted on.

Someone who edits OSM across tens of kilometres and the entirety of their edit is accepting iD’s suggestions is performing a bot edit IMO.

To make it a human edit, I expect human judgement. For example, in choosing which of iD’s suggestions to accept, or choosing what to map, or genuinely answering a question “is this A or B” that the tool is asking earnestly.

A bot edit is changing crossing_ref=zebra to crossing:markings=zebra in an entire town in a single changeset because a tool suggests it. A human edit is changing that tag in StreetComplete or Every Door when you are standing in front of the zebra crossing in question.

Bot edits can be OK if there is local community agreement that it’s a good change - for example I understand the change to crossing:markings is generally accepted in Canada, or to give a recent example, the deprecation of cycleway=opposite. But if all you’re doing is accepting what got put into the iD presets repo without any discussion with local community, then you’re going to cause problems sooner or later – as the other thread documented. This is the whole reason that “automated edits” policy was put in place.

To me, a bot edit is someone who’s never ridden a bicycle going into a MapRoulette challenge and pressing “accept” on all suggestions to upgrade cycleway=opposite. A human edit is someone who rides a bicycle going into a MapRoulette challenge for their local area, viewing each of the suggestions to see if the proposed new tagging matches aerial imagery, perhaps consulting OSM history to see if something not matching imagery is a new change on the ground that was surveyed in-person, and making those changes. Both could be from the same MapRoulette challenge. It is up to MapRoulette to make it as hard as possible to make that first edit.

It’s possible for the same change to be done in a bot manner or in a human manner. The outcome could be the same. But the process matters. Because the process helps us avoid problems. Pilots don’t go through their landing checklist every time because they expect the outcome to be different – they do it in case the outcome is different.