TLDR: A rant about removing business data, citing vandalism.
I’ve seen users remove business edits across the board claiming they are “vandelism”. To me, if a business wants to add their locations, addresses, phone numbers, business hours, website, etc, let them. That is not vandalism, that is helpful to the community. Removing that data outright is vandalism.
What if I wanted to visit a hardware store using my GPS to get there? What if it was on OSM for a day, but removed because someone decided that just because a hardware store added their stores themselves, all in one edit, it must be removed?
I don’t care who adds the data, I just want good data on my map/GPS app. So please, before you “fix” vandalism, verify that the data is wrong. If it’s not wrong and the fields are not being abused, please do not remove it!
Unfortunately this was months ago. I commented on their edit, but I don’t know of a way to go back through comments I left on someone else’s edit.
I don’t even know who the business was, but they had added like 30+ locations across the US in one commit. The user who removed these said it was vandalism. I didn’t argue. But everything they added to the map looked legitimate to me.
If I ever see this again, is there anywhere I can ask for a review of the data further up the chain to make sure we aren’t losing valuable data just because a business added it?
Perhaps that is true. I don’t have access to the other accounts etc. But what if this is a business that is hired by other businesses to add them into OSM? That might possibly explain why one IP address is making hundreds of accounts.
Is this a common practice in OSM: deleting edits if a user makes too many, too fast (possibly suggesting spam)?
I just want to make sure everything is as it should be. And if not, I want to know where to ask for a second opinion.
I am against spam, but I obviously wouldn’t want to see my work end up being arbitrarily deleted either. Thinking back today about the incident made me worried.
Is there, like, an appeal board for changes like this, or is OSM fully user moderated?
Perhaps if I see anything I think is strange (weird additions or subtractions to the map) I should post about it on the forum? Is that a good way, as just a regular user, to handle it?
TL;DR: If you’re engaged enough to be posting here, I doubt you’ll run into anyone wanting to delete your contributions. The ones being deleted are, as others have said above, very low quality “contributions” made by a bad faith actor.
I did a quick addr:county=USA to addr:country=US edit a while back and since then my QA feeds have been full of these spammy edits, which I’ve been slowly working through.
Each one is always by a new user (with the name of the business as their username) with one edit (adding “their” business) and almost always with the same set of tagging and formatting errors:
addr:*=* formatting errors, such as abbreviated street names, full addresses not split into addr:housenumber and addr:unit, and the country code error
No effort to follow opening_hours format, just pasted in
Generic spammy descriptions like “XYZ Company has been proudly serving Faketown for 40 years and we pride ourselves on outstanding customer service and quality products.”
Errors in payment:*=* tags, like payment:checks and payment:amex
Random freeform service=* values instead of proper POI shop=* / office=* / etc. tagging
Phone number always in +1 -123-456-7890 format
…and so on…
I don’t really blame the businesses themselves, which have probably just hired some “SEO Optimizer” company which is the real source of the issues. For that reason, I usually clean up the tags instead of deleting them. However, it’s clear that the company’s approach of making a new user for every business is “conveniently” making it near impossible to hold them accountable for their consistently bad edits, and I wouldn’t blame others for deleting them outright as it’s obvious they are likely profiting off of OSM (and its editors) without putting any effort into being a constructive contributor.
I am part of OpenStreetMap’s sysadmin team. I’ve removed 10,000+ throwaway accounts of spammers, mostly outsourced “SEO” agents filling the web with promotion spam and backlinks. Most never edit the map, but a few add the businesses to the map, with locations wildly inaccurate (often wrong state and country). Giveaway is often a description= tag filled with hyperbolic content.
I would never remove genuine mappers accounts. I regularly add shops, restaurants, etc to the map myself. OpenStreetMap mappers care about the quality of the map. Map and have fun building our awesome map together.
