Frederik Ramm wrote:
(Our rule is, in a nutshell: If you personally look at every object you
change then it's fine; if however you select all objects that have a
certain property and then change that globally without even noticing
which countries you're editing in then that's a mechanical edit that
requires prior discussion to make sure you're not breaking things
inadvertently.)
Actually, as written it's a little broader than that.
What http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Mechanical_Edit_Policy actually
says is "Generally, this policy covers all edits where an individual
change to an object is not performed by a human being. This includes ...
search-and-replace operations using an editor... unless your changes are
backed up by knowledge or survey rather than just reckoning".
Generally speaking people doing large search-and-replace operations
using JOSM are trying to "do the right thing" - many typo-correctors use
JOSM on a daily basis without complaint either because their correcting
genuine errors (e.g. tag misspellings) or are so minor (e.g. the case of
letters used in a "source" tag) that no-one minds.
Problems occur when tag changes aren't notified beforehand and data
consumers' maps break without warning, or when tag consolidations lose
survey data, or when errors occur (e.g. the "building=generic" tag being
removed in one of your "random example" user's changesets).
Perhaps a third rule along the lines of "if you're making changes over a
large area, please consult with local mappers first and follow the
Mechanical Edit Policy" would work?
Cheers,
Andy
_______________________________________________
josm-dev mailing list
[email protected]
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/josm-dev
