Foundation/AGM2023/Election to Board/Answers and manifestos/Q09 OSM Data - Vandalism

OSM Data - protection, legal threats and vandalism: Vandalism

What would you do to discourage vandalism of OSM databases whilst ensuring genuine contributors are not caught in the crossfire?

• 1. How would you make sure the Data Working Group is adequately resourced at times of high vandalism?
• 2. Do you believe that the OpenStreetMap Foundation should prioritize and allocate more funds towards software maintenance, developer bounties, and other technological incentives? Please elaborate your answer.

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Related link added on 2023-11-20 for members: Data Working Group.

Roland Olbricht - Q09 OSM Data: Vandalism

The members of the Data Working Group know themselves best what resources they need. Every now and then, I request for something comes in and is fulfilled as good as possible. I have full trust in the DWG's competence, thus I would not intervene unless the group itself requests something.

I suggest a three-tier strategy against vandalism.

The first tier to defeat vandalism is the ability of the community and in extreme cases the DWG to detect and revert vandalism. This has proven to work within minutes to hours, even in the worst cases rarely slower than a day. This worked well even in the `name:ru` and Israel vandalism.

What worked less well has been the reverting due to the high volume and interdependence of the vandalism in the Israel case. Here comes the second tier into play: the limits for new users, or maybe non-bot users in general. While in itself not a protection against vandalism, it helps to slow down vandalism to an extent this is well-manageable by existing revert processes. Other limits may compliment that. I've just given a talk to help determine the values for the limits such that benign users are not hurt - this is absolutely possible.

The third tier is a response to the unlucky incidence that a data user might export the data right when some vandalism has taken place but not yet reverted. This has indeed at least once happened. So far, we expect downstream data users to ensure that no unwanted data is in their export. A relatively broad part of data users has never managed to get that proper. Acknowledging the problem, there should be a toolchain within the OpenStreetMap ecosystem to assert downstream data users against at least the bluntest vandalism. One possible solution for this is a regularly recreated planet dump that does contain only changes that survived at least 24 hours or seven days.

Guillaume Rischard - Q09 OSM Data: Vandalism

The recent Ukraine and Israel cases have been tedious cases of sophisticated vandalism. We now have better detection and revert tools, but they're not perfect. In the long term, we must develop better internal tools to maintain the asymmetry over vandals. I have communicated to the Data Working Group that the Foundation's is willing to support it with funds and resources. So far, only motivated volunteers have been working on vandalism.

We're already working on limiting the damage new accounts can do. A major engineering project I would like us to work on is a more flexible filter to screen changesets before they're commited. DWG could write rules for it as necessary, for example by disallowing changesets adding new objects around Null Island, or deleting a country's administrative boundary.

I wish to express my huge gratitude and admiration to the volunteers of the Data Working Group and Operations Working Group who have spent long hours dealing with the two recent waves of vandalism.

Włodzimierz Bartczak - Q09 OSM Data: Vandalism

First of all, I would like to thank all DWG members for the enormous amount of work they have to do to ensure that our work is not destroyed. If elected to the board, I will try to ensure that part of the OSMF funds are allocated to solutions that facilitate the work of DWG colleagues as well as to support them in recruiting new volunteers. In this case, an interesting idea may be a program for Local Chater members to help search for willing volunteers for DWG.

Ivo Reano - Q09 OSM Data: Vandalism

I don't have enough experience or knowledge on the matter to express an opinion. Perhaps through widespread control by expert mappers, as already happens, and a development (or is it already sufficient?) of automatic checks on suspicious changesets.

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OSM Foundation's board election 2023: official questions
Q01 Strategic Plan | Q02 On imagery sources | Q03 On Diversity and Inclusion | Q04 On Fundraising | Q05 On appointive board-adjacent positions | Q06 OSMF and Overture Maps Foundation | Q07 OSM Data: Protection | Q08 OSM Data: Legal Threats | Q09 OSM Data: Vandalism
All board candidates' manifestos

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2023 OpenStreetMap Foundation's: Board election - Voting information and instructions - Annual General Meeting

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