Bulk damage of Australian and New Zealand OSM road data network and failure to respond to changeset comments

[EwenH]

Hi Microsoft open maps team, I note that we have seen a sharp increase of Open Street Map (OSM) users with names adding a single element like a building or road with a name not dissimilar to ZSK6XTABGY. These appear to be users of the Microsoft MapBuilder 3.0 (MB)

As a MB user, you register through Microsoft and not OSM, nor are you informed you are updating OSM unless you click the ? button. These changes appear to be pushed to OSM by MB manually, some time later.

The key issue is that there is "Map Roulette" style option called "Complete Map Data" with an option of "Building" or "Road" and I would like to request that the Road option is removed immediately from Oceania and that the clustered nodes exclude roads.

Most of the roads appear to be private driveways however the user have no option of added access attributes, or surface or sidewalks etc. It leaves private farm tracks open to access and can cause routing engines to direct users through farms with critical biosecurity concerns. It leaves, cyclists, walkers and drivers in a dangerous situation by using a private farm access track.

An example is https://www.openstreetmap.org/edit?changeset=147956122#map=18/-35.19213/138.53037 where open access tracks have been added to a vineyard or orchard.

I request that Microsoft ...

• immediately remove the road option from the pop screen and clustered nodes with immediate effect due to the danger it presents to travellers and farm biosecurity and that they work on reconfiguring the backend process so that
• if a driveway is selected, then access defaults to private,with the ability to select the std OSM values
• if no exit exists in a new highway type, then access defaults to private,with the ability to select the std OSM values
• if the new highway crosses another highway and it is not connected it raises an issue and it would be great to validate against all issues
• That the user is contactable and approachable via changeset comments directly.

It is completely unacceptable to prevent users to be able to correctly identify a new element and the large number of changes is damaging the highway network and deeply upsetting.

A rapid response from MIcrosoft is requested please.

[stalker314314]

Hi, thanks for reaching out and for your comments. What we can do immediately is apply pre-moderation by our editors for roads coming from suggestions in AU/NZ, so they are actively scrutinized. Current users are contactable and approachable and will receive mails when you send them changeset comments and/or private messages, so this is not an issue.

However, what we are not sure is how we can approach this problem in better ways and bring back road suggestions to Australia/New Zealand. Users can already choose road type. I see that neither iD editor, nor Rapid's road suggestions are defaulting to private (or service) roads nor they offer any specific hints for AU/NZ, so just to confirm - this issue is not strictly related to Map builder editor? What does AU community do for users coming from these editors, can we learn from that? Additionally, I am looking at https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Australian_Tagging_Guidelines/Roads and I don't see any specificity related to Australian private roads (at least nothing specific that any country is not having). Is there some community discussion around this that you can point us to, to learn, to understand and to get community consensus of what is proper AU tagging and what we should do to better adapt Map builder to AU conditions?

What we can offer in future is to either make road type selection mandatory. Or somehow make road suggestions default to "service" road type and even "access=private", and make it more prominent that this option is selected. Or to keep it as-is, expose "access" as option in UX and maybe offer small banner informing AU/NZ users that they should make it private road before adding it blindly?

BTW, another (preferred) way to contact us is via osm@microsoft.com (as mentioned in wiki), but let's keep this communication channel open for this issue!

[EwenH]

Hi Branko, Thank you for the reply. There are still a number of users still adding driveways without access and I have only had a response from two users from a swarth of comments I have added... See https://resultmaps.neis-one.org/osm-discussions?c=Australia#10/-37.6501/144.6893.

A private driveway up to a house, farmyard or orchard is on private property and cannot be used without permission. This is where state trespass laws come into effect. In Victoria for example, this is the Summary Offences Act (1966) under section 9

• wilfully trespass in any public place and neglect or refuse to leave after being warned to do so;
• wilfully enter a private or Scheduled public place without express or implied authority from the owner or occupier;
• fail to leave a private place or Scheduled public place after being warned to do so and without a lawful excuse;
• enter a place in a way likely to cause a breach of the peace without a lawful excuse.
• These offences are punishable by a fine of up to 25 penalty units or imprisonment for six months.

As this is ongoing, I think it is best to pull the highway section until it is remediated. Other users are spending time rectifying issues due to the editor. It's not really fair on all parties to continue this way. Thank you for listening

[stalker314314]

Hi, Update on our side - we deployed worldwide change where all added roads in AU/NZ will go through pre-moderation for the time being. We also plan to make it easier for users to select driveways and add ability to select whether road is private or not. Once we do that, we plan to remove pre-moderation logic.

I will keep this issue open until we wrap up on that!

[philam]

Just to add my two cents - I agree entirely with @EwenH here. This is causing a lot of damage that is a serious issue for the reputation and reliability of OpenStreetMap. It's extremely important that all the issues raised here are rectified before this feature is enabled.

[stalker314314]

We pushed new version. Now when user select "driveway", it will present "access" with "private" being selected by default. If user selects "service road", Map builder also shows "access" and defaults to "public". This will enable users to select proper access and have sensible defaults. We will soon phase out pre-moderation from AU/NZ roads. Thanks for raising this, I think Map builder is better tool now due to this raised issue! I will let @nikolatr close this issue