Hello,

this is a message sent to the following users:

• Sainimili varo
• jay yavala
• 10tora
• togasela
• AlivetaQ
• Aseri
• Liceni
• vasitisoko
• P D Qoro
• Milika
• TA8884
• IamColleen

All of you have been active on the island of Viti Levu recently. There are massive data quality issues on the the island, and we’re not sure who in your team is in a position to deal with them, hence we’re sending a zero-hour block message to all of you hoping that the problems can be communicated and addressed.

(NB It is considered good style to add a short sentence to your profile page explaining what mapping group you’re part of and who to contact in case of problems.)

The problems include:

• several times the Viti Levu boundary has been transformed into a building or a restaurant.
• all kinds of features are mapped as buildings even if they are not buildings (eg here a rugby field: http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=19/-17.79314/177.43061)
• it appears that you might be adding the names of people or families to houses - if this is true, please don’t and respect the privacy of residents. This map can be seen by everyone on the planet.
• you are not using meaningful changeset comments (“nR”, “house TBC”, “adbfieldvalidation” etc)
• you are mapping many objects twice or three times, leading to “stacks” of houses like here http://www.openstreetmap.org/node/4408947450#map=19/-17.77617/177.38184
• you are using lots of non-standard tags (“amenity=shop”, “plinthlevel:height >=0.5m” etc
• you might be using a badly projected aerial image, judging from the non-rectangular form your areas and buildings have: http://www.openstreetmap.org/way/439085681
• you are not using the “name” tag correctly - it is used for the name of objects, not for descriptions (e.g. instead of “name=COMMERCIAL BUILDING” you would be expected to use “building=commercial”)
• when contacted by community members in changeset discussions, you don’t respond and simply continue (http://www.openstreetmap.org/changeset/42311560, http://www.openstreetmap.org/changeset/42122196 etc)

In all, it appears as if this is a mapping exercise gone wrong, and the data you are adding is sadly of little value if you work this far outside of the usual OSM practices. Please stop whatever it is you’re doing and read up on OSM practices, or seek help by an experied mapper. Otherwise, it is possible that your contributions will be removed.

Best wishes Frederik Ramm aka woodpeck OSMF Data Working Group