It seems I have gained a cyber fan.

I have been adding previously unmapped roads to the database using satellite imagery, but mainly in areas I have traveled, as recently as within the past two weeks. There is a particular user who seems to be chasing and changing my recent edits around the map. I say “chasing” because I moved to a totally different area of the map I don’t usually work on and this user still found and changed my work.

My main goal is to map roads that aren’t in the database yet, but it seems this user is mainly just tracking my changesets and changing what I tag when I add the roads.

Is it frustrating for the mapper? Yes indeed. Frustrating is someone else changing the classification of a road I just drove on in a regular car. I might not be as frustrated if this user was also working at adding to the road network but the bulk of their edits are changing and deleting other users work.

Rhetorical question, but if everything I classify and tag will be shortly changed after I save, should I just add the road geometry with no tags at all and let this other user do all the tagging work?

I understand the OSM project is open to all and every user has the right/ability to change information they deem to be inaccurate. But isn’t it rather rude to single someone out and chase their work around the map, rather than add new information to the database?

Not really looking for comments - I’m just venting and sharing in case others are experiencing the same issue.

I have been happily adding rural roadways to OSM for a few years now. Recently, another user has been systematically retagging/reclassifying many of the roadways I have originally added to the database, essentially flattening multiple types of road into a single type of road (changing secondary, tertiary and unclassified roads into all tracks).

It wouldn’t bother me so much if the other user was helping to fill in unmapped areas, but it seems all they are doing is chasing and changing my work.

The user did not attempt to contact me to ask why I tagged things the way I did, so I contacted them and explained my reasoning and asked if we could come to an agreement.

The response was simply to tell me I was wrong and to point me at specific OSM wiki pages. When I quoted sections that agreed with my tagging methods, I was still wrong.

The other user even opened a forum topic to specifically point the finger at me and say I was doing things the wrong way, and to ask others their opinion. A step in the right direction, except the user ignored comments that agreed with my methods and took any that agreed with theirs as total validation.

Let me point out that neither of us is technically wrong, according to information on multiple wiki pages.

As a result of the discussions, I have changed the way I tag rural roadways and have clearly stated my methods on my profile page. I have explained my reasoning in direct messages and on the forums, but this other user persists in changing my original work.

Have any of you run into an issue like this before, and were you able to resolve it?