Recently, user DeadAngel started a thread on Russian community forum to inform other community members that for a long time, he had been copying addresses from multiple unacceptable (commercial mapping services) and disputed (state property registry) sources. He also used local administration development plans, allowed for use in OSM due to its legislative nature, while he wasn’t aware of that, assuming that all sources aren’t acceptable. He said, that he sent a letter to DWG asking to delete his illegal contribution because he eventually understood and acknowledged his wrongdoing.

This is a questionable situation because it is unclear, which edits were based on illegal sources (development plans aren’t an illegal source), but the reaction of community members was totally surprising and barely relevant to it.

Indeed, one or two people tried to ask for a clarification. However, others came up with a paranoid suspicion that it is not the “real” DeadAngel, but someone who uses his stolen account to harm OSM data, serving interests of commercial mapping services. They demanded a “proof” that he is a “real” DeadAngel, accused him of making a scandal (while there is no scandal), blackmailing the community (how exactly?) and so on. All for the sake of discrediting a user who acknowledged his unacceptable actions and keeping the precious address data.

In addition to that, there was a statement saying that if it is impossible to tell that address information comes from a commercial service (by pointing at hidden “watermarks” in a form of intentionally modified information like wrong or non-existent addresses), this information must be kept intact. This is an exemplary Russian legal nihilism usually brought up to advocate theft. Later, several people started lecturing DeadAngel about the idea that every OSM contributor has no “property rights” on information he added. This is obviously irrelevant because DeadAngel doesn’t demand deletion of his contributions based on “property rights”, he does that based on an illegal nature of his sources.

All that turned into a heated discussion and, as a result, thread is now closed by Zverik (Ilya Zverev), infamous for his refusal to fulfill the responsibilities of a moderator (arbitrator and mediator, according to a dictionary definition) and for being very quick to shut down any “unfriendly” discussion on Russian OSM forum.

So, I have a question: is it possible to acknowledge a possible wrongdoing within a project in a formal way without being accused in a paranoid manner, heckled, lectured with irrelevant demagoguery, suppressed based on greed and legal nihilism?