[OSM-dev] A new take on the "mutable" idea

[sylvain letuffe]

Le dimanche 21 juin 2009 12:49, Richard Fairhurst a écrit :
> Frederik Ramm wrote:
> > However, we'll have more and more imports like boundaries, seamarks
> > and so on, which I like to consider "mutable for people who know
> > exactly what they're doing".
>
> Is this actually a real-world problem right now, or something we think
> might possibly one day become one?

It is, In france we are actually importing admin_level=8 boundaries from 
an "official" source and we have some fears about users modifying it without 
really understanding why it is so.

Our source is however not perfect (projection problems, semi-manual 
imports,...) and users are encouraged to modify it when they have good 
reasons to do so. 
But nothing forbids anyone to do a mistake and cut/move/change nodes/ways 
incorectly.

For now, we are just using some tools to monitor the data and try to spot such 
erroneous modifications + adding wiki page to explain the import. But we put 
an important trust on the user. 

A solution such as the one proposed by Frederik could help, but I do 
personnaly fear a bit that the editor will one day drop dozen pop-ups 
repeating "are you sure ? because XXX" ending with a windows-minded user just 
to repeatidly hit "Yes I am"

JOSM dialog box :
- You are editing a node out of your bbox, are you sure ?
- You are modifying an official imported source, are you sure ?
- The source tag is XXX are you sure yours is better ?
- The quality of this node is GPS retrieved with a Garmin X, is your GPS at 
least a Magelan Y ?
- You are modifying an extended-multipolygon relation element, are you aware 
of this wiki page ? 
- Your changeset need a comment, an empty one might leads to a revert, are you 
sure ?

I know I'm going too far, and I also know that as data amount increase we'll 
probably need some "quality insurrance monitoring tools", but I'am 
considering the defaults being "warn and trust" instead of "guilty and 
revert"

PS: Rigth now, I'm using the note tag when I feel the need to give an 
estimation of the quality of my contribution in the hope that a new user will 
consider it before making some approximative changes

--
sly
sylvain letuffe