[OSM-dev] Reversion tool for new users

[Serge Wroclawski]

Kathleen,

If you make no changes and immediately want a reversion, then no, it's
not "complex", but there's no way to know that nothing has changed
without inspecting each object in the changeset and possibly its child
objects (node belonging to ways, ways belonging to relations).

There is a reversion tool in Josm, it's a plugin, and there's nothing
stopping someone from using it. The only reason people don't is they
either aren't aware of it, aren't using josm, or are uncomfortable
doing reversions.

- Serge

On Sun, Nov 10, 2013 at 10:52 AM, Kathleen Danielson
<kathleen.danielson at gmail.com> wrote:
> As someone who doesn't do reversions, I'd agree with Serge that they sound
> tricky and I'd worry about messing up later edits based on my bad changeset.
> Agree that changeset comments would be an awesome asset to the project as a
> whole!
>
> Here's a thought, though-- does the complexity of a reversion decrease if
> nothing has been edited on "top" of a changeset? For example, I make an
> edit, hit save, and then realize I accidentally made some error that would
> be hard/tedious to manually undo. What if there were a "revert changeset"
> option that were only available for changesets that have no subsequent
> changes affecting them. That might be just as complex, but in case it isn't
> I thought I'd throw the idea out there.
>
>
> On Sun, Nov 10, 2013 at 10:38 AM, Serge Wroclawski <emacsen at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>>
>> Andrew,
>>
>> Speaking as someone who does reversions, reversions are tricky. Doing
>> them in an automated way does not always get you what you expect if
>> there's been an interim edit, and even knowing if there's going to be
>> a problem with an automated reversion requires a bit of deep
>> introspection onto the changeset.
>>
>> So maybe the right solution is (as has been proposed before) is
>> changeset comments and flags.
>>
>> - Serge
>>
>> On Sat, Nov 9, 2013 at 3:45 PM, Andrew Hain <andrewhainosm at hotmail.co.uk>
>> wrote:
>> > Every so often a new user asks how to revert their editing mistake. It
>> > would
>> > be useful if they could do this themselves, which we don’t have suitable
>> > tools for. Frederik’s scripts aren’t aimed at new users and Potlatch 1
>> > needs
>> > the browser’s address bar to be fiddled with.
>> >
>> > Perhaps we could offer them a tool for them to revert their own edits.
>> > This
>> > doesn’t need a Potlatch-style deletion history API call because it it
>> > can
>> > use trace through one user’s changesets to offer one to revert.
>> >
>> > --
>> > Andrew
>> >
>> >
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