[HOT] Tasking Manager - Feedback and upcoming evolution

[David Schmitt]

On 2012-01-26 20:50, Pierre GIRAUD wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> In the following document, I put together the most interesting
> feedback comments contributors made about the tasking manager. The
> bolder words are those I paid attention to.
> https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Fogj124ykXWXCcMgMKjMZosquiVzxDe5_pN4Pt7SL8Q/edit
>
> I would sum up things with the following list of feature requests:
>
>   - split tasks:
> Many users asked for this feature. It now looks obvious that mapping
> main roads, minor roads or buildings represents a complete different
> work. A job should be separated into different "tasks". Each task
> would be materialized by a type of feature to map as well as a tile
> (or area) size.
> I started to design this new workflow. Please check it out here:
> http://bluecarto.free.fr/hot_ts_wireframe/osmtm_v2.pdf

That could really help getting a broader involvement even by people not 
willing to do the highest detail level. I'm wondering whether it might 
be even better if you could cross off all subtasks you've done on the 
tile you were working on? Like Swaziland's country-side has some areas 
with very few to none buildings, where you could map everything in a few 
minutes and mark off all subtasks with very few clicks, instead of 
re-taking the tile several times. This also ties in with the 
sub-division of tiles and the exclusion of water areas (which are a pain 
too).

>   - help mappers to communicate with each other:
> Would a chat per job (in-the-page as in Facebook) help?

I'm myself ain't the big chatter, but this triggered the following train 
of thought:

It'd be great to have an area where mapping standards could be 
discussed/defined. It is often hard for an outsider to identify major 
vs. minor roads in foreign countries. This could be on the osm-wiki  and 
should include links to already well-mapped areas and/or identified 
screenhots of features on the available aerials from the area.

Perhaps this should even become an integral part of the task 
description? A few well-mapped segments as task-seed could also go a 
long way towards a shared understanding of the 
required/expected/available accuracy and information density.

>   - second subdivision (1 tile into a 2x2 grid) for complicated areas:
> I agree that this would be a nice yet useful feature. I think however
> that this it's not easy to develop. I can think a bit more about it if
> you think that this is a must-have.

If this is too hard, a "partially done" status for the intense tiles 
might be sufficient? This could also tie in in with the subtasks: 
perhaps insert "Do X in the NW/NE/SW/SE corner of the tile" as checkable 
sub-task.

Another idea here would be to be able to take multiple tiles at a time 
and reduce the tile-size further. For example, halve the area of a tile 
but allow the "checkout" of 8 tiles at once. That way in the city center 
you'd fetch one and be done with it and in the country-side you can 
fetch multiples, e.g. along a major road and fix-up that first.

The annoying aspect - for me - was always the jarring flow breaker of 
having to wait until josm (even via remote) has loaded the next tile. If 
I could go through and add a bunch of expected sea-tiles in one swoop, 
download it once and the check them through for islands and stuff, that 
would totally go away, even with substantially smaller tiles.

> Thanks for your feedbacks (again).


Thanks for your coding! I'm already looking forward to these changes ;-)



Best Regards, David