[HOT] The status of iD in HOT contexts/projects

[John Firebaugh]

Will, Robert,

Thanks very much for the thoughtful feedback. I've mentally updated some
priorities, and can give you a status update on a few of the items you
mentioned:

- GPS layer: see
https://github.com/systemed/iD/issues/277#issuecomment-25187237
- Waypoint support in GPX traces: thanks to Simon Johnson's work, this will
be included in 1.2.0, which I've just submitted to OSM.org.
- Imagery offset database: this is another feature where a pull request
would greatly expedite things. It's on my radar, but not a top priority.
- Conflict detection: this could range from 'periodic preemptive check for
new data', which might be fairly simple to implement, to 'full blown
detection and resolution', which is very complex and likely out of scope
entirely for iD. It would be helpful if you could add your opinion on what
the necessary scope is and ideas for specific changes to the issue.

cheers,
John


On Tue, Sep 24, 2013 at 8:06 AM, Banick, Robert
<Robert.Banick at redcross.org>wrote:

>   Hi Will,
>
>  Super helpful feedback. I agree with your specific points but not with
> the overall thrust of your argument. Given that I'm about to conduct a
> training next week using iD, I hope I'm right :)
>
>  Some constructive responses:
>
>  Simon Johnson of the British Red Cross has been working on the GPX point
> layer since last week and has submitted a pull request to have it fixed.
> I'm not sure what the status of that pull request is but selfishly hope
> that it's incorporated by next week. Tom, John *et al*, any ETA on that?
>
>  I'm planning on using the tasking manager to organize the iD tracing,
> with the hope that we can avoid conflicts this way. I agree that conflict
> resolution is fairly poor and hope to get around it that way. Any
> experience on your end doing this?
>
>  I never plan on relying on Bing anyways, since it's too fuzzy in many
> rural areas of the developing world to be of any use. That's not the fault
> of the iD team of course, just the reality of imagery availability in its
> current state.
>
>  Robert
>
>   *Robert Banick* | Field GIS Coordinator | International Services | Ì American
> Red Cross <http://www.redcross.org/>****
>
> 2025 E Street NW, Washington, DC 20006
>
>
>     From: "kathleen.danielson at gmail.com" <kathleen.danielson at gmail.com>
> Date: Tuesday, September 24, 2013 8:49 AM
> To: william skora <skorasaurus at gmail.com>
> Cc: John Firebaugh <john.firebaugh at gmail.com>, "hot at openstreetmap.org" <
> hot at openstreetmap.org>, Tom MacWright <tom at macwright.org>
> Subject: Re: [HOT] The status of iD in HOT contexts/projects
>
>   Great example of constructive feedback, Will. I'm sure that Tom, John,
> and team really appreciate it!
> On Sep 23, 2013 11:00 PM, "Will Skora" <skorasaurus at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Robert Soden mentioned the interest of using iD for OSM-related
>> trainings during today's HOT tech chat. While in Northern Haiti for
>> the CAP103 project in May-June 2013, a handful of the advanced mappers
>> in Northern Haiti had learned about iD and wanted to learn how to use
>> it, and I attempted to give 2-3 informal brief walkthroughs.
>> afterwards, I wrote my experiences about it and then forgot to share
>> them with the HOT community until now and thought it would be useful
>> to share since we haven't discussed the use of iD in HOT contexts.
>>
>> First off, I truly admire the work done for iD. Its development has
>> been rapid, the developers are very friendly, humble, and responsive,
>> they set an example for the OSM developers' community. I understand
>> that iD developers have other competiting priorities to help improve
>> the editor but there's several issues that I've experienced and as a
>> result, would really hesitate to use iD in HOT contexts where these
>> issues would be appear.
>>
>> - Lack of a GPS layer
>>  - you can currently upload a single GPS track to display in the
>> background, but you are not yet able to load the entire background of
>> GPS traces from OSM of a given area.
>>  https://github.com/systemed/iD/issues/277
>>  Although the quantity and quality of imagery sources available has
>> increased in recent years, there's still a handful of areas in the
>> world where there's no traceable imagery available, often in areas
>> where HOT has operated . In these instances, mappers still have to
>> rely solely on GPX points and GPS layers to map.
>>
>> - Lack of waypoint support in GPX traces
>> https://github.com/systemed/iD/issues/1557
>>  As we often take waypoints as we often take GPS traces and write down
>> information that describes the area associated with the corresponding
>> waypoint.
>>
>>  - In some areas, bing imagery is 'offset' - a road traced with bing,
>> for example, may be 30 or 50 meters away from where it is on the
>> ground. To fix this, 'offsetting the imagery' is necessary. At the
>> moment, iD has the capability to adjust imagery, but the adjustment
>> must be manually done each time a user opens iD to edit OSM.
>> Secondly, without a GPS trace layer (mentioned above), a user does not
>> know whether the data already mapped to OSM are currently offset or
>> not. This is a bit problematic to newer OSM users who may move data,
>> believing that it should match up with bing imagery.
>>  https://github.com/systemed/iD/issues/1124
>>
>>  - conflict detection
>>   - no way to detect conflicts. This is problematic when there are
>> mapping parties and mappers are editing in areas very close to each
>> and you may be editing the same ways as your fellow users.
>>   https://github.com/systemed/iD/issues/1053
>>
>> At the moment, iD is a great editor but the above issues can be quite
>> problematic in some HOT contexts (that don't have great imagery for
>> example) and would be considered dealbreakers in these HOT
>> environments.
>>
>> Given the rapid development of iD, we may even have to reasses it in
>> just a few months. Until then, we should keep iD on the back burner.
>>
>> Regards,
>> Will
>>
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>
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