[HOT] Fwd: Re: Problems saving in ID

Suzan Reed suzan at suzanreed.com
Fri May 22 23:37:23 UTC 2015


Hi everyone! 

So I started working on the tutorial for Github, feeling enthusiastic, and quickly realized the workflow in Github delivers disasterous results. 

Once you login or sign up, which has to be done before you can report and issue, you are directed to a landing page that has nothing to do with OpenStreetMaps, and instead asks you to choose a plan and pay money. Yikes! What!?? How did I get here? How do I find a way to report my problem? (https://github.com/)

It took many clicks and searches that didn't produce anything at all relevant to end up no where. (I took screen shots.)

Finally! I clicked on the original link provided by Nick and althio, and I was at the right page and already signed in. Success! But not intuitive. (Also, signing in is not easy once you have an account as it asked me five different times to give a new username. What!?? I already have a username for Github! And now my past usernames are taken? Really?)

So this is my conclusion (I used to teach and lecture on Usability so I hope this is of some help): 
1. Either find another tool that's much easier to use
or
2. See if Github can be customized and "dumbed down" so it delivers the correct landing page for OpenStreetMaps, and further customize it by deleting a lot of the other buttons (fork etc.) that appear now. 
or the KISS, easy, user-friendly solution
3. Simply provide a web based email form, with instructions to the user to add their OS, browser, etc., that goes to the programming group and have them copy and paste into Github. (Happy to help format and write so it's easy to understand for the user.)

Bottom line: 
As it is, I don't think many non-IT/programming/scientific people are going to figure out how to report an issue. Therefore, programming isn't going to know there's an issue, and the non-tech user public will continue to have a really bad experience, say with iD not saving and oddball dialog boxes, and doubling or even tripling the number of buildings and roads on a tile through multiple saves that make the validator do a lot of extra work. Not good. 

~ Software that doesn't work makes OSM and HOT look bad. 
~ Easy solutions make OSM and HOT look good and the public user feel happy. 

I really did want to write the tutorial, but goodness, Github is a hot mess! 

I bow to the programmers who like it. 

Suzan 



On May 22, 2015, at 10:25 AM, Robert Banick wrote:

Hi Charlotte,

The intention of putting issue reporting there is to create information that’s *actionable* for the (primarily Mapbox) folks who maintain and develop iD. That way problems are automatically linked to solutions. As you can tell, I gently disagree with your assessment of github’s utility. I’m not a developer but I find it really useful for communicating to developers, who, after all, are the ones to fix things. 

That being said, could you maybe explain how Github is poor for reporting issues with iD? If you can maybe explain your frustrations further we can understand how to either better explain Github to new users *or* create new processes that better match your needs as a user. I’m not opposed to the latter but I would hope to give Github a shot instead of inventing yet another process.

Cheers,
Robert

—
Sent from Mailbox


On Fri, May 22, 2015 at 1:07 PM, Charlotte Wolter <techlady at techlady.com> wrote:

Suzan,

You're not alone. Github was designed for people writing 
software. It is an absolutely terrible way to report issues with iD 
or anything else.
Why isn't there a page on the OSM web site with a simple 
form for reporting these issues?

Charlotte


>Delivered-To: techlady at techlady.com
>From: Suzan Reed <suzan at suzanreed.com>
>Date: Thu, 21 May 2015 21:14:11 -0700
>To: Nick Allen <nick.allen.54 at gmail.com>
>X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.1085)
>Cc: "HOT at openstreetmap.org" <hot at openstreetmap.org>
>Subject: Re: [HOT] Problems saving in ID
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>Nick and all,
>
>Would someone be so kind as to add the information way below
>to the "issues" at the link Nick sent to me? I had a dickens of a
>time trying to provide the feedback at that link, and I thought I
>was pretty good with stuff like that.
>
>Suzan
>
>On May 21, 2015, at 1:31 AM, Nick Allen wrote: Hi, 
>https://github.com/openstreetmap/iD/issues Should be the place to 
>report problems. Nick (OSM=Tallguy) Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team 
>Member On 21 May 2015 09:25, "Suzan Reed" <suzan at suzanreed.com> 
>wrote: For some time I've been having problems saving when using ID. 
>I don't know who to report this to. Can someone direct me the person 
>or people who can fix the ID editor? Or send the following to them? 
>Suzan Here are the issues: 1. After Saving edits, unlocking the 
>Task, and going to another Task, a dialog box appears with two icons 
>that indicates past edits have not saved, and asks if I want to 
>restore the edits and save them. When saved, I believe these over 
>write the last Task, doubling the images. 2. Other times another 
>dialog box appears: "Errors occured while trying to save Bad 
>Gateway. The proxy server received an invalid response from an 
>upstream server. Apache/2.4.7 (Ubuntu) Server at 
>www.openstreetmap.org Port 80" (html tags have been removed for 
>brevity.) When Saving after getting this kind of dialog box, the 
>Save button has to be pressed several times. There can be long 
>delays. Eventually the edits Save and I get the dialog that shows 
>they are being saved and the blue images in the left column appear. 
>_______________________________________________ HOT mailing list 
>HOT at openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/hot 
>_______________________________________________ HOT mailing list 
>HOT at openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/hot

Charlotte Wolter
927 18th Street Suite A
Santa Monica, California
90403
+1-310-597-4040
techlady at techlady.com
Skype: thetechlady



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