[josm-dev] The Golden Rules

[Bryce Nesbitt]

On Fri, Aug 23, 2013 at 4:49 PM, Frederik Ramm <frederik at remote.org> wrote:

> (Our rule is, in a nutshell: If you personally look at every object you
> change then it's fine; if however you select all objects that have a
> certain property and then change that globally without even noticing
> which countries you're editing in then that's a mechanical edit that
> requires prior discussion to make sure you're not breaking things
> inadvertently.)
> Thoughts?


Yes.

There's the TODO plugin that could be part of a solution.
Common mechanical edit patterns are detectable, and could result
click-through notice at save time.

A possible approach:

   1. Any edit of multiple attributes sets an 'unexamined' flag.
   2. Selecting an object individually clears the 'unexamined' flag (In
   particular, stepping through each object with the TODO plugin clears the
   flag).
   3. At save time, report the ratio of 'unexamined' edits, and if it is
   high require an extra confirmation step to commit the edit.



To make this more practical:

   1. Fix bug https://josm.openstreetmap.de/ticket/8672
   2. Enable the TODO plugin by default.
   3. Promote the TODO plugin, to make it more obvious.


JOSM also makes it easy to "select all", apply a tag, and have the change
apply to every node of every way.
But perhaps this is good?  It's a mark of a Mechanical Editor to make such
a mistake.