[openstreetmap-website] Changeset view (#20)

Frederik Ramm frederik at remote.org
Mon Feb 27 20:21:56 GMT 2012


Hi,

On Feb 27 14:30:04, Tom MacWright wrote:
> I get that the other information is important, but it's important to
> advanced users, and people who don't immediately grasp what a 'node' is are
> blindsided by technical information - and presenting a map with the thing
> highlighted makes it clearer. Hopefully we can please both camps.

I haven't yet heard of anyone from that "other" camp - I'm not aware of 
anyone who doesn't know what a node (or a tag, for that matter) is using 
these "browse" pages and frankly I wouldn't know why they should. You 
usually get there by analyzing stuff in the data view or trawling 
through people's changesets; hardly the kind of activity that someone 
unfamiliar with the terms would engage in.

And even if they did, they would be likely to see things like this:

http://tomh.apis.dev.openstreetmap.org/browse/node/100

What does that even mean? A blue circle on the map, but there's nothing 
there! Is it deleted? Is it hidden? The "comment" seems to say that it 
is a motorway of some kind. But why a blue circle?

What I want to say: This is not a tool for newbies, and making it into 
one would require *much* more than just putting a larger map on top and 
hoping that this would somehow make things easier to understand. As 
others have said before me, the map is a (sometimes) helpful extra, but 
not the main reason you would visit such a browse page, and that should 
be properly expressed in the UI.

If you want a "browse" page for newbies who cannot be counted upon to 
understand what a "node" or a "tag" is, then I suggest to first define 
the purpose that page is supposed to serve, and then design a browse 
page from scratch that serves this purpose. The current browse page is 
mainly used for investigating details or for inter-mapper communications 
and it serves its purpose well.

Bye
Frederik

-- 
Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frederik at remote.org  ##  N49°00'09" E008°23'33"



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