[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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