[openstreetmap-website] Make iD default editor (#453)

[Richard Fairhurst]

Frederik Ramm wrote:
> While you're at it, why don't you quickly deploy a modificiation to
> Potlatch that deletes every relation it touches, so that you can then
> innocently whistle about iD certainly not being worse in that department
> either?

I greatly resent your implication that I am deliberately making P2 worse 
or, as you put it rather more directly on IRC, "haha look i can fuck up 
potlatch however i like".

Everywhere apart from paranoidland, adding an optional, 
deselected-by-default, tracking-free checkbox to open a Twitter intent 
window after save is a new feature and therefore good news. Since 
generally speaking the inhabitants of paranoidland would rather 
sandpaper their eyeballs than use a Flash-based editor, this is a moot 
point anyway.

As the maintainer of P2, I actively want to get it the hell away from 
being the default on the Edit tab. That is not just because I, 
personally, think iD is better suited for the new user and for probably 
a majority of future OSM users of all stripes. Nor is it just because in 
2013, having the default editor in Flash is objectively bonkers; and nor 
is it just because neither I nor what passes for "the P2 developers" are 
resourced to respond to the support burden of running the default editor 
on a fast-growing site.

It is because Potlatch (1 and 2) has always been best suited to quick, 
survey-intensive, outdoor-centric editing by the intermediate-level 
user. That is what it was written for (the majority use case in OSM back 
then); that is what its UI is best suited for; and that is what, as 
maintainer, I would like it to continue to be.

Being the default editor forces a set of UI compromises that make this 
experience worse. Fading in background tiles is a good example; this is 
a more smooth, welcoming experience for the new user, but is a slow PITA 
for the more experienced user. I have now removed that and would like to 
continue in that vein - in particular, ripping out the existing tagging 
UI and replacing it with something simpler and more efficient for the 
user who already has a reasonable understanding of OSM tags. (It can't 
be right that even the P2 maintainer avoids using the default tag UI.) 
But I can hardly rip out the "user-friendly" tagging UI when P2 is still 
the default editor.

That is precisely why P2's help screen (shown on the first edit of all) 
now makes (non-IE) first-time users aware that iD may be a better option 
for them. P2 is not a very good editor for the unchurched and nor do I 
particularly want to bend it to be so. The sooner iD becomes the 
default, the better it is for users of both editors.

But if you really do think I've suddenly turned round and am trying to 
actively "fuck up" the last seven years of blood, sweat and tears for 
some unexplained reason... well, just, well.

Richard