[openstreetmap-website] The welcome page should mention relations (#881)

vincentdephily notifications at github.com
Wed Jan 28 15:48:34 UTC 2015


http://www.openstreetmap.org/welcome mentions the OSM basics : editor, node, way, and tag. One important requirement for this page is that it should be as short as possible, which probably explains why relations are not mentioned.

I'm now thinking that this is a mistake. Relation are one of the four building blocks of the OSM data model. It's becoming more unlikely every day that a user could edit the map without encountering relations. Because relations are not mentioned on the welcome page and are rather discreet in most editors, a newbie's first interaction with a relation will probably be to break it. And a lot of contributors prefer to avoid relations whenever possible, even if the workaround is akward.

This is all detrimental to OSM, so I suggest adding a one-line description like we have for the other elements. Something like "A relation groups nodes and ways together to define areas, bus routes, or turn restrictions".

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Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub:
https://github.com/openstreetmap/openstreetmap-website/issues/881
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