[Talk-de] Potlatch, die Siebenundzwölfigste

[Richard Fairhurst]

Ralf Otmanns wrote:

> Potlatch mag sein ein tolles Tool sein, ein gut gemeintes Tool ...  
> leider wissen vielleicht 2 % der Leute, die es verwenden, was sie da  
> tun. Ihr wisst ja, dass "gut gemeint" das Gegentum zu "gut" ist. Der  
> Rest sind wie 4jährige, denen Du Malstifte gibst und sie dann in ein  
> frisch tapeziertes Zimmer sperrst.

I get intensely frustrated when people complain about aspects of an  
open source project like OSM, but don't actually _do_ anything about it.

All the code for Potlatch is public domain, freely available, in the  
main OSM repository, and in a well-known and well-documented language,  
with a free compiler.

http://trac.openstreetmap.org/browser/applications/editors/potlatch/

Patches are welcome. If you submit patches to bugs you've noticed,  
that's great. If you submit patches to any of the outstanding trac  
tickets, that's _really_ great, because it means I can spend less time  
on these and more time improving usability - such as the online help  
feature planned for Potlatch 1.0. For example, you could fix  
http://trac.openstreetmap.org/ticket/954, which is really difficult  
for me to do because I don't actually have a German keyboard. If  
someone else saves me an afternoon hacking on that, the online help  
gets one afternoon nearer.

Maybe you can't program. That's fine. There are still a lot of ways in  
which you can help. Several people on this list have put a lot of time  
into localising Potlatch and improving the German-language docs on the  
wiki, and I'm enormously grateful to them.

Why not create a video screencast in your native language, showing  
newbies how to use Potlatch? If you were to upload it to YouTube I  
could perhaps even use their API to integrate it into Potlatch, so  
that new users could click to see the tutorial before they start.

If you feel there are things about Potlatch that need improving, then  
come and help. There are only 24 hours in the day, I can't do it all  
myself.

Don't just sit here and whinge. Particularly, at least have the common  
courtesy to cc: your complaints to the developer, rather than bitching  
off behind his back in a language which he doesn't understand (except  
via Google Translate ;) ) and on a list which he very rarely reads.

Oh, and "2%"? Come on, you only weaken your case with such utterly  
absurd exaggerations. As a _mapper_ I'm offended by your suggestion  
that I'm 98% likely not to know what I'm doing, simply because of my  
choice of editor.

Richard