[Talk-GB] Ashamed to be a part of the OSM GB community

[Lester Caine]

Richard Fairhurst wrote:
> Thirdly; there is no "they", only "we". OSM, all of it, map and code equally, is
> made by its contributors. So when Brian says "Surely we can do better than
> this?": Yes. We can. But only if you're prepared to be part of the "we".

The main problem with that statement is that not all of us time time to learn 
yet another environment and method of working. I'm on github, mirroring to HG 
locally for compatibility with other projects, but I simply don't have time to 
dig into Ruby. Python and Java is bad enough to fix problems with my development 
tools which to some extent I'm driven to use to provide a good PHP development 
platform. I wasted many days playing with bits which were working at one time, 
but changes in other areas has broken them again. Unfortunately the playing 
field is not flat, so we have to live with what others 'provide' with little 
acceptance of other usages of the data.

I'll repeat what I've said on the main talk list ... the new front end is TOO 
targeted at pushing visitors to become mappers. I don't actually have a problem 
with that ... however the follow up pages lack a LOT of sensible information for 
NEW mappers and that needs to be addressed as a matter of urgency. The 'About' 
page is simply NOT 'Learn More' but is exactly 'About OSM', so some other path 
needs to be provided to help even for the tools ON the new front end. I'm trying 
to work out what 'Export' is intended to do, and some help on how things like 
the 'Share' now works would be nice ( my notes still relate to the OLD tools! ). 
HELP should be available on actually using the map as it is configured now ...

But what I'm looking to providing is a decent 'Large View' which has promotional 
material and other links on the ONE page. If you come to the site from an 
embeded map it IS a case of 'what the f**k' ... I've had a second call about 
this already this weekend and I'm expecting many more tomorrow when users get 
back to work although it will probably over the next weeks as people come 
accross it :( THAT is why a proper announcement ON THE SITE ITSELF that it was 
going to change would have been helpful ... just like when the style change was 
dropped on us with little notification! Does no one learn?

If I've got to create my own independent site to do this then OK. I did have 
OSRM running, but keeping our own mirrors up to date is simply NOT supported 
well currently !!! No way can I support a whole world map, I need something that 
mirrors the UK area in something less than the 2 or 3 week cycle of some mirrors :(

-- 
Lester Caine - G8HFL
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