[Talk-GB] New mapper has imported all Nottingham street lights

[Rob Nickerson]

What happens if new contributors work out how to use the mapping tools but
don't come across the import guidelines (or for that matter the community,
mailing lists, etc)?

I've just used JOSM to open a shapefile and attempt to upload it (I
obviously didn't upload it). JOSM gave a warning message:

"Upload Discouraged?
You are about to upload data from the layer 'test.shp'.
Sending data from this layer is strongly discouraged. If you continue, it
may require you subsequently have to revert your changes, or force other
contributors to.
Are you sure you want to continue?"

This is a good start but would have benefited from linking to the Import
Guidelines. Also, had I got the file in a different format (e.g. as an .osm
file), I would have not seen this error message. I wonder if there is any
way for JOSM to detect what looks like an import (perhaps based on the
amount of time that JOSM has been open in the current session). Another
small enhancement would be for JOSM to add the filename (test.shp in this
case) to the upload changeset tags.

Rob

p.s. An import is not a simple thing to do, suggesting that any newbies
than manage to work it out must have a reasonable technical background. As
such we need to try to get them on side as they could help OSM in other
ways.
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