[Openstreetmap] keeping trac

[Frank Hebbert]

Coming very late into this discussion, I support the decision to keep mediawiki for the wiki and use trac for everything else.

Andy's suggestion about the portal is a really good one - at the moment the initial interface is a bit unexciting. The disabled radio buttons for street and postcode are confusing as well, they look broken instead of just disabled pending the latest lead forward. To provide some end user experience: when I first checked out the site a while ago, I saw the front page, launched the applet, was baffled by the interface and then it crashed. It took me a while to come back for a second look. I suspect that some aspects of this may recur for new visitors, especially less technical people. 

Could the front page feature some content from the db - such as the last ten streetnames added, activity per day this week, small maps of busy areas, etc? The news feed would be nice too. 

I've expanded trac #34 to cover these points.  

Frank



On Wed, Nov 09, 2005 at 07:23:00PM -0000 or thereabouts, Andy Robinson wrote:


> Steve,
> 
> First impressions are pretty good in as you say it offers greater continuity
> for the whole project and makes it much less daunting for the uninitiated to
> see all the workings from one familiar looking platform.
> 
> Taking a quick look at a few pages reveals that there was some poorly formed
> wiki formatting in the original pages which means the formatting is not
> properly applied in trac, however this is minor and can be corrected with a
> bit of time, some by across the board find and replace operations perhaps?
> 
> Obviously the format and look is different from the wiki and therefore will
> take a little time to get used to and some new tools and differences from
> the wiki to learn for those contributing and editing but these should not be
> seen as negatives.
> 
> Finally I would also suggest that if changes are being made its time for the
> root home page for OSM to more greatly reflect the work going on behind the
> scenes. The danger at the moment is that visitors reach the page, open the
> map, see very little, and then leave. We want more people to get interested
> and a lot of that comes about from reading about the project on the
> wiki...etc. 
> 
> I guess what I am thinking is that either the OSM page needs to have more
> links to sections of the wiki (perhaps some key enticing words in a separate
> box) or the front page of the wiki is simplified such that you reach the
> viewer, editor and all the other valuable sections and the front page of the
> wiki and this effectively becomes the home page. May be my rambling thoughts
> here but there is a need I think to gel the whole package together. It would
> also reduce the number of bookmarks I need for OSM in my browser!
> 
> Andy Robinson
> Andy_J_Robinson at blueyonder.co.uk
> 
> Andy Robinson
> Andy_J_Robinson at blueyonder.co.uk 
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: openstreetmap-bounces at vr.ucl.ac.uk [mailto:openstreetmap-
> > bounces at vr.ucl.ac.uk] On Behalf Of SteveC
> > Sent: 09 November 2005 14:46
> > To: openstreetmap at vr.ucl.ac.uk
> > Subject: [Openstreetmap] keeping trac
> > 
> > Hi everyone, especially people helping with the wiki,
> > 
> > I've installed trac
> > 
> > http://projects.edgewall.com/trac/
> > 
> > here:
> > 
> > http://www.openstreetmap.org/trac/
> > 
> > With a bit of luck it can replace mediawiki, websvn and bugzilla in one.
> > There are ways of magically converting mediawiki pages to it and it's
> > nicer than the things we're using at the moment.
> > 
> > What do you think? Anyone have experience or reservations?
> > 
> > have fun,
> > 
> > SteveC steve at asklater.com http://www.asklater.com/steve/
> > 
> > _______________________________________________
> > Openstreetmap mailing list
> > Openstreetmap at vr.ucl.ac.uk
> > http://bat.vr.ucl.ac.uk/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openstreetmap
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Openstreetmap mailing list
> Openstreetmap at vr.ucl.ac.uk
> http://bat.vr.ucl.ac.uk/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openstreetmap