[OSM-talk] The OSM Applet - let's ditch it for JOSM (was: Mapping Reading, some impressions)

Nick Black nickblack1 at gmail.com
Tue Sep 5 10:39:34 BST 2006


I fully agree that the trashing of the applet is not constructive in
any way.  Those who slag it so heavily should observe the results of
this survey question that I asked in June 2006:

Q2: Which OSM editing tools do you use?	
	
Editor:	Total
OSM Editor	        4
No OSM Programs	4
Uses the Applet	    26
JOSM	                   34
TOTAL RESPONSES FOR EACH:	43

Feel free to trash my statistically unsound survey strategy - but the
Applet is cearly in use by over 50% of respondents - even if not
uniquely.  Given that the general feeling is that "power users" do not
use the applet, you may also be intereseted to see that:


Q1: How do you rate your level of experience with computers in general?  		
		
Sum of Count	Total	Percentage

1	0	0%
2	0	0%
3	4	9%
4	14	33%
5	25	58%

Where 1 is a novice and 5 is an IT professional.  So in the only
vaguely statistically valid sample of OSM users we have, the results
suggest that "power users" did use the applet in June 2006.

Maybe its time for another survey?  At least they give more concrete
results than the "who can shout the loudest" flaming on the mailing
list.

Full results are still available here:

http://www.blacksworld.net/osm/Final_OSM_Survey.ods

nick





On 9/5/06, Etienne <80n80n at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/5/06, Tom Carden <tom at tom-carden.co.uk> wrote:
> > On 04/09/06, Tom Chance <tom at acrewoods.net> wrote:
> > >
> > > The web applet sucks.
> > >
> >
> > Speaking as the person who wrote the initial version of the current
> > applet, can I just say that the continued trashing of it on this list
> > is tiresome, offensive, and not constructive.
>
> It is the burden of all software developers that their users will criticize
> the software.  Try not to take it too personally.  It is never meant
> personally and is usually a clumsy attempt to be constructive.
>
>
> > I accept, as I'm sure
> > do Steve (who wrote the tiling interface to the applet amongst other
> > bits) and Imi (who retrofitted tagging into the applet, even though he
> > didn't like it!), that the way the applet works just isn't viable for
> > efficient and productive editing.  If we knew then what we know now,
> > we would have done it differently.  I don't want to hear any more "the
> > applet sucks" type criticisim.  Everyone agrees it's unusable... and
> > yet nobody is stepping up to do something about it.
> >
> > Here's my suggestion:
> >
> > It seems that for 99% of people actually actively mapping, JOSM is the
> > main tool of choice (no offense to other editor writers).  How about
> > we ditch the applet and put a page about JOSM on the edit tab?
> > Download links, how to navigate to the area you were just viewing, a
> > full tutorial, etc.  I don't think at the moment it would hurt OSM one
> > bit if JOSM became an 'official' client and there was no web-based
> > editing solution.
>
> Or have www.openstreetmap.org go to the wiki and have a link from there to
> the slippy map at edit.openstreetmap.org.
>
> > These are changes that can be written by any one of the extremely
> > motivated non-coder OSM contributors, and would be far more
> > productive, and less hurtful, than whining about the applet.
> >
> > Cheers,
> >
> > Tom.
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > talk mailing list
> > talk at openstreetmap.org
> >
> http://lists.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/talk
> >
>
>
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>
>




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