[OSM-talk] Potlatch :-)

[openstreetmap at penguin.de]

Am Sa, 24 Nov 2007 schrieb David Earl:

> I appreciate Richard's objections to a Save button within Potlatch, not 
> least that it changes the whole paradigm of the application.
> 
> But... I keep on finding random, often long straight chunks of road 
> being added which have no bearing on reality. I think these are people 
> playing with it, and don't realise they are changing live data.

This may very well be the case. I just tried this tool for the first
time and i can´t actually see why this is considered to be an 
intuitive interface. Don´t get me wrong - i apreciate your work,
Richard. But had a bad feeling about the whole thing, it felt 
like loosing control. Maybe a Save Button wouldn´t be that bad.

Just my 2¢ as feedback; I don´t plan to use potlatch or add
functionality to it for the moment. But I like the idea of an 
online editing feature. However, this would require a well 
defined incident reporting and rollback feature. As long as this
is missing, any editor with direct write access to the database
will cause severe damage to some data every now and then (and 
in the end to the reputation of OSM). But his is also true
for all the other editors out there, and let´s not forget the
edit wars coming up in the next years... 

IMO we should focus on these questions intead of pointing 
fingers at potlatch over and over again:

- rollback features

        It is just not enough to rollback an entire area 
        from backup. We urgently need ideas and a clear 
        roadmap for some kind of per-object rollbacks 
        and diff/merge features for openstreetmap data. 
        Maybe this would be a good opportunity for 
        universities to step in?

- reaction to edit wars
        
        We have had our first edit war and others will
        follow. We need a strategy and "tools" (like 
        object- or area locks, a moderation policy, etc) 
        for this stuff, just like Wikipedia and others.

- easy error reporting / bug tracking system

        IMO, there should be a simple way to feed 
        change requests to some kind of bug-tracking
        system. Most anonymous users won´t learn how 
        to use potlatch or any other editor just to
        edit a street name. 

- sketch editing

        Idea: What about some possibility to add objects 
        or comments via e.g. potlatch to a special 
        sketch-layer where they stay until someone 
        has reviewed the new data. This can also be
        used to state something like "there ought to
        be a street somewhere here ... *scribble*, 
        but someone should go and map it with his GPS..." 

- review process
        
        We need to define some kind of review process.
        Reviewed areas should be locked somehow, so 
        that any changes to this data will at least 
        trigger some action (editor warning dialog, 
        automatic email-notifications to the review 
        team, whatever)

Bjørn