[OSM-talk] Does potlatch make it too easy for people to unintentionally screw things up?

[Richard Fairhurst]

[several replies lumped together into one]

D Tucny wrote:

> From my own attempts
> to use it, I found it doing things unexpected, just trying to look at
> existing data very easily led to unintentional changes and some of them were
> uploaded/applied before you noticed...

Historically a big problem with Potlatch has been the click handling.  
It has not always been too great at detecting what's a click, what's a  
move and what's a map drag. Consequently it was too easy to  
accidentally move a node, for example (resulting in a server write),  
when you thought you'd just clicked it.

This was significantly improved by a large-scale rewrite of the click  
handling in v0.3, and is better still in v0.4, which now times the  
interval between mouse-down and mouse-up and assumes that anything  
under a certain time is a click, not a drag. There are doubtless still  
improvements that can be made but it's getting a lot better.

(The other major "accidental edit" issue is the tag editor, for which  
see below.)

I would say, however, that the problem of "bad edits" is not  
particularly limited to one editor. I seem to spend half my  
OSM-editing time cleaning up crap that people have done with JOSM,  
too! Two days ago I had to redraw a significant chunk of an English  
shire county (no names, no pack drill) which someone had drawn very  
badly in JOSM: roads didn't connect, ways were duplicated on top of  
each other, highway tagging was inconsistent, etc. The funny thing was  
that the mapper in question had been quite a fervent critic of  
Potlatch. :) :)

But I wouldn't claim that such mistakes are a particular failing of  
JOSM. It's more a reflection of the fact that - like any collaborative  
website - we have both newcomers and more experienced users, and the  
former will inevitably make mistakes.

(That said, both JOSM and Potlatch would be improved, I think, if they  
refused to let you draw lines at a higher zoom than n, to avoid the  
crappy rough tracings that some people seem to do...)


Charalampos Theocharidis wrote:

> From my own experience I know that if you are used to JOSM a switch to
> Potlach is not that intuitive.

To be honest I don't really expect many people to switch from JOSM to  
Potlatch. JOSM is the more powerful and more flexible editor. Potlatch  
is really designed for those who are starting out, those who want to  
make quick changes, and those who (like me) have very limited patience.

> Additional a short screencast introducing the work with Potlach could solve
> many problems.

I believe Chippy is working on this - agreed, it'll be a great idea.


John McKerrell wrote:

> And as
> stated, there's a "play" mode now so accidents shouldn't happen so
> often. Richard - what happens if you don't select play or start and
> just start using potlatch?

At present it assumes "start live editing" - in other words, practice  
mode is only engaged if you click "play". I could probably change this  
if it were deemed a good idea, though.

> There's definitely still some things it doesn't handle as well as
> josm (adding tags is easier in josm if you know to hit alt-a and
> start typing)

Potlatch's tag editing is due a _big_ overhaul... I'm planning to add  
a more structured set of panels (with radio buttons for highway types,  
checkboxes for one-way, etc.) as an alternative to the freeform  
key/value editing.

One of these panels will be a history panel, with the option to revert  
to an earlier version of the way - i.e. undo. The 0.5 database makes  
coding an undo feature much easier. :)

cheers
Richard