[OSM-talk] requesting feedback (was: Disallow Anonymous Edits NOW)

[Jussi Kukkonen]

Frederik Ramm wrote:
> Looking at all these discussions, it seems that while people are
> understandably annoyed when someone ruins their careful work, the
> thing that really pisses them off is if they can't contact the author
> because he has not "made his edits public".
> 
> So there's someone wreaking havoc on your data - and you don't even
> know who he is, cannot contact him, nothing! The only handle you have
> is that he does what he does with Potlatch, so naturally you call for
> Potlatch being switched off.
> 
> I think this is the core of the problem. And while I have said in the
> past that I would like fully anonymous edits without even registering,
> I rescind that now and say: No more edits by accounts who haven't made
> their edits public!

This is a good idea and it reminded me of another user-generated-content
project that didn't just allow feedbcak, but also encouraged giving it.
I used to contribute to Distributed Proofreaders (http://www.pgdp.net/)
and they had a very nice system for smoothing the learning curve:
   When the user submits a proofread page, there's a checkbox "I'm a new
   user and would like feedback on my work". A more experienced user
   would see this when he does the 2nd proofreading and could comment or
   complement...
This worked wonderfully when I encountered some difficult situations or
when I was unsure of the quality of my work.

The workflow in OSM is totally different of course, and I'm not sure how
a "feedback wanted"-flag could be implemented, but I'm positive that if
it was implemented it would be very useful.

 -jussi


-- 
Jussi Kukkonen
http://koti.welho.com/jkukkone/