[OSM-talk] Vandalism in Trumpington

Frederik Ramm frederik at remote.org
Sun Apr 27 20:30:01 BST 2008


Hi,

> > Is the fact that Potlatch does live editing a design decision, or are
> > there technical reasons behind it (i.e. it would be much more
> > difficult to have a Flash editor with a "save" button)?
> 
> It's a design decision. If you do "buffered editing", you have to a)  
> do conflict management, b) visualise unsaved changes on a map that  
> stretches everywhere. Both are very serious UI challenges and  
> complications for what's meant to be the newbie-friendly editor.

Conflicts may happen even with today's Potlatch - they're just less
likely. (But likely to become more likely in the future as the number
of users rises!)

And about visualising unsaved changes on the world map - isn't that
what play mode does?

> People occasionally make comparisons with text-based wikis like  
> Wikipedia, but it's not really helpful, because they're much more  
> modal: when you've edited a Wikipedia page, you either save or abort.  
> You can't just leave it unsaved as you continue browsing. So if you  
> translate that model to OSM, where the atoms are much smaller, you  
> end up presenting a "Save/Cancel" dialogue box on every deselect,  
> which is a UI disaster.

Well now you are the one who is making invalid comparisons. You can't
leave tons of Wiki articles unsaved while browsing, but I don't see
why I could not leave one street unsaved as I tend to the neighbouring
one!

I'm not sure if you really do newcomers a favour by denying them the
ability to enter a number of changes to different ways, then see how
they play together, and then save them.

And if somebody first makes some edits in London and after that some
completely unrelated edits in Brazil, then I'd damn well want him to
close his London edits - ideally with a comment about what he thinks
he has done - before he starts something else.

> For this reason, the issue would be largely solved - as David  
> suggests - by requiring those who aren't sure what they're doing to  
> actively choose between "Edit" and "Play".

That would probably fix David's problem but still not give me my save
button. What I'd like to see (and use!) comes down to doing some stuff
in "play mode" and then switching over to "real mode" (whoa, i386
flashback!), whereby Potlatch asks me "do you want to retain your play
mode changes". Then, just a slight renaming (play mode becomes edit
mode, real mode becomes "save") and we're there ;-)

> (The issue would be _completely_ solved by doing this _and_ making  
> Potlatch easier to use in general, i.e. pop-up help, fewer obscure  
> keypresses, etc. It's an ongoing thing.)

The original issue, yes, likely. 

> If you want buffered editing, use JOSM. And at that point I could get  
> onto the subject of "are we - in particular, the wiki - encouraging  
> people to run [use JOSM] before they can walk [use Potlatch]", but  
> that's a whole nuther kettle of fish. ;)

What I want is encourage people to have an idea about what they're
doing, and communicate that idea to others. I don't think that there
really is an use-case for "browse editing", i.e. someone opening
Potlatch just to look at something and making a few edits where he
suddenly sees a mistake. My assumption is that people know (roughly)
what it is they want to edit BEFORE they hit the edit button. And I
want them to make that complete edit, double-check if they have
achieved what they wanted, and then save it.

People don't use Potlatch because they don't want buffered editing.
People use Potlatch because it is much quicker to load, learn, and 
use. This would not be diminished by a save button; in fact, I believe
a newcomer would feel much safer if one would tell him that nothing is
changed until he clicks "save".

Bye
Frederik

-- 
Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frederik at remote.org  ##  N49°00'09" E008°23'33"





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