[OSM-talk] [OSM-talk-nl] Recent Edits

[Tom Hughes]

In message <479DED6A.40403 at ucl.ac.uk>
        Patrick Weber <p.weber at ucl.ac.uk> wrote:

> I am not shure that I fully understand the usefulness of such a
> system. As I understand it, it would enable users to highlight
> something missing, or not right, on the slippymap and underlying OSM
> Data. I had a look at the proposed system prototype. Now, if someone
> goes to the trouble of browsing the slippymap, sees a problem, and
> then starts filling out the report form (which is quite verbose), why
> not help that user correct the problem himself? We can guide them on
> how to add/change a POI, or draw a new road?

The idea is to have a 30 second way for somebody to report a 
problem rather than them having to register and then learn how
to make the edit, which probably has a minimum bootstrap time
of an hour.

> Just reporting the problem, and then hoping someone else goes back and
> fixes it seems unproductive. I still think of OSM as a Wiki, and
> anyone should be encouraged to make changes. I suspect that very
> often, we will have reports saying, "hey the street I live in is
> missing here" , and then you still need to somehow add that road, be
> it through local knowledge (which the original report written most
> probably has, and is gone if he believes that it will get sorted if he
> reports it, and that is less than certain) and/or external datasources
> (tracklogs, yahoo image layer , ... ).

Obviously reporting missing streets is generally not very helpful
unless it is in area that look well surveyed, in which case it can
draw attention to a street that has been missed. Going to a blank
area of the map and entering a ticket that "Foo St" is not there
is clearly not helpful but that isn't really the target for this.

The target is things like reports of misspellings or missing data
in otherwise well surveyed areas.

Tom

-- 
Tom Hughes (tom at compton.nu)
http://www.compton.nu/