[OSM-talk] Proposal for a map-bug tracker (Openstreetbugs)

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

Christoph Böhme wrote:
> That sounds good. I will see at the weekend if it really is a piece of
> cake. Would it be possible to reuse and extend the client-side code from
> osb for a web-based client-side interface?

Before you get all cranked up writing something new, be sure to check 
out the "notes API" branch in SVN, where something OSB-like has been 
attempted in rails already. I don't know by whom and what the status is 
but I'm sure you will find out.

(I believe the notes API may suffer - my interpretation - from the idea 
of putting comments directly into the OSM database rather than into a 
separate data set where they - my opinion - belong but it's worth 
checking anyway.)

> Especially it would not help anyone if bug reports
> contain different information depending which user interface was used
> to add them to the database. Just imagine the situation where a user
> adds a bug through the web interface and a mapper requests the bugs with
> JOSM. Both pieces of software need to use the same model of
> information in the report and the same concept of how to process the
> bug report.

This is very short-sighted - coming from someone who has worked with 
OSM! Who are you to know in advance what cool ideas the writers of bug 
tracking software might have? Just because you cannot think of anything 
beyond "severity", "class" and "comment" doesn't mean nobody else can. 
Let the writers of software decide, do not constrain them by your 
limited imagination.

If someone comes up with a cool new tag the makes reporting and handling 
bugs much easier, then let him do that and write his own cool interface 
for it. If it works well then others will copy the idea. By postulating 
that everyone will have to work with the smallest common denominator, 
you are killing off creativity.

It's ok to have a few suggested standard attributes like severity and so 
on, but never close the door to enhancements.

Bye
Frederik

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