[OSM-talk] Potlatch again

Sebastian Hohmann mail at s-hohmann.de
Mon Jan 12 23:08:47 GMT 2009


Richard Fairhurst schrieb:
> So why do people get it wrong? And I'm not doubting that they do.
> 
> Well, one of the reasons is that our beginners' documentation is the  
> weakest part of the whole caboodle. Put yourself in the position of a  
> newbie. You're not sure what to do (as Chris Schmidt observed on  
> #irc, "editing topology is hard") - you may not even realise that the  
> roads have to link together. So you click the nice "Help/Wiki" link  
> on the left. There's a big button marked "Beginners' Guide", so you  
> click that.
> 
> And then it all goes wrong.
> 
> First step: Collect Data. Erm - maybe. I don't think I need that, I  
> just want to draw a tram line along this road. And it's telling me  
> something about a collaborative mapping project for Korea. Maybe I'll  
> skip that? This map thing is harder than I thought.
> 
> Second step: Upload Data. Help. I need to upload something? What's  
> that? I have to save my files to GPX, it says? And "download it into  
> JOSM for editing"? What do all these strange letters mean?
> 
> It's insane. The user doesn't even know what Potlatch is yet, let  
> alone JOSM. They just clicked "Edit" to add 500m of tram line.
> 
> What would be the single best patch anyone could contribute to OSM  
> right now? Rewriting the beginner docs from scratch. I'm 100% serious.
> 

I totally agree. The documentation needs to be organized better. Many 
things are repeated on several pages, others are inconsistent with one 
another.

I already worked on many of the german pages, but I don't think that my 
english is good enough to work on the international ones. It's hard to 
make good documentation even in your own language..

Greetings




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