[OSM-talk] Undo request button for changesets

[Simon Ward]

On Wed, Jul 15, 2009 at 03:37:35PM +0200, Frederik Ramm wrote:
> Pieren wrote:
> > It is a technical discussion because everybody can revert changes anyway.
> 
> True. Everyone can delete all of London anyway. This doesn't mean that 
> we have a button on the web page that says: "Delete all of London".

That’s quite an exaggeration over reverting the edits made in a changeset,
committing in a new changeset, which itself can be reverted.

If somebody did delete all of London using the mechanism above, I would
welcome the option to revert that all the more.

> (If we had a "revert" button next to a changeset […] then I would
> probably enable that button only for the user who committed the
> original change, and anyone else who clicks the button would just send
> a message to that user saying "please revert your change".)

That breaks down if the user fails to respond, and it’s back to the
admins to evaluate the situation and revert, or potentially spending a
lot of effort manually reverting the change.  For a crowd‐sourcing
project that thrives on a low(ish) barrier to contributing, making tasks
unnecessarily difficult seems to be going entirely in the wrong
direction.

Of course, it’s polite to let someone know if you’d like their change to
be reverted, but you can still do that if a revert button exists next to
a changeset.  There are links to the user page at the moment, but
messaging can be encouraged by providing a direct “message this user”
link too.  Leaving the option of reverting a changeset (if possible
without conflicts) to the users is much more open than leaving it to a
privileged few.

Simon
-- 
A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a
simple system that works.—John Gall
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