[OSM-talk] Undo request button for changesets

[Lambert Carsten]

On Wednesday 15 July 2009 16:36:36 Russ Nelson wrote:
> On Jul 15, 2009, at 7:10 AM, Frederik Ramm wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > Yann Coupin wrote:
> >> I completely agree with Pieren here. Unless you're part of the happy
> >> fews, if case of vandalism/error, you're forced to painstakingly
> >> repair by hand the problems
> >
> > That is true, but we also have to look at the potential for problems.
> >
> > ("If everyone had a gun, it would be much easier for everyone to
> > defend
> > themselves, and the streets would thus become much safer for
> > everyone."
> > - Can you spot the problem?)
>
> No, in fact, I can't, because you're using the wrong analogy. Try this
> one:  "If only police and criminals have guns, it is much easier for
> everyone to defend themselves, because when a criminal is threatening
> you with his gun, you just call a policeman, wait for him to arrive,
> and he uses his gun."
The gun analogy is a very bad one whichever way you use it. In the real world 
there is no undo/revert. Philosophical nitpicking aside we can undo/revert 
things in the data so there is no real risk involved unlike the physical 
world. Having very powerful tools on either side will do more good than bad.
>
> > If we make these things too easy, then they will get abused.
>
> Do you realize that you're also making this argument:
> "If we make map editing too easy, then abusers will edit the map, thus
> we must put horrible user interfaces in place to make it harder to
> edit."  One might argue that this has already happened.  :)  (just
> teasing!)
>
> > Also, it is quite a challenge technically as well. A good revert
> > system
> > would have to visualise what it is about to revert,
>
> Fair enough!  Perhaps a revert should be couched in terms of a .OSM
> file which you load into JOSM, and then preview?  If you like what you
> see fixed, then you hit the upload button.  If there are conflicts,
> well, then there are conflicts and you deal with them as any other
> edit conflict.
Agreed.
Ordinary mappers like me need an easy way to download the deleted objects so 
they show up in Josm (or other).

Lambert Carsten