[OSM-talk] Reverting Changes....

[David Earl]

On 18/05/2009 15:26, Andy Allan wrote:
> On Mon, May 18, 2009 at 1:47 PM, Chris Fleming <me at chrisfleming.org> wrote:
>> In just spotted a pile of changes that someone made that seem to have
>> done more harm than good:
>> http://www.openstreetmap.org/browse/changeset/1008885
>>
>> What's the current thinking on "un-doing" changes; is it worth
>> contacting the person involved, Checking if anything useful was done?
> 
> If it's not deliberate vandalism (e.g. someone writing "OSM Suxxors"
> across the north Atlantic) then contact them first, offer assistance
> etc.
> 
> Better to offer to help them fix it than to fix it first and talk later.

It looks to me like yet again someone hasn't realised changes made in 
Potlatch are live. There was also someone complaining about this on the 
diary pages recently. I think it is worth asking what happened when 
talking to them (if it is an unintended mistake).

The open-edit-save mentality is completely ingrained in the way people 
use programs (even though it's a historical accident of the way things 
grew up in computing, and isn't actually true of most desktop database 
programs either, like Access and FileMaker) and so they are surprised 
when it comes tome to save their changes (or abandon them).

And despite the blaring warnings on first use, it's quite apparent that 
many people just don't read what's in front of them (nor do they try to 
read help - "I couldn't figure out the way to do such and such").

David