[OSM-talk] Brainstorming: Simple Revert-Tools

[Peter Miller]

On 3 Sep 2009, at 10:05, Pieren wrote:

> On Thu, Sep 3, 2009 at 10:29 AM, Dave  
> Stubbs<osm.list at randomjunk.co.uk> wrote:
>> As far as I know most of the tools used for reverting currently are
>> also public -- the problem being, they're dangerous to use if you
>> don't know what you're doing, not at all user friendly, deliberately
>> hard to use to make sure you do know what you're doing, and not
>> remotely capable of dealing with conflicts.
>>
>> Dave
>
> That's where I disagree. We should stop considering 'revert' as
> 'dangerous to use if you don't know what you're doing'. It is not more
> dangerous as any other edits, it's just a different way to select
> elements and modify them. The only difference is that you refere to a
> particular state of the dataset (changeset) which might be obsolete
> (in which case the 'easy revert' should be aborted) in the same way as
> when two contributors work in parallel in the same area.
> We cannot say in one side "let the crowd create, modify or delete
> elements as easy as possible" and in the other side "make revert hard
> to use".
> I'm still in favour of having an "easy revert" as a first attempt on
> the main site and only provide more complexe tools into editors in
> case of conflicts.

I agree that there should be a 'easy revert' for a single changeset.  
This might result in a 'clean' revert (where none of the features have  
been touched since), a partial success with a conflict report (where  
only some features could e reverted because they have already been  
deleted or whatever), or a total failure  (possibly where the  
changeset has already been reverted).

This is not of course a 'revert' in that the original changeset will  
still be in the history, its just that the data will be back to the  
original state.

> But you will have to explaine how you deal with the
> 145 changesets of RR8 if you have to enter manually each number in
> your editor.

When it comes to reverting multiple changesets there will be a benefit  
to doing them all together possibly, or strictly in reverse order.  
Possibly this might need a different approach. If we can do it easily  
then great (one would normally select a single user and a date range  
to catch the relevant changesets).

An absolute essential is that a revert shows up as a changeset with a  
description that includes the fact that it was a revert and what it  
was reverting and can itself be reverted.

At some point we might need a speed tile redraw to get embarrassing  
stuff out of the tile stack quickly.



Regards,



Peter



> Pieren
>
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