[OSM-talk] Commenting and thumbs up/down feature for changesets

[Steve Bennett]

On Wed, Jul 13, 2011 at 5:18 PM, Frederik Ramm <frederik at remote.org> wrote:
> Also, in case this hasn't become clear, I am not in favour of +1/-1 buttons
> for *contributors*, but for individual *changesets*.

Well, until you start compiling them into a league table of
least-liked contributors. Which, erm, you proposed. :)

> I am not a friend of policies and guidelines

Ah. I am. For all the complaints of "wikilawyering" at Wikipedia, at
least it means the effort is focused on improving policies and
guidelines, rather than simply hurling insults at each other. Or,
almost worse, the interminable discussions on the tagging lists that
briefly build consensus which is promptly forgotten because it wasn't
recorded anywhere.

> I think there should be policies and guidelines for a few "hard" things but
> there will always be "soft" things where setting up rules is extremely
> difficult.

Policies for hard things, guidelines for soft things.

> A +1/-1 scheme for changesets could be a replacement for the
> tedious and bueraucratic process of setting up guidelines. Such a process is
> quickly drowned by all sorts of "but we cannot have this rule because there
> is a legitimate situation where you would need to break it...",

It's actually pretty easy to have a rule then compile a list of known
exceptions.

> whereas a
> simple +1/-1 for changesets would not have that problem.

Nor does it achieve the same thing. So, this was a great changeset
over here. How do I know whether that fresh changeset over there is
any good?

> You could ask
> questions like: Show me a changeset with more than 5 "+1" votes that uses
> the so-and-so tag - in the hope of finding a good example of how that tag is
> used.

Yep, it would have some value.

Steve