[OSM-talk] Newbie alert

[SomeoneElse]

Colin Smale wrote:
>
>  I don't wish to cause offence... Perhaps someone more tactful than me 
> would consider contacting the user to advise caution?
>

It looks like someone's already fixing the broken relations; I'd have 
thought that it's probably best that they do it as they'll be familiar 
with what they've fixed.

> By the way, it seems that this user is using the iD editor... Is there 
> any chance that the user simply doesn't realise what is happening? Is 
> the editor possibly causing the relations to break?
>

If you've only made 77 edits to OSM then it's likely that you're not 
exactly up to speed with what relations are used for, but that's 
primarily because your're new to OSM rather than using X, Y or Z editor.

In the absence of documentation that is both comprehensive enough to 
prevent errors but not so comprehensive as to put anyone off editing at 
all, newbie errors will continue to be a thing.  The tricky bit is to 
spot the problems and offer assistance early enough that (a) errors can 
be easily corrected and (b) the new mapper doesn't get put off for life.

It'd be a shame to set the "barrier to entry" to OSM so high that people 
are put off making simple edits, but at the same time the lack of 
feedback from all editors about "potential damage done" does mean that 
that part of the feedback loop has to be human mapper to human mapper, 
not editor program to mapper.

Cheers,

Andy