[OSM-talk] this has to stop: iD user mistakes all over the place

[Bryce Nesbitt]

On Wed, Feb 11, 2015 at 8:47 AM, Tom MacWright <tom at macwright.org> wrote:

> How is an open source project that was open source on day one, was
> publicly communicated from day one, heavily explained in time-consuming
> technical blog posts, has 77 contributors, and has accepted hundreds of
> pull requests "tightly held."
>

Read through the issue tracker: It's clear that issues reported are pushed
back on by the core iD developers.  It's very "tightly held".
In terms of design ideas, it's particularly "tightly held" compared to
comparable projects.  *Saying it's not tight just does not match the
record.*

Beyond the tight control, iD is "opinionated" software.  *That's more of an
observation than a judgement by the way. * There's a particular focus on
fulfillment of iD's funding mission to be an entry level editor, pulling
"new mappers" into OSM.  That results in a particular aversion to
introducing any sort of complexity, even when the underlying editing is
complex.  I think that's not really working: iD instead leads new users
down roads and into editing jobs they can't correctly complete.  iD could,
but does not, help users identify interesting and fulfilling editing at the
level of the user.  iD is helping to breed and support a class of mapper
who is not integrated with, or in contact with, other similarly situated
contributors.  It's really a missed opportunity.

A number of specific issues illustrate this point: among them the delete
issue, and the relation deletion issue.  But it's deeper than those marquee
subjects.  There's clearly some pretty deep differences in focus between iD
developers focusing on maximizing raw input into the system, and "cleanup"
style editors who are on the receiving end of those changes.

--

In short: pushing patches to the iD tracker won't help.
Making "time consuming technical blog posts" won't help if goals are out of
alignment.
Cleanup-oriented editors have been unhappy with iD for a long time: and
don't seem to feel respected by the iD core developers.
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