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

Tom MacWright tom at macwright.org
Fri Feb 13 02:00:55 UTC 2015


Since two years ago, iD has an range of validations it runs on every
potential changeset, as well as an interface to review & correct potential
errors before saving them.

https://github.com/openstreetmap/iD/blob/master/js/id/validate.js#L1

We welcome contributions to expand these, and have a few proposed additions
which would be good places to start if you want to help:
https://github.com/openstreetmap/iD/issues?q=is%3Aopen+is%3Aissue+label%3Avalidation

On Thu, Feb 12, 2015 at 8:44 PM, Michał Brzozowski <www.haxor at gmail.com>
wrote:

> I was wondering, what do you think (interpret this only as a question)
> about introducing validation in iD in the future?
>
> Using MAGIC integrated circuit design tool, that does DRC (Design Rule
> Check) in real time and highlights errors inspired me that OSM editors
> could also incorporate this. It makes sense to me. First, users will not be
> overwhelmed by a sh**load of errors at once and second, they could learn
> what they actually do wrong.
>
> But this poses challenges, because sometimes when you're editing, there
> will be a temporary error state, to disappear just when you finish a
> sequence (e.g. you don't enter all tags at once so there will be a
> transient "place of worship without religion" error.) That type of error
> message should not happen, because spamming irrelevant errors only makes
> users ignore them.
>
> Still, there are checks that can be safely made in real time, like all
> sorts of geometrical tests (self-intersections, building crossing another
> building and so on.). Maybe good-enough heuristics could be applied for
> when the user stopped editing a feature and moved on to another, to address
> the "temporary error" issue.
>
> Anyway, thanks in advance to anyone who makes iD more iDiot-proof. It
> really matters a lot, for example there was press coverage (Polish News
> Agency) back in 2014-08-18 that generated 500 or more new users who
> obviously contributed a fair share of mistakes. There was simply no
> manpower available to check edits of all the users, let alone message them
> on what they did wrong.
>
> Having no severe errors is quite a point of honor to me, as I think we
> must try to be free of all these "that cursed satnav told me to do this"
> situations. Steve Jobs once told something along the lines of "We don't
> ship junk. We make products that we could recommend to our family and
> friends" and surely anyone tech-savvy can relate to that feeling of
> embarrassment when a cool gadget/software you show to your family happens
> to betray you. Have your navigation lead you off-road (see: wrong road
> tagging), people will tell that "OSM is shit" even though other map
> products are not ideal as well.
>
> Michał
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> talk mailing list
> talk at openstreetmap.org
> https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk/attachments/20150212/c6f61127/attachment.html>


More information about the talk mailing list