[OSM-talk] Mappers and apps should focus on relations at the very start

[Richard Fairhurst]

Jo wrote:
 > even more sorry you stopped being the lead developer of iD

For the record: the mantle of lead developer of iD passed to Tom and 
John immediately after SOTM-US Portland because it was wonderfully clear 
that their JavaScript skills are pretty much on a different planet to 
mine, and I was delighted to see them take up the torch.

My reluctance to continue work on OSM editing software dates from before 
this, as you can see if you look at the commit graphs of both proto-iD 
and Potlatch 2. This is why I was so keen in summer 2013 to get iD made 
the default instead of Potlatch 2: so that the burden of maintaining the 
default editor could pass to someone else and I wouldn't have to endure 
the shit flung at the holder of that role any more.

I think you, and others, need to consider why it's only those with the 
thickest skins that are prepared to work on OSM site (and, particularly, 
online editor) development. I am not the only one to have burned out.

You have your own views. That's fine. Your view is that "there is a 
problem". That is not objective truth, that is your view and it may or 
may not be informed by actual facts. Others may believe that the main 
challenge for OSM is to be welcoming enough for a million new users to 
contribute their local knowledge - not to provide more and more detailed 
methods for a diminishing number of power users to map the locations of 
angels on a pin, without ever being troubled by thoughts of how new 
users will interact with those detailed methods. That too is not 
objective truth, it is a view (it happens to be mine).

What is unacceptable is the relentless, harrying, dismissive, abusive 
manner in which you and others advance the former view over the latter. 
That is why we cannot retain developers.

Richard