[OSM-talk] Street Complete

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

On 06/02/17 15:47, Sebastiaan Couwenberg wrote:
>> My message was more of a heads up about the app. I don't recommend it as
>> it is.

> That's not what your message says, it just a rant about StreetComplete.

[...]

> You apparently have no clue how software development works. 

I agree that if there's a good piece of software and you want to report
a bug or suggest an improvement, getting involved with whatever issue
tracker that software might be using, signing up to that issue tracker,
and filing an issue there (which the maintainer is then at liberty to
handle, or ignore) makes sense.

If, however, the software is found to be buggy or misbehaving to a
degree that other people (even those not involved with the development
of the software) should hear about the problems so that they can avoid
using the software, or at least the buggy version of the software, or at
least use it with great care, then an issue tracker is obviously the
wrong venue.

Ultimately, the question was about whether adding surface tags to *all*
roads should be encouraged or not. This is a policy decision for the
community to make, not a discussion to be had somewhere in an issue tracker.

StreetComplete has occasionally tempted people to mass-edit whole towns
or cities, adding guesswork surface tags to everything even when aerial
imagery clearly showed they were wrong.

Gamification can be an interesting addition to OSM but when the goals
are set wrongly, the project will suffer. A discussion of which goals to
set is very much on-topic on this list.

Having a clue about software development (or having an account on a
proprietary issue tracking platform) is not a prerequisite for
participating in OSM, or for discussing whether it makes sense to add
surface tags to all streets or not.

Bye
Frederik

-- 
Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frederik at remote.org  ##  N49°00'09" E008°23'33"