[OSM-talk] Can you recommend good introduction to JOSM for 100% osm newbie?

[Justin Tracey]

On 2020-10-05 6:49 a.m., john whelan wrote:
> I think we underestimate new mappers.  JOSM takes a little more time
> to set up true enough but once set up new mappers can be quite
> productive.  I think it is best if you limit them to adding one or two
> features at a time but for adding buildings nothing beats it with the
> buildings_tool plugin.


For adding lots of buildings quickly, sure, that's definitely what I'd
recommend, but that's not the most common action newbies will be
performing in OSM. And yes, you *can* teach new mappers how to use JOSM,
of course, but IMO the goal should be to make the UI as frictionless as
possible at getting them to understand how mapping works, not getting
them to use the most powerful mapping tools as quickly as possible. Or,
framed another way, I would rather have lots of moderately skilled
contributors all over the world than (unintentionally) gate-keep into
highly skilled contributors in a few places.


To use a programming analogy (sorry, I realize this is useless to
non-programmers), yes, you can teach a complete programming newbie C as
their first language. But if you want them to actually understand the
important core concepts quickly rather than learning the quirks of the
architecture, you're probably better off using something simple like
Python. On a similar note, I use C for my work quite often, but when I
need to write something simple, I'll default to Python; and while I
frequently use (and have even made non-trivial upstream code
contributions to) JOSM, I still default to iD as my go-to editor for
most quick fixes.


>
> Highways, I think it is iD that offers many choices of tags but do we
> really need rural highways in Africa to be tagged as unlit?


Well, for that particular case, my guess is that tag is just as useful
there as it is anywhere.

 - Justin