Re: [OSM-talk] A plea for meaning ful changeset comments
Am 31.07.2010 14:05, schrieb Frederik Ramm: I, too, find your attitude funny. You spend an hour doing edits, then cannot be bothered to spend a minute to think of a good changeset comment. That's one thing I want to do and the other I often find a burden to enter. What's so funny about that? Instead, you say, it is the job of all the others who want to make sense of your edit to investigate, and spend certianly more than that one minute. Is this the same Frederik that preached all the time: Its the consumers job to make sense out of the data, not the mappers job? That is indeed selfish, because you're saying that your time is more valuable than theirs. If someone doesn't tag all possible data of a place, is he also selfish? By your definition: yes. Because someone else then needs to revisit that place to add more details and spend probably a lot more time than necessary. OSM has a long tradition to *not* force people to enter all possible data, but only the things that someone *wants* to add. This principle worked pretty well in the past. You failed to explain why a different principle should be applied to changeset comments now. It helps some people is certainly *not* enough to force how others have to spend their time. I'd appreciate very much if, in the future, you would contribute 1% less data and use the saved time to double the value of your contribution by telling your fellow mappers what you did in a changeset comment. double the value of your contribution - really? When I add the address to an existing hotel node, it won't be a lot more valueable if I add a comment address of hotel added. But it almost doubles the time I need. You failed to explain why adding changeset comments all the time is so valueable that it's necessary to force people to spend their time as you want to see it. BTW: A map will have *no* additional value wether I add that comment or not. And as I said to John, blaming insufficient tools is a cheap excuse. I'm not blaming insufficient tools. However, if we would have sufficient tools, a lot of your reasons to force people to add comments would simply vanish away. This is about paying respect to your fellow mappers, about being part of a community rather than just someone who dumps data onto a heap (let the others make sense of this). Would be nice if you would pay respect how others want to spend their time and not telling them what they have to do. On our last local NFE OSM meeting, we had a short talk if anyone uses changeset comments. Turned out that anyone attending found it to be a burden. So my fellow mappers seem to look at it quite differently than you. That is most certainly a selfish attitude. Just because you upload a change to OSM doesn't mean you're automatically not selfish. There are indeed people who spend their spare time mapping stuff and add it to OSM and half the community goes oh my god, can't that guy contribute to another project, he's stubborn, doesn't communicate about his edits, and does things all of us think wrong. You know we have several such cases in Germany on the regional and national level. That's a pitty. But if someone is entering bullshit, does it help us to force him to also enter a valueable comment about his bullshit? ;-) You don't want to put yourself on a level with them, do you? So we're already at the moral level of: if you don't add a valueable comment, you're a potential spammer/vandal :-( I'm not arguing that a good comment is valuable. But it is my belief that forcing people (by software or by social norms) to do things they don't really want to do will reduce the fun to work with OSM and therefore do more harm than good to the project in the long run. Regards, ULFL ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] A plea for meaning ful changeset comments
Frederik Ramm schrieb: It is so much easier to read a short phrase about an edit than having to look at the area and history of affected objects. It sounds like a nice feature! Anyone should code a possibility to comment changesets! ;-) One group ... The other group ... You have forgotten the third group ... my group ... ;-) I'm grown up as OSM Mapper using potlatch live edit. And I still prefer it. And you may edit live millions of nodes and ways without being asked to comment a changeset. So potlatch user may call comments a nice new feature, see above ;-) I just searching around a little bit and, yeah, found a possibility to give a comment to a live edit, too, but it is connected with closing it. Because it is not necessary to close a changeset if you end editing live (clicking in View for changing to the slippy map works fine, too ;-) ) it might be, that this feature is used seldomely (for examples: look at my changesets ;-) ) The number of commented changeset may arise if someone changes potlatch, that the possibility of setting a comment appears more visible and not only hidden behind a menu and not only connected with closing it ... Mueck ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] A plea for meaning ful changeset comments
On 1 August 2010 04:04, Pieren pier...@gmail.com wrote: Again, most of the 'what' could be summarized automically (20 POI's added, 2 ways displaced, 5 restrictions added, etc) and is far better than reading comments. I have seen so many nice comments from newcomers where changesets contained so many mistakes... Some people have been also asking for a more meaningful where, rather than a bbox, surely this can be derived in a similar manner to how the user diary stuff works if you give a location? Obviously big areas are an issue in themselves, but most people only seem to want information about what actually occurred in their area. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] A plea for meaning ful changeset comments
On Fri, 30 Jul 2010 21:27:43 John F. Eldredge wrote: I have to admit that I am bad about not bothering to enter a comment, particularly if all I have been doing is fixing the alignment of streets to better conform to the Yahoo aerial view. snip Don't forget, the Yahoo! aerials might not be exactly aligned in all areas. I have found here in Korea the aerials are a little off in some places, but correct in others. I generally move the aerial layer until some obvious feature lines up with a GPS trace (either my own, or downloaded), then I start tracing other features from the aerials. For example, in my town the aerials are off by about 10m south and 8m east. I have to slide the layer up and left to align to the GPS. Of course, it's true the GPS traces are also off by 5, 10, or more metres, but you can overcome this by taking the average of many traces along the same road. In my case, the obvious aerial feature I use is an oval running track. I have collected several GPS traces of this track, and they all agree with each other. I apologise if you silently inferred that of course I align the aerials first before I start fixing streets, but maybe this is new information for some people. Best wishes, Andrew PS I always try and put some changeset comment in, but I had/have no idea if anyone reads them. I also make mistakes such as not changing the comment if I do two changesets in a row, or sometimes leaving the comment blank. Oh well. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] A plea for meaning ful changeset comments
James Livingston lists at sunsetutopia.com writes: For casual editing, I'm not sure what I could put in that would be useful. Often I start off adding some street numbers I've collected, and then trace those houses from nearmap, and then start tracing a creek, and then start doing something when that ends. When I set the changeset comment, I don't know exactly what I'll be fixing up - I know the location, but you can get that from the changeset anyway without any comment. Wouldn't it make more sense for changeset comments to be set when closing, or at least be changeable afterwards (as, for example, log messages in version control systems)? The editor I use, Merkaartor, creates a new changeset every time you press the Upload button, and prompts then for the comment. This means that I do often upload a single task (such as a single mapping trip) in several changesets 'part one', 'part two' etc, but that doesn't seem a bad thing. -- Ed Avis e...@waniasset.com ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] A plea for meaning ful changeset comments
Am 30.07.2010 13:18, schrieb Frederik Ramm: To them, I say: Yes, you're right, it can be a pain sometimes, but if you practice it for a while, it will be an easy routine. I'm doing this day by day while doing software development - but there it has a much higher value: Very often you can't get the reason of a code change only by looking at the differences. If I add a missing road to the road network, it's pretty clear what the reason was. I think some comments are really useful, e.g. if the change are potentially annoying another user, like: removed a duplicate node is a valuable message to the other one out there, that I think he has added a duplicate. In a lot of other cases, comments are only a waste of time. If writing English takes you too long, use your national language, that's no problem. And you don't have to write long sentences, a few words are sufficient. But that little bit of time you spend when committing your changes adds so much value! For which audience? There are people who actively watch out their area what changes there. That's fine and valueable. But IMHO it's *their job* to make sense of the changes, not the mappers job. Don't be fooled; the small changeset comment that you enter when uploading stuff *will* be read by many people. I don't think so. Do you have numbers? Done well, changeset comments are tremendously helpful. For what? First of all, you probably need better diff tools (I mentioned that before :-), not better changeset comments ... Regards, ULFL P.S: Your whole mail was the wrong way round. It was: Comments are s helpful, please do it and your lame if not, but it should have been: Look, this and that and those things are a lot easier for others if you add a comment, please do it. This way you might convince more people ... ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] A plea for meaning ful changeset comments
On Saturday, July 31, 2010 12:55:28 pm Ed Avis wrote: For casual editing, I'm not sure what I could put in that would be useful. Often I start off adding some street numbers I've collected, and then trace those houses from nearmap, and then start tracing a creek, and then start doing something when that ends. When I set the changeset comment, I don't know exactly what I'll be fixing up - I know the location, but you can get that from the changeset anyway without any comment. Wouldn't it make more sense for changeset comments to be set when closing, or at least be changeable afterwards (as, for example, log messages in version control systems)? The editor I use, Merkaartor, creates a new changeset every time you press the Upload button, and prompts then for the comment. This means that I do often upload a single task (such as a single mapping trip) in several changesets 'part one', 'part two' etc, but that doesn't seem a bad thing. josm will not upload a changeset if the comments field is blank - but it prefills the comment field with the last comment, which is worse than blank. At the same time mercurial and subversion from the command line will not permit a push/commit without a comment - this has kept me 'honest' - if josm did not prefill, it would be ideal. Given of course the fact that most people would like to be 'good' and make meaningful comments, but often forget to do this. -- Regards Kenneth Gonsalves Senior Associate NRC-FOSS at AU-KBC ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] A plea for meaning ful changeset comments
On Sat, 31 Jul 2010, Liz wrote: On Fri, 30 Jul 2010, Frederik Ramm wrote: Dear all, we've had the changeset feature for quite a while now and I believe it is very helpful in a number of ways. I thought I'd have a look at the documentation provided for the documentation called changeset comment The documentation I found was at http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:comment and http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Changesets and these give a completely different slant on the changeset comment. They discuss them being optional and note that anything mandatory annoys some mappers who will retaliate with garbage comments. Thanks to the persons who pointed out changeset comments I know realise that I am quite free to write anything or nothing useful. Yes I can see their potential use, however would the other persons in this thread who are dogmatic about their use read the existing documentation on the documentation. The stuff I read changed within hours. Of course you can read the wiki history to see what it did say at the time wrote the email. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] A plea for meaning ful changeset comments
On 31/07/2010 10:05, Ulf Lamping wrote: There are people who actively watch out their area what changes there. That's fine and valueable. But IMHO it's *their job* to make sense of the changes, not the mappers job. What a selfish attitude for a supposedly co-operative project. It may be obvious to you what the changes are and especially why because you did them. It isn't necessarily clear to someone looking at it, not least because our tools for looking at changes aren't well developed. For example, it is hard, though not impossible, to spot that a way has been reversed; a helpful comment slip road was in the wrong direction reassures me that this person is making a serious change because I can see that they were probably correct straight away. I don't understand your attitude at all: it hardly takes a moment to add a helpful comment, but many minutes or hours to make the change itself. It is hardly a burden. David ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] A plea for meaning ful changeset comments
On 31 July 2010 19:24, David Earl da...@frankieandshadow.com wrote: I don't understand your attitude at all: it hardly takes a moment to add a helpful comment, but many minutes or hours to make the change itself. It is hardly a burden. You gave a very simplistic comment example, how about something more likely to occur by people doing large numbers of changes, for example, realigning roads, fixing up names from photos, drawing in schools and parks and playgrounds and buildings and pitches and How exactly are you supposed to compress all the possible changes you've made, into a single line, and not spend a similar amount of time documenting what you did, why you did it, who paid for your time and other expenses, what the weather was like, how many birds were tweating, and any jokes you may have receive in an email while doing all that... Frankly I'd rather spend my time mapping than telling everyone to the nth degree what my life story about why I made a change. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] A plea for meaning ful changeset comments
Am 31.07.2010 11:24, schrieb David Earl: On 31/07/2010 10:05, Ulf Lamping wrote: There are people who actively watch out their area what changes there. That's fine and valueable. But IMHO it's *their job* to make sense of the changes, not the mappers job. What a selfish attitude for a supposedly co-operative project. No, that's a lesson learned from working in the german Wikipedia. All those it would be nice if you would do It's no good to tell people that they have to do this and that and please don't forget whatnot. All for the best of the project. It annoyed me so much, that I no longer work for the wikipedia. For me: The less things you should do to be a good mapper, the better for OSM. Regards, ULFL ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] A plea for meaning ful changeset comments
On Sat, Jul 31, 2010 at 11:24 AM, David Earl da...@frankieandshadow.comwrote: I'm in the group who think that changeset comments are waste of time because: - you may have vandalism with nice comments (and good edits with crappy comments) - this is an habit comming from software development and software version control. But mapping is not development, you don't develop or create something new or implement a design, you just copy facts. Which means that all information are easy to retrieve from the changeset itself. A software could summarize the changeset more accurately than humans. - we are a community. If I am working in a workspace with 100 colleagues, I wouldn't have this group claiming I do this, I do that every 5 minutes if no one else is checking his work. Watch carefully what people are doing, talk to each other or shut up. - the OSM gems are not the consumers, not the people watching their area but real contributors, volunteers working on their spare time. We have regularly professionals coming and asking to this community to work like professionals with good comments and sourcing. I remember someone who said that OSM should not become a project like wikipedia where newcomers are reluctant to contribute when it becomes too restrictive. Pieren ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] A plea for meaning ful changeset comments
On 31/07/2010 10:50, John Smith wrote: On 31 July 2010 19:24, David Earlda...@frankieandshadow.com wrote: I don't understand your attitude at all: it hardly takes a moment to add a helpful comment, but many minutes or hours to make the change itself. It is hardly a burden. You gave a very simplistic comment example, how about something more likely to occur by people doing large numbers of changes, for example, realigning roads, fixing up names from photos, drawing in schools and parks and playgrounds and buildings and pitches and How exactly are you supposed to compress all the possible changes you've made, into a single line, and not spend a similar amount of time documenting what you did, why you did it, who paid for your time and other expenses, what the weather was like, how many birds were tweating, and any jokes you may have receive in an email while doing all that... Frankly I'd rather spend my time mapping than telling everyone to the nth degree what my life story about why I made a change. sad, sad, sad to be so selfish towards your colleagues. David ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] A plea for meaning ful changeset comments
On 31 July 2010 20:17, David Earl da...@frankieandshadow.com wrote: sad, sad, sad to be so selfish towards your colleagues. And you are selfish to be making demands that some deem unreasonable... see I can twist logic just as much as you can... ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] A plea for meaning ful changeset comments
On 31 July 2010 20:17, David Earl da...@frankieandshadow.com wrote: sad, sad, sad to be so selfish towards your colleagues. Oh and I'm still waiting for the comment example based on people that make a lot more edits than a simply changing the direction a one way street runs... ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] A plea for meaning ful changeset comments
On Saturday, July 31, 2010 03:53:19 pm John Smith wrote: On 31 July 2010 20:17, David Earl da...@frankieandshadow.com wrote: sad, sad, sad to be so selfish towards your colleagues. Oh and I'm still waiting for the comment example based on people that make a lot more edits than a simply changing the direction a one way street runs... I simply say finetuning areaname -- Regards Kenneth Gonsalves Senior Associate NRC-FOSS at AU-KBC ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] A plea for meaning ful changeset comments
Am 31.07.2010 12:17, schrieb David Earl: On 31/07/2010 10:50, John Smith wrote: Frankly I'd rather spend my time mapping than telling everyone to the nth degree what my life story about why I made a change. sad, sad, sad to be so selfish towards your colleagues. Calling someone selfish when he spends his spare time mapping stuff and adds that to OSM is simply bullshit. Regards, ULFL ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] A plea for meaning ful changeset comments
On Sat, Jul 31, 2010 at 12:08 PM, Pieren pier...@gmail.com wrote: We have regularly professionals coming and asking to this community to work like professionals with good comments and sourcing. Sourcing might be the only meaningfull comment I could see. This is the only important information that cannot be retrieved by software and is required to justify some actions e.g. features displacements. We should better replace 'comment' by 'source' in the changeset tags (and leave it optional not like comments in JOSM). Pieren ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] A plea for meaning ful changeset comments
On 31/07/2010 11:52, Pieren wrote: Sourcing might be the only meaningfull comment I could see. This is the only important information that cannot be retrieved by software and is required to justify some actions e.g. features displacements. We should better replace 'comment' by 'source' in the changeset tags (and leave it optional not like comments in JOSM). You can see the what but never the why. David ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] A plea for meaning ful changeset comments
Hi John, On Samstag, 31. Juli 2010, John Smith wrote: On 31 July 2010 20:17, David Earl da...@frankieandshadow.com wrote: sad, sad, sad to be so selfish towards your colleagues. Oh and I'm still waiting for the comment example based on people that make a lot more edits than a simply changing the direction a one way street runs... I usually split my changesets into small chunks. http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/werner2101/edits The only reason is to keep the changeset areas small and the possibility to add a meaningfull changeset comment for the next mapper. Please, John, add some comments to your changesets. e.g. for the changeset: http://www.openstreetmap.org/browse/changeset/5357611 a simple toy - toys comment is enough. BTW: I trapped into the last message issue of JOSM, too. Changeset 5358548 was a dupe nodes removal session. Regards Werner ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] A plea for meaning ful changeset comments
Hi Ulf, Ulf Lamping wrote: Calling someone selfish when he spends his spare time mapping stuff and adds that to OSM is simply bullshit. I, too, find your attitude funny. You spend an hour doing edits, then cannot be bothered to spend a minute to think of a good changeset comment. Instead, you say, it is the job of all the others who want to make sense of your edit to investigate, and spend certianly more than that one minute. That is indeed selfish, because you're saying that your time is more valuable than theirs. I'd appreciate very much if, in the future, you would contribute 1% less data and use the saved time to double the value of your contribution by telling your fellow mappers what you did in a changeset comment. And as I said to John, blaming insufficient tools is a cheap excuse. This is about paying respect to your fellow mappers, about being part of a community rather than just someone who dumps data onto a heap (let the others make sense of this). That is most certainly a selfish attitude. Just because you upload a change to OSM doesn't mean you're automatically not selfish. There are indeed people who spend their spare time mapping stuff and add it to OSM and half the community goes oh my god, can't that guy contribute to another project, he's stubborn, doesn't communicate about his edits, and does things all of us think wrong. You know we have several such cases in Germany on the regional and national level. You don't want to put yourself on a level with them, do you? Bye Frederik -- Frederik Ramm ## eMail frede...@remote.org ## N49°00'09 E008°23'33 ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] A plea for meaning ful changeset comments
On 31 July 2010 22:05, Frederik Ramm frede...@remote.org wrote: That is indeed selfish, because you're saying that your time is more valuable than theirs. And you are saying their time is more valuable than the person contributing the data, this is going no where fast, people have their opinions and they are polar opposite and berating and belittling people doesn't seem to be shifting any opinions. And as I said to John, blaming insufficient tools is a cheap excuse. This is So is blaming others for not commenting exactly how you think they should, when up until a few hours ago the changeset comment was specifcally listed as optional, of course you fiddled that wiki to fit your opinion, and when others do something similar it you attack them for not following the status quo. Why is there such a double standard here? ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] A plea for meaning ful changeset comments
On Sat, Jul 31, 2010 at 7:09 PM, David Earl da...@frankieandshadow.comwrote: On 31/07/2010 11:52, Pieren wrote: Sourcing might be the only meaningfull comment I could see. This is the only important information that cannot be retrieved by software and is required to justify some actions e.g. features displacements. We should better replace 'comment' by 'source' in the changeset tags (and leave it optional not like comments in JOSM). You can see the what but never the why. +1 ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] A plea for meaning ful changeset comments
On Saturday 31 July 2010 11:17:16 Kenneth Gonsalves wrote: josm will not upload a changeset if the comments field is blank - but it prefills the comment field with the last comment, which is worse than blank. At the same time mercurial and subversion from the command line will not permit a push/commit without a comment - this has kept me 'honest' - if josm did not prefill, it would be ideal. Given of course the fact that most people would like to be 'good' and make meaningful comments, but often forget to do this. Not to mention that prefilling actually helps the vandals and unwilling. They only have to type sod off once and JOSM dutifully repeats it every time for them. -- m.v.g., Cartinus ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] A plea for meaning ful changeset comments
On Sat, 31 Jul 2010, Frederik Ramm wrote: You spend an hour doing edits, then cannot be bothered to spend a minute to think of a good changeset comment. so how do *you* summarise adding POIs and side streets and putting in maxspeed along a hundred km of highway? because i just put in the name of where i have been, that's all. and that is glaringly obvious from the bounding box ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] A plea for meaning ful changeset comments
On Sat, Jul 31, 2010 at 8:29 PM, Liz ed...@billiau.net wrote: On Sat, 31 Jul 2010, Frederik Ramm wrote: You spend an hour doing edits, then cannot be bothered to spend a minute to think of a good changeset comment. so how do *you* summarise adding POIs and side streets and putting in maxspeed along a hundred km of highway? because i just put in the name of where i have been, that's all. and that is glaringly obvious from the bounding box Not necessarily. On changeset lists which does display the changeset comment, you only see the bbox coordinates and people have a poor grasp of which coordinates correspond to which location. You have to click on to the changeset page itself to see the map of the bbox (which is inconvenient if you want to check out several changesets), and the location is still not obvious if the bbox is zoomed in and you're not familiar with the area. So, it's not glaringly obvious. You have to do a bit of work to determine where the changeset is located. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] A plea for meaning ful changeset comments
Liz, Liz wrote: so how do *you* summarise adding POIs and side streets and putting in maxspeed along a hundred km of highway? because i just put in the name of where i have been, that's all. and that is glaringly obvious from the bounding box I believe that the changeset comment should be meaningful without any extra information. I'm not saying that it should be in any way an exhaustive description, duplicating the content. That would be stupid, and unnecessary work. I think that you have an excellent changeset comment right there: added POIs, side streets, maxspeed from trip along A1234 perfect. It tells people where you have edited, it tells them what you did, it even hints at the source. Most of all, it tells them that youare a human being, that you are diligent, and that you are respectful towards your fellow mappers. The exact same edit with a changeset comment of fixes may add the same data, but it sends a wholly different message to the community (take your pick from anywhere between nobody's gonna read this anyway to if you want to know what I did then go and find it out yourself). That's sad because, as I pointed out, if you get into the habit of writing good changeset comments then the additional work this causes is going to be practically zero, whereas the quality of the change increases dramatically. Bye Frederik -- Frederik Ramm ## eMail frede...@remote.org ## N49°00'09 E008°23'33 ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] A plea for meaning ful changeset comments
On 31 July 2010 22:53, Frederik Ramm frede...@remote.org wrote: pick from anywhere between nobody's gonna read this anyway to if you want That's sad because, as I pointed out, if you get into the habit of writing good changeset comments then the additional work this causes is going to be practically zero, whereas the quality of the change increases dramatically. This might be a good application of crowd sourcing, specifically allowing others to add tags to changesets, and then these changesets become more useful as a statistical tool to figure out the more popular objects being mapped, or the inverse what needs to be mapped more. Then you just need one of those bubble cloud interfaces that make the popular/unpopular tags show with a bigger font. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] A plea for meaning ful changeset comments
On 31 July 2010 23:25, Frederik Ramm frede...@remote.org wrote: No. Equally valuable. But they are more. Only one person makes the edits, but more than one person look at the edits. Sure, if on average more than one person views the changeset information, is this really happening though? All wanted was to say: Please folks, add meaningful changeset comments. I think it is plain obvious that they are very useful, not only to me personally. Of about 20 people participating in this thread, only three seem to be of the opinion that changeset comments are a waste of time. Yes, people have their opinions and yes, some might be of that opinion, but luckily it is a small minority. And how many don't set meaningful tags and didn't contribute to this thread? I think there is a wide range of useful changeset comments; you're misrepresenting my statement if you say I was complaining about people not commenting excactly how I think they should. I'm just asking for meaningful changeset comments. So far no one has given a reasonable example for changesets with diverse activities, so please be more specific. No. Liz, helpfully, pointed out that the Wiki did not reflect what the community expects, as has been proven by this thread. I merely amended the Wiki to reflect that. If you carefully read the version history you will see that even before I made the change, the Wiki definitely said that the comment was used in many places; it just wasn't quite so obvious that people actually use it a lot. Back to lies, damn lies and statistics, 20 v 3 out of 5-10k active editors, it's not a very good sample size to be extrapolating from, if anything it shows a minority have a strong opinion one way or the other, and the rest just don't care. I'm not even starting to discuss Key:UUID here. Who said anything about that, I was talking about your spurious comment on the emergency=* thread... ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] A plea for meaning ful changeset comments
Well, in my area at least (Nashville, TN, USA), the aerial images seem pretty well aligned with the actual street locations. The corrections I am speaking of tend to be needed only here and there, not overall. Much of the street location info on the OSM map in my area originated in the TIGER import (data collected, over decades, by census-takers), and some of the original mappers were pretty sloppy. You will have a neighborhood where all of the streets align with the aerial view, for example, except for one street that will be mapped 15 meters or so to the side of its actual location. ---Original Email--- Subject :Re: [OSM-talk] A plea for meaning ful changeset comments From :mailto:a.erring...@lancaster.ac.uk Date :Sat Jul 31 01:29:02 America/Chicago 2010 On Fri, 30 Jul 2010 21:27:43 John F. Eldredge wrote: I have to admit that I am bad about not bothering to enter a comment, particularly if all I have been doing is fixing the alignment of streets to better conform to the Yahoo aerial view. snip Don't forget, the Yahoo! aerials might not be exactly aligned in all areas. I have found here in Korea the aerials are a little off in some places, but correct in others. I generally move the aerial layer until some obvious feature lines up with a GPS trace (either my own, or downloaded), then I start tracing other features from the aerials. For example, in my town the aerials are off by about 10m south and 8m east. I have to slide the layer up and left to align to the GPS. Of course, it's true the GPS traces are also off by 5, 10, or more metres, but you can overcome this by taking the average of many traces along the same road. In my case, the obvious aerial feature I use is an oval running track. I have collected several GPS traces of this track, and they all agree with each other. I apologise if you silently inferred that of course I align the aerials first before I start fixing streets, but maybe this is new information for some people. Best wishes, Andrew PS I always try and put some changeset comment in, but I had/have no idea if anyone reads them. I also make mistakes such as not changing the comment if I do two changesets in a row, or sometimes leaving the comment blank. Oh well. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk -- John F. Eldredge -- j...@jfeldredge.com Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly is better than not to think at all. -- Hypatia of Alexandria ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] A plea for meaning ful changeset comments
On 31 July 2010 21:09, David Earl da...@frankieandshadow.com wrote: You can see the what but never the why. Most changesets seem to summerise what they did not why they did it, the only why that you could get from a changeset is from any source tags as someone else pointed out, however there seems to be a distinct lack of emphasis on sourcing data properly, which this would be much more useful to help people decide if they should touch up the data or not. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] A plea for meaning ful changeset comments
One thing I found unfortunate is that when we switched to API 0.6 to support changeset comments we also limited the length of values to 255 characters. So because of that you end up with really long run-on sentences like that to describe large changes making it hard to write them and to understand them. It would be much nicer if I could Write a short summary of the changes I'm making, like this. Then go on to elaborate a bit on what I did, why I did it, and what sources I used etc. Perhaps explaining how I'm not really sure about that one track by the sports stadium, due to the bad GPS reception I had there. Sometimes my changes in Git turn into little mini blog-posts about the problem I was solving, it's unfortunate that I can't provide similar details on OpenStreetMap, at least it's 255 characters, not 255 bytes like on Wikipedia. Anyway, since we're making pleas, here's one of my own: Can the maintainers of JOSM please get rid of the silly feature that makes changeset comments manditory? It results in a lot of garbage like the ..., some mapping, fixed stuff, or none of your business examples which Frederik cited. I'd rather have history with no comments at all than expending mental energy on comments that look like they were copy/pasted from http://whatthecommit.com. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] A plea for meaning ful changeset comments
On Sat, Jul 31, 2010 at 9:25 AM, Frederik Ramm frede...@remote.org wrote: John, John Smith wrote: On 31 July 2010 22:05, Frederik Ramm frede...@remote.org wrote: That is indeed selfish, because you're saying that your time is more valuable than theirs. And you are saying their time is more valuable than the person contributing the data No. Equally valuable. Maybe equally valuable to the universe. But my time is certainly more valuable to myself than anyone else's time is valuable to me. Maybe that's why I'm not on this list telling other people what to do with their time. All wanted was to say: Please folks, add meaningful changeset comments. I think it is plain obvious that they are very useful, not only to me personally. Of about 20 people participating in this thread, only three seem to be of the opinion that changeset comments are a waste of time. Yes, people have their opinions and yes, some might be of that opinion, but luckily it is a small minority. I'm of the opinion that good changeset comments are useful, and yes, please folks, add meaningful changeset comments. On the other hand, I'm quite grateful to those of you who have been helping map the world regardless of whether or not you've been adding good changeset comments. Thanks. So please, if you think changeset comments for a particular change would be a waste of your time, don't add them. I'd rather have you enjoy your mapping experience than resent it. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] A plea for meaning ful changeset comments
Hi, Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason wrote: Can the maintainers of JOSM please get rid of the silly feature that makes changeset comments manditory? It results in a lot of garbage like the ..., some mapping, fixed stuff, or none of your business examples which Frederik cited. It's a two-sided thing. Yes, making it mandatory causes some people to enter stupid things. However, if it is optional then some people who would otherwise be willing and able to enter a meaningful comment might think that it doesn't matter whether the enter one or not! Someone else said that JOSM was by default re-using the same message as last time; I think that's the first thing that needs to go (maybe only do that if the last commit was less than 24hrs ago). I could imagine dropping the mandatory changeset comment, but when left empty, display a pop-up that explains why changeset comments are important and ask the user to reconsider. (Indeed that dialog could be shown whenever the changeset comment is less than 15 characters or so.) And of course that dialog must not have a don't ask me again feature. I agree that someone who wants to be a jerk has the right to do so. But I'm not sure if allowing that is a core requirement for editors. Bye Frederik -- Frederik Ramm ## eMail frede...@remote.org ## N49°00'09 E008°23'33 ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] A plea for meaning ful changeset comments
Ulf Lamping wrote: There are people who actively watch out their area what changes there. That's fine and valueable. But IMHO it's *their job* to make sense of the changes, not the mappers job. [...] Don't be fooled; the small changeset comment that you enter when uploading stuff *will* be read by many people. I don't think so. Do you have numbers? Even if only a single person tries to understand your changesets, it will take them far longer to figure out what you have done than it would take you to write it down. If you think that watching one's area is a valuable activity, it makes sense to add changeset comments. With tools like OWL, it's now actually feasible to look at edits in an area - but if mappers don't write down what they have done, it would take a lot of time to understand the edits. There's another situation when changeset comments are useful, and that's when I try to fix broken data (and find out why they are broken), as that involves browsing though the elements' history. With changeset comments, it's easier to identify suspects among the edits. First of all, you probably need better diff tools (I mentioned that before :-), not better changeset comments ... There are excellent diff tools for source code. That doesn't stop people from adding version control messages. Of course, I'd love better diff tools, too, but they don't operate on the same level of abstraction as changeset comments. Finally, I want to point out that I don't want rules forcing people to add changeset comments. If people resent the act of adding the comments, their comments tend to be nonsense anyway. I just want to say that, yes, there are people who read those comments, and it would be great if more mappers added them - voluntarily, because they have decided that it is a useful feature. Tobias Knerr ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] A plea for meaning ful changeset comments
Currently I'm cleaning up in Ottawa, I have over 8,000 errors to clean up left and recently I've probably cleaned at least a couple of thousand errors so far. Things like incorrect street names, where I have a CANVEC source that helps enormously, connecting streets up so you can run routing software. etc. Are you seriously suggesting for each correction I do a write up saying why I or Validator think its wrong and my source for the correction? Thanks Cheerio John ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] A plea for meaning ful changeset comments
On 1 August 2010 02:18, Frederik Ramm frede...@remote.org wrote: I could imagine dropping the mandatory changeset comment, but when left empty, display a pop-up that explains why changeset comments are important and ask the user to reconsider. (Indeed that dialog could be shown whenever the changeset comment is less than 15 characters or so.) And of course that dialog must not have a don't ask me again feature. Are you trying to encourage people into migrating to potlatch? ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] A plea for meaning ful changeset comments
john whelan wrote: Currently I'm cleaning up in Ottawa, I have over 8,000 errors to clean up left and recently I've probably cleaned at least a couple of thousand errors so far. Things like incorrect street names, where I have a CANVEC source that helps enormously, connecting streets up so you can run routing software. etc. Are you seriously suggesting for each correction I do a write up saying why I or Validator think its wrong and my source for the correction? Usually, corrections can be grouped - for example, by fixing all the incorrectly joined junctions in an area first, then uploading with an appropriate changeset comment. That's a lot of errors, by the way. Have those errors been created by humans or by some import? Everything I modify was manually created by a human being, so it's a reasonable assumption that someone will be interested in my reasons for changing their work. They might even learn something from it and don't repeat the same mistakes in the future, thus I might actually be saving time that I would otherwise have spent on fixing those future errors. The situation could be somewhat different when fixing import errors, which is something I'm not familiar with. Tobias Knerr ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] A plea for meaning ful changeset comments
As pointed out, you only have 255 characters. No one is suggesting a book needs to be written. There is a difference between useful and exhaustive. All we are asking for is useful comments. Cleaning up validator problems in Ottowa using a CANVEC source or pull the reference to CANVEC out into a source=* changeset tag. Seriously. It is that simple people! I just ran into some problem roads last night along Kansas highway 18 where it would have been a big help to have some useful comments in the history. If you are in an area with more than a few active mappers I can *guarantee* you that at least one other person is looking at your changeset comments. I live in the middle of nowhere Kansas and I know at least one other person is watching the area. Toby On Sat, Jul 31, 2010 at 11:30 AM, john whelan jwhelan0...@gmail.com wrote: Currently I'm cleaning up in Ottawa, I have over 8,000 errors to clean up left and recently I've probably cleaned at least a couple of thousand errors so far. Things like incorrect street names, where I have a CANVEC source that helps enormously, connecting streets up so you can run routing software. etc. Are you seriously suggesting for each correction I do a write up saying why I or Validator think its wrong and my source for the correction? Thanks Cheerio John ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] A plea for meaning ful changeset comments
Frederik Ramm wrote: I could imagine dropping the mandatory changeset comment, but when left empty, display a pop-up that explains why changeset comments are important and ask the user to reconsider. (Indeed that dialog could be shown whenever the changeset comment is less than 15 characters or so.) And of course that dialog must not have a don't ask me again feature. I believe that people will only provide truly useful changeset comments if they do so voluntarily. Not to mention that some react badly to rules, and will rebel against something they *would* have done voluntarily when they are forced to do it. Therefore, I think that annoying people with permanent dialogs is highly counter-productive. Instead, I suggest the following course of action: - remove requirement to fill in the changeset field from editors - improve the tools that *use* the changeset comments Why? Because mappers who regularly use features like edit histories themselves will actually experience why changeset comments are useful. For example, getting rid of those big edits from the history on osm.org would improve the usefulness, and thus acceptance, of changeset comments far more than any mailing list thread could. Tobias Knerr ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] A plea for meaning ful changeset comments
Hi, Tobias Knerr wrote: I believe that people will only provide truly useful changeset comments if they do so voluntarily. But at least one person in this thread has said something along the lines oh I didn't know these were so important actually. *That* is surely something that could have been avoided by an editor informing them accordingly. For example, getting rid of those big edits from the history on osm.org would improve the usefulness, and thus acceptance, of changeset comments far more than any mailing list thread could. I hear that this is in the works. - However I'd still advocate not creating big edits in the first place. When I modified 170 million nodes in the US last year, I made sure to group them at least by county if not smaller clusters, to avoid having thousands of changesets spanning the whole US. Bye Frederik -- Frederik Ramm ## eMail frede...@remote.org ## N49°00'09 E008°23'33 ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] A plea for meaning ful changeset comments
On 31-7-2010 18:49, Toby Murray wrote: If you are in an area with more than a few active mappers I can *guarantee* you that at least one other person is looking at your changeset comments. I live in the middle of nowhere Kansas and I know at least one other person is watching the area. Even if you are the only one editing a certain area, it is still useful to use changeset comments. If someone else starts to work in your area, or vice versa, it's still useful to know what happened. -- Lennard ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] A plea for meaning ful changeset comments
John Smith deltafoxtrot256 at gmail.com writes: Frankly I'd rather spend my time mapping than telling everyone to the nth degree what my life story about why I made a change. Steady on. Nobody says you should repeat in the comment what is already clear from the changes made. That would be redundant and pointless. Only the 'why' not the 'what' needs to be stated. That normally shouldn't be more than one sentence. The only times I've needed to give a long-winded explanation is when correcting existing data which I believe is wrong - in that case you ought to cite your sources and explain why the new version is correct, otherwise we could get into edit wars, which would waste a lot more time than writing a changeset comment. -- Ed Avis e...@waniasset.com ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] A plea for meaning ful changeset comments
Another way to look at it is that it's your own time you are saving. If another mapper has a question about your changes and they have to contact you and you need to reply, that uses a lot more time than a quick explanation attached to the change when it was uploaded. Certainly doing so takes a lot less time than posting messages on this list. -- Ed Avis e...@waniasset.com ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] A plea for meaning ful changeset comments
Liz edodd at billiau.net writes: so how do *you* summarise adding POIs and side streets and putting in maxspeed along a hundred km of highway? because i just put in the name of where i have been, that's all. I'd also mention how I found the data - spotted from the car window as I drove past, or painstakingly surveyed on foot? That can help someone else if they need to verify the exact position of some post box to the nearest metre, or whatever. So I would say 'POIs from car window driving through X' or 'mapping trip on foot to X'. (You could instead tag source=survey;survey=foot or something equally Byzantine on every single object, but nobody is pedantic enough to do that. So a short note in plain English on the changeset helps.) -- Ed Avis e...@waniasset.com ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] A plea for meaning ful changeset comments
john whelan jwhelan0112 at gmail.com writes: Currently I'm cleaning up in Ottawa, I have over 8,000 errors to clean up left and recently I've probably cleaned at least a couple of thousand errors so far. Things like incorrect street names, where I have a CANVEC source that helps enormously, connecting streets up so you can run routing software. etc. Are you seriously suggesting for each correction I do a write up saying why I or Validator think its wrong and my source for the correction? I do something similar cleaning the data using the http://keepright.ipax.at/ data checker, primarily fixing junctions so the map is routable. Ordinarily I'll just write 'fixed junctions' as the comment. Only if I think there is some potential doubt or controversy will I note my reasons for making a particular assumption. http://www.openstreetmap.org/browse/changeset/5332272 is an example: OS indicates this road joins the other one to its west, and the aerial photo shows at least a gap between buildings, so I'll assume it does. But that long message is the exception. -- Ed Avis e...@waniasset.com ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] A plea for meaning ful changeset comments
On 31-7-2010 19:54, Ed Avis wrote: I do something similar cleaning the data using the http://keepright.ipax.at/ data checker, primarily fixing junctions so the map is routable. Ordinarily I'll just write 'fixed junctions' as the comment. Only if I think there is some potential doubt or controversy will I note my reasons for making a particular assumption. 'fixed junctions based on keepright reports' There, made it much more useful. At least other mappers can see what the change was based on, and if they've actually been there can be more certain that their edits may be better than yours, as they're based on survey. -- Lennard ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] A plea for meaning ful changeset comments
On Sat, Jul 31, 2010 at 7:40 PM, Ed Avis e...@waniasset.com wrote: Only the 'why' not the 'what' needs to be stated. That normally shouldn't be more than one sentence. You are two, with David Earl saying that. But that's a big difference with what Frederik and others are saying. They want a summary, a 'what' and 'why', not just a 'why'. Again, most of the 'what' could be summarized automically (20 POI's added, 2 ways displaced, 5 restrictions added, etc) and is far better than reading comments. I have seen so many nice comments from newcomers where changesets contained so many mistakes... About the 'why', I can already tell you : - if someone displaces 20 nodes, the 'why' is because this person things that his source is more accurate than the previous contribution. The 'why' is a more accurate source. - if someone adds 100 buildings in an empty area, it's because this person found a source for those buildings. - if someone renames a pub or a restaurant, it's because this person thinks that his knowledge is more recent than the previous contribution (source=survey or personnal knowledge) About the required comment in JOSM, I think that JOSM is the only editor doing this. Remember that I'm the one who first complained about this feature on this list and after a long discussion the compromise was to repeat the previous comment (which is good enough for me). The proposal to make a pop-up explaining comments importance as suggested by Frederik today was also raised at that discussion but nothing was made since then. Pieren ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] A plea for meaning ful changeset comments
On 1 August 2010 03:43, Ed Avis e...@waniasset.com wrote: Another way to look at it is that it's your own time you are saving. If another mapper has a question about your changes and they have to contact you and you need to reply, that uses a lot more time than a quick explanation attached to the change when it was uploaded. I can count using my fingers and toes the number of times I've been emailed about a changeset, and most of them weren't even questioning what or why I did what I did, but simply complaining about the changeset comment, it took far less time than if I'd set hundreds if not thousands of changeset comments accurately reflecting what I was doing, and that's assuming I didn't make any mistakes that may have mislead people about the changes I'd made. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] A plea for meaning ful changeset comments
John Smith deltafoxtrot256 at gmail.com writes: If another mapper has a question about your changes and they have to contact you and you need to reply, that uses a lot more time than a quick explanation attached to the change when it was uploaded. I can count using my fingers and toes the number of times I've been emailed about a changeset, and most of them weren't even questioning what or why I did what I did, but simply complaining about the changeset comment, I guess, in that case, they might have been curious about your changes and went to see more about what you were doing and why - and asked you to put in a comment to help in future. Even if you disagree about the value of comments; even if you never feel the need to review other mappers' changes or offer advice, it might be a good idea to humour these people and add a short note. In future, they might help you by spotting a mistake you made or making useful suggestions. It's good to have these extra people reviewing your work, even if they are an annoyance at first. it took far less time than if I'd set hundreds if not thousands of changeset comments accurately reflecting what I was doing, and that's assuming I didn't make any mistakes that may have mislead people about the changes I'd made. Agreed. I think the comment should say 'why' not 'what', and if the change is derived from something other than ground survey, cite the source used. It shouldn't take more than a few seconds. -- Ed Avis e...@waniasset.com ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] A plea for meaning ful changeset comments
Pieren pieren3 at gmail.com writes: About the 'why', I can already tell you :- if someone displaces 20 nodes, the 'why' is because this person things that his source is more accurate than the previous contribution. The 'why' is a more accurate source. Indeed - and all that's needed is to mention this source in the comment. 'Adjusted road positions based on GPS traces' - if someone adds 100 buildings in an empty area, it's because this person found a source for those buildings. 'Traced buildings from aerial photo' or 'from OS map' or from whatever source you used. - if someone renames a pub or a restaurant, it's because this person thinks that his knowledge is more recent than the previous contribution In that case perhaps no special comment is needed, though myself I'd still add a note saying 'I walked past this pub and the name has changed'. Yes, of course it is obvious that the reason for making a change is I have better information or I believe that the new version is correct. But that's not what is meant by the 'why' of the change; rather, a useful hint about where the data came from, so that somebody else remapping the same area can make an informed decision about whether his or her data, in turn, is better quality than what's on the map. -- Ed Avis e...@waniasset.com ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] A plea for meaning ful changeset comments
On 1 August 2010 04:39, Ed Avis e...@waniasset.com wrote: Agreed. I think the comment should say 'why' not 'what', and if the change is derived from something other than ground survey, cite the source used. It shouldn't take more than a few seconds. I generally always use source=* (and attribution=* tags where applicable). ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] A plea for meaning ful changeset comments
Lennard ldp at xs4all.nl writes: I do something similar cleaning the data using the http://keepright.ipax.at/ data checker, primarily fixing junctions so the map is routable. Ordinarily I'll just write 'fixed junctions' as the comment. 'fixed junctions based on keepright reports' I would put that if the keepright report suggested what changes to make. But it doesn't tell you any particular change, it just flags things, and the change to make is decided by the mapper. (In many cases keepright flags an error but I ignore it, because there isn't strong evidence that the OSM data is wrong - so both whether to make a change and what change to make are decided by human judgement.) But still, you're right it is probably worth mentioning keepright - it is another kind of 'why' - so I'll do that in future. -- Ed Avis e...@waniasset.com ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] A plea for meaning ful changeset comments
Many are very simple, St instead of Street, doesn't sound much but it stops some search and other tools. Multiple imports each with different defaults, some forgot the street name, many didn't import where an existing street was, OK but combine that with up to 200 meters out probably drawn in from a satellite and you end up with lots of holes in the maps and streets that should be joined not joined. Cross overs not linked.Sections of street without a street name. Streets incorrectly linked together and incorrectly named. Leisure=Park not Leisure=park, use of tags that are not part of the feature set on http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Map_Features where a suitable tag is available. There aren't a lot of on the ground mappers in Ottawa and data quality has been an issue. There are religious problems as well, such as should we just replace all the existing roads with CANVEC data? I've seen a couple of roads that aren't in CANVEC so far but the CANVEC data quality is very good. Cheerio John On 31 July 2010 12:46, Tobias Knerr o...@tobias-knerr.de wrote: john whelan wrote: Currently I'm cleaning up in Ottawa, I have over 8,000 errors to clean up left and recently I've probably cleaned at least a couple of thousand errors so far. Things like incorrect street names, where I have a CANVEC source that helps enormously, connecting streets up so you can run routing software. etc. Are you seriously suggesting for each correction I do a write up saying why I or Validator think its wrong and my source for the correction? Usually, corrections can be grouped - for example, by fixing all the incorrectly joined junctions in an area first, then uploading with an appropriate changeset comment. That's a lot of errors, by the way. Have those errors been created by humans or by some import? Everything I modify was manually created by a human being, so it's a reasonable assumption that someone will be interested in my reasons for changing their work. They might even learn something from it and don't repeat the same mistakes in the future, thus I might actually be saving time that I would otherwise have spent on fixing those future errors. The situation could be somewhat different when fixing import errors, which is something I'm not familiar with. Tobias Knerr ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] A plea for meaning ful changeset comments
Ed, I hear your point about commenting on the why not the what. I agree that the why is important. But personally I try to add the what and the where as well: 'Adjusted road positions based on GPS traces' There's your why and what already; I'd probably say adjusted road positions in 16ieme arondissement or something. It's true that this can be derived from the changeset contents/bbox but still I think it is useful (think of changesets arranged in a list view with just the numerical bbox behind it) and it costs me nothing. 'Traced buildings from aerial photo' or 'from OS map' or from whatever source you used. Again, you have the why and what already. My comment would probably read traced South Haystack buildings from aerial photo or so. - if someone renames a pub or a restaurant, it's because this person thinks that his knowledge is more recent than the previous contribution In that case perhaps no special comment is needed, though myself I'd still add a note saying 'I walked past this pub and the name has changed'. Yes, of course such a change may be contained in a larger edit which might be called fixed some names based on survey in West Brumpton. *If* you do a large and unspecific edit, e.g. you hold a mapping party and map lots of new streets, add POIs, fix existing bugs etc., then I think it is perfectly ok to just write lots of new streets fixed existing data from mapping party results in XYZ - nobody requests that you split up the changeset into atomic bits. By the way, the why, what, and where are not the only kinds of information that can be conveyed with a changeset comment. I have often seen things like: first part of mapping party results in X, rest to follow tomorrow, or casual survey of Y, further visits definitely required! - that's also valuable meta-information. Changeset comments are an excellent way to share your work with other members of the community in a number of ways. Bye Frederik -- Frederik Ramm ## eMail frede...@remote.org ## N49°00'09 E008°23'33 ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] A plea for meaning ful changeset comments
My favourite of the day Fair Oaks Crescent / Beechcliffe Street for a street name, its actually two streets that have been linked together, so break them apart and name them correctly. Cheerio John On 31 July 2010 12:46, Tobias Knerr o...@tobias-knerr.de wrote: john whelan wrote: Currently I'm cleaning up in Ottawa, I have over 8,000 errors to clean up left and recently I've probably cleaned at least a couple of thousand errors so far. Things like incorrect street names, where I have a CANVEC source that helps enormously, connecting streets up so you can run routing software. etc. Are you seriously suggesting for each correction I do a write up saying why I or Validator think its wrong and my source for the correction? Usually, corrections can be grouped - for example, by fixing all the incorrectly joined junctions in an area first, then uploading with an appropriate changeset comment. That's a lot of errors, by the way. Have those errors been created by humans or by some import? Everything I modify was manually created by a human being, so it's a reasonable assumption that someone will be interested in my reasons for changing their work. They might even learn something from it and don't repeat the same mistakes in the future, thus I might actually be saving time that I would otherwise have spent on fixing those future errors. The situation could be somewhat different when fixing import errors, which is something I'm not familiar with. Tobias Knerr ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] A plea for meaning ful changeset comments
On Sat, Jul 31, 2010 at 2:39 PM, Ed Avis e...@waniasset.com wrote: Agreed. I think the comment should say 'why' not 'what' What does that mean? What: made a road into a dual carriageway Why: ??? I assume you don't want an explanation of my vision of my role in the universe. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] A plea for meaning ful changeset comments
On Sun, 1 Aug 2010, Ed Avis wrote: Another way to look at it is that it's your own time you are saving. If another mapper has a question about your changes and they have to contact you and you need to reply, that uses a lot more time than a quick explanation attached to the change when it was uploaded. Certainly doing so takes a lot less time than posting messages on this list. Mailing people who have just mapped something which I wish to query doesn't take long. It may take a couple of weeks to get an answer - other mappers who stray into my areas of interest are travelling and may not have internet access regularly. I've not found what I want to know from the changeset comments. I want to know when the mapping happened (I may have newer knowledge) or how they actually got some information I'd not been able to obtain. The mail process improves our teamwork and gives me new hints on information gathering, or allows us to politely approach a new mapper and offer advice. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] A plea for meaning ful changeset comments
On Sun, 1 Aug 2010, Ed Avis wrote: Liz edodd at billiau.net writes: so how do *you* summarise adding POIs and side streets and putting in maxspeed along a hundred km of highway? because i just put in the name of where i have been, that's all. I'd also mention how I found the data - spotted from the car window as I drove past, or painstakingly surveyed on foot? That can help someone else if they need to verify the exact position of some post box to the nearest metre, or whatever. So I would say 'POIs from car window driving through X' or 'mapping trip on foot to X'. (You could instead tag source=survey;survey=foot or something equally Byzantine on every single object, but nobody is pedantic enough to do that. So a short note in plain English on the changeset helps.) So are you all now putting examples on the wiki about changeset comments? To the humble mapper they would have just arrived. Some editing programmes prefill the changeset comment. One (which I have not tried) apparently does not allow any comment. If freeform text is what you want, could you file bug reports on the editors that don't make that obvious? ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] A plea for meaning ful changeset comments
On Sat, Jul 31, 2010 at 10:04 PM, Anthony o...@inbox.org wrote: On Sat, Jul 31, 2010 at 2:39 PM, Ed Avis e...@waniasset.com wrote: Agreed. I think the comment should say 'why' not 'what' What does that mean? What: made a road into a dual carriageway Why: ??? I assume you don't want an explanation of my vision of my role in the universe. Preferably not. Because I noticed it on this aerial photography. Because this source says so. Because I drove down it today. Because some vandal made it single carriageway yesterday. Because I saw it in a dream. If none of these or anything along those lines work, maybe then you could explain your role in the universe. Love that this thread is now over 9000 words on 'why I can't be bothered / haven't got time to write a few words in the comment'... ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
[talk-ph] Fwd: [OSM-talk] A plea for meaning ful changeset comments
A reminder to add useful comments in your changesets. -- Forwarded message -- From: Frederik Ramm frede...@remote.org Date: Fri, Jul 30, 2010 at 7:18 PM Subject: [OSM-talk] A plea for meaning ful changeset comments To: OSM t...@openstreetmap.org Dear all, we've had the changeset feature for quite a while now and I believe it is very helpful in a number of ways. I can select an area and see the edit history for it (soon, hopefully, even ignoring those world-spanning changesets). I can click on a username and see what that user was up to in the last month (or at least what they thought they were up to). It is so much easier to read a short phrase about an edit than having to look at the area and history of affected objects. There are two groups of people however who refuse to put in proper changeset comments, and instead write ..., some mapping, fixed stuff, or even none of your business. One group consists of vandals and morons who never wanted to be part of the community in the first place; who consider any srutiny about their edits an invasion of their right to map crap at best, or want to hide what they're doing at worst. They write ... as a shorthand for kiss my ass community. It is useless to try and talk reason into these people so I won't even try. The other group consists of well-meaning mappers who are valuable members of our community but who perceive the need to enter a changeset comment as a kind of nagging, nannying, and who might be tempted to enter a useless comment as a form of protest against that. I'm sure everyone who has to work with version control systems of any sort knows the feeling - change one line of code and then have to write two lines of commit comment! To them, I say: Yes, you're right, it can be a pain sometimes, but if you practice it for a while, it will be an easy routine. If writing English takes you too long, use your national language, that's no problem. And you don't have to write long sentences, a few words are sufficient. But that little bit of time you spend when committing your changes adds so much value! OpenStreetMap is not about the data, it is about the community, and the community is exactly who benefits from your changeset comment - someone checking edits in an area, maybe even preparing something for the press to demonstrate how many people are working in an area (and how diverse their work is), someone wanting to get a quick idea of what another community member's area of expertise is... all that becomes easy with proper changeset comments. Changeset comments can even be messages to other community members - they see what you're doing and they might start to help out or do the same in their area. Don't be fooled; the small changeset comment that you enter when uploading stuff *will* be read by many people. Done well, changeset comments are tremendously helpful. Please use them! Bye Frederik ___ talk mailing list t...@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk -- cheers, maning -- Freedom is still the most radical idea of all -N.Branden wiki: http://esambale.wikispaces.com/ blog: http://epsg4253.wordpress.com/ -- ___ talk-ph mailing list talk-ph@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-ph
[OSM-talk] A plea for meaning ful changeset comments
Dear all, we've had the changeset feature for quite a while now and I believe it is very helpful in a number of ways. I can select an area and see the edit history for it (soon, hopefully, even ignoring those world-spanning changesets). I can click on a username and see what that user was up to in the last month (or at least what they thought they were up to). It is so much easier to read a short phrase about an edit than having to look at the area and history of affected objects. There are two groups of people however who refuse to put in proper changeset comments, and instead write ..., some mapping, fixed stuff, or even none of your business. One group consists of vandals and morons who never wanted to be part of the community in the first place; who consider any srutiny about their edits an invasion of their right to map crap at best, or want to hide what they're doing at worst. They write ... as a shorthand for kiss my ass community. It is useless to try and talk reason into these people so I won't even try. The other group consists of well-meaning mappers who are valuable members of our community but who perceive the need to enter a changeset comment as a kind of nagging, nannying, and who might be tempted to enter a useless comment as a form of protest against that. I'm sure everyone who has to work with version control systems of any sort knows the feeling - change one line of code and then have to write two lines of commit comment! To them, I say: Yes, you're right, it can be a pain sometimes, but if you practice it for a while, it will be an easy routine. If writing English takes you too long, use your national language, that's no problem. And you don't have to write long sentences, a few words are sufficient. But that little bit of time you spend when committing your changes adds so much value! OpenStreetMap is not about the data, it is about the community, and the community is exactly who benefits from your changeset comment - someone checking edits in an area, maybe even preparing something for the press to demonstrate how many people are working in an area (and how diverse their work is), someone wanting to get a quick idea of what another community member's area of expertise is... all that becomes easy with proper changeset comments. Changeset comments can even be messages to other community members - they see what you're doing and they might start to help out or do the same in their area. Don't be fooled; the small changeset comment that you enter when uploading stuff *will* be read by many people. Done well, changeset comments are tremendously helpful. Please use them! Bye Frederik ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] A plea for meaning ful changeset comments
On Friday, July 30, 2010 04:48:03 pm Frederik Ramm wrote: Don't be fooled; the small changeset comment that you enter when uploading stuff will be read by many people. Done well, changeset comments are tremendously helpful. helpful reminder - my problem is that I put an entry like 'fine tuning south Mumbai', and then for the next changeset, I forget to put anything, so it again goes as 'fine tuning south mumbai' when it is actually concerning a place hundreds of kilometers away. -- Regards Kenneth Gonsalves Senior Associate NRC-FOSS at AU-KBC ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] A plea for meaning ful changeset comments
On 30 July 2010 21:27, Kenneth Gonsalves law...@au-kbc.org wrote: On Friday, July 30, 2010 04:48:03 pm Frederik Ramm wrote: Don't be fooled; the small changeset comment that you enter when uploading stuff will be read by many people. Done well, changeset comments are tremendously helpful. helpful reminder - my problem is that I put an entry like 'fine tuning south Mumbai', and then for the next changeset, I forget to put anything, so it again goes as 'fine tuning south mumbai' when it is actually concerning a place hundreds of kilometers away. +1 I've been caught several times forgetting to change the changeset comment and so it ends up worst than any generic comment since it then is misleading as to what happened. Maybe we just need better tools to summerise changes made, rather than trying to get something meaningful by way of the comment field... ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] A plea for meaning ful changeset comments
On Fri, Jul 30, 2010 at 9:18 PM, Frederik Ramm frede...@remote.org wrote: The other group consists of well-meaning mappers who are valuable members of our community but who perceive the need to enter a changeset comment as a kind of nagging, nannying, and who might be tempted to enter a useless comment as a form of protest against that. I'm sure everyone who has to work with version control systems of any sort knows the feeling - change one line of code and then have to write two lines of commit comment! And then there's the group that consists of Potlatch users in Live mode. Potlatch kind of supports changeset comments, but you have very little control over when the changeset is created and saved, and you can't (afaik) change a changeset comment after the fact. For me, very frequently, the changeset just represents a random bunch of edits I happened to be doing at one time, with not much cohesion. There are different suburbs all in the same changeset as I flitted about. I also question this value you talk about. I don't think I've ever looked at another member's changeset. If the user interfaces made that a more common occurrence, I'd probably put more effort into changeset comments, but for me they're not very visible. (Corollary: when another user tells me specifically that they would find my changesets easier to navigate if I commented them properly, I would re-evaluate. But afaik, no one ever looks at my work, so it seems a bit pointless.) Steve ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] A plea for meaning ful changeset comments
I have to admit that I am bad about not bothering to enter a comment, particularly if all I have been doing is fixing the alignment of streets to better conform to the Yahoo aerial view. I shall try to do better in the future. Also, I sometimes mark POIs with a cell phone app, BigTinCan Mapper, that offers only a preset list of POI types, with the only user-editable attribute being the name, and no provision for entering changeset comments. ---Original Email--- Subject :Re: [OSM-talk] A plea for meaning ful changeset comments From :mailto:deltafoxtrot...@gmail.com Date :Fri Jul 30 06:35:39 America/Chicago 2010 On 30 July 2010 21:27, Kenneth Gonsalves law...@au-kbc.org wrote: On Friday, July 30, 2010 04:48:03 pm Frederik Ramm wrote: Don't be fooled; the small changeset comment that you enter when uploading stuff will be read by many people. Done well, changeset comments are tremendously helpful. helpful reminder - my problem is that I put an entry like 'fine tuning south Mumbai', and then for the next changeset, I forget to put anything, so it again goes as 'fine tuning south mumbai' when it is actually concerning a place hundreds of kilometers away. +1 I've been caught several times forgetting to change the changeset comment and so it ends up worst than any generic comment since it then is misleading as to what happened. Maybe we just need better tools to summerise changes made, rather than trying to get something meaningful by way of the comment field... ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk -- John F. Eldredge -- j...@jfeldredge.com Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly is better than not to think at all. -- Hypatia of Alexandria ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] A plea for meaning ful changeset comments
On Fri, 30 Jul 2010 21:52:47 +1000 Steve Bennett stevag...@gmail.com wrote: I also question this value you talk about. I don't think I've ever looked at another member's changeset. If the user interfaces made that a more common occurrence, I'd probably put more effort into changeset comments, but for me they're not very visible. (Corollary: when another user tells me specifically that they would find my changesets easier to navigate if I commented them properly, I would re-evaluate. But afaik, no one ever looks at my work, so it seems a bit pointless.) I used to think this way, but for the past couple of months I've been mapping to support three separate goals: a research project that involves importing bus stops, inventorying shops and points of interest for an area bicycle map, and preparing for a walk-trip planner like the University of Maryland's. Each focuses on different features in a common part of town. If I reference bus stops in the changeset comment, the student who is doing the programming on the bus stop project can pull up all of my changesets and immediately identify which ones he needs to look at. He's told me how useful this is. If I reference inventorying shops on a street with street name, the students in the bike club can do the same for that. But, I haven't yet adopted the discipline of doing just one activity's worth of mapping in a changeset. When I inventoried the shops on one street, I also mapped the proper location of the bus stops, and edited both in one changeset (actually a series of changesets because I didn't get it all done in one session). And from Steve's comments, I'm not alone in doing things this way. It is just easier for me to record everything I see in the series of photographs I take of, say, a strip mall and its setting, than to do just shops in one changeset, close it, open another, do the bus stops, move to the photos for the next strip mall, and repeat. And, sometimes I enter something and it triggers a memory of something that I observed elsewhere the day before, and I flit to the other location to note it before I forget it again, and then come back to what I was doing. But, I think that labeling at least part of the changeset correctly helps. So thanks, Frederik, for raising this. Ed Edward L. Hillsman, Ph.D. Senior Research Associate Center for Urban Transportation Research University of South Florida 4202 Fowler Ave., CUT100 Tampa, FL 33620-5375 813-974-2977 (tel) 813-974-5168 (fax) hills...@cutr.usf.edu http://www.cutr.usf.edu ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] A plea for meaning ful changeset comments
So what really is a good changeset comment? -- cheers, maning -- Freedom is still the most radical idea of all -N.Branden wiki: http://esambale.wikispaces.com/ blog: http://epsg4253.wordpress.com/ -- ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] A plea for meaning ful changeset comments
On Fri, Jul 30, 2010 at 9:08 AM, maning sambale emmanuel.samb...@gmail.com wrote: So what really is a good changeset comment? I think we recognize bad change set comments more easily than good ones. I'm not proud of the ones I missed here. http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/rw__/edits But mostly I think I do a good job with change set comments. I try to keep my edit sessions short as well, so the comment relates to fewer separate tasks. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] A plea for meaning ful changeset comments
Am 30.07.2010 13:52, schrieb Steve Bennett: (Corollary: when another user tells me specifically that they would find my changesets easier to navigate if I commented them properly, I would re-evaluate. But afaik, no one ever looks at my work, so it seems a bit pointless.) I've subscribed to all changes in my area using OWL [1] and I'm looking through all Changesets that crosses the area I live work in. Unfortunately OWL does not show the Changeset comment in the RSS items, so I'll always have to click onto the web link, but I always read what my co-mappers are writing. Peter [1] http://matt.dev.openstreetmap.org/owl_viewer/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] A plea for meaning ful changeset comments
On 30 July 2010 14:34, Peter Körner osm-li...@mazdermind.de wrote: Am 30.07.2010 13:52, schrieb Steve Bennett: (Corollary: when another user tells me specifically that they would find my changesets easier to navigate if I commented them properly, I would re-evaluate. But afaik, no one ever looks at my work, so it seems a bit pointless.) I've subscribed to all changes in my area using OWL [1] and I'm looking through all Changesets that crosses the area I live work in. Unfortunately OWL does not show the Changeset comment in the RSS items, so I'll always have to click onto the web link, but I always read what my co-mappers are writing. I agree that proper comments can be very good to quickly see what has been going on. I try as hard as possible to separate my tasks in multiple changeset for this reason. But then like Richard Weait, I miss a few :) (I blame JOSM for doing an autocomplete :P ) Emilie Laffray ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] A plea for meaning ful changeset comments
Ed, Hillsman, Edward wrote: I used to think this way, but for the past couple of months I've been mapping to support three separate goals: a research project that involves importing bus stops, inventorying shops and points of interest for an area bicycle map, and preparing for a walk-trip planner like the University of Maryland's. Each focuses on different features in a common part of town. If I reference bus stops in the changeset comment, the student who is doing the programming on the bus stop project can pull up all of my changesets and immediately identify which ones he needs to look at. He's told me how useful this is. If I reference inventorying shops on a street with street name, the students in the bike club can do the same for that. Thanks for that changeset comment success story ;) But, I haven't yet adopted the discipline of doing just one activity's worth of mapping in a changeset. When I inventoried the shops on one street, I also mapped the proper location of the bus stops, and edited both in one changeset (actually a series of changesets because I didn't get it all done in one session). And from Steve's comments, I'm not alone in doing things this way. It is just easier for me to record everything I see in the series of photographs I take of, say, a strip mall and its setting, than to do just shops in one changeset, close it, open another, do the bus stops, move to the photos for the next strip mall, and repeat. Of course. I think it would be going too far to actually expect mappers to close an editing session (often losing some context) and then reopen it just to make another kind of edit. We don't want to reach a point where newbies e-mail SteveC complaining that they got turned away from OSM because the community demanded too much of them ;) Changeset comments don't have to be perfect. If everyone aimed at not writing silly ones, that would be already be a big step forward, and yours seem to be safely in the useful zone. Maybe in the long run, power editors like JOSM will allow you to keep mutliple changesets open at the same time, switching between them by the click of a button, or even allowing you so easily sort and filter edits (all those with bus stations, in changeset 1, all others, in changeset 2). But that's something for the (rather more distant I assume) future. I think it helps if one keeps in mind what Peter said: I always read what my co-mappers are writing. - your changeset comment is a message to other humans who work with you on this, whether you know them or not. Trying to send them a meaningful message, and thus treating them with respect, is what counts. Bye Frederik ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] A plea for meaning ful changeset comments
On 30 July 2010 13:35, John Smith deltafoxtrot...@gmail.com wrote: Maybe we just need better tools to summerise changes made, rather than trying to get something meaningful by way of the comment field... A commit message is not only a summary of what is being changed but also why it's being changed (and more in case of code). Cheers ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] A plea for meaning ful changeset comments
Maybe in the long run, power editors like JOSM will allow you to keep mutliple changesets open at the same time, switching between them by the click of a button, or even allowing you so easily sort and filter edits (all those with bus stations, in changeset 1, all others, in changeset 2). But that's something for the (rather more distant I assume) future. JOSM has been able to keep multiple changesets open since sometime last year. Actually, this feature has me wishing that changesets wouldn't autoclose after only one hour. Coupled with the Upload Selection feature, it can already do everything you describe above. -- Lennard ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] A plea for meaning ful changeset comments
On Fri, Jul 30, 2010 at 8:34 AM, Peter Körner osm-li...@mazdermind.de wrote: Unfortunately OWL does not show the Changeset comment in the RSS items, so I'll always have to click onto the web link, but I always read what my co-mappers are writing. Actually, it is supposed to. There is some bug that causes it to choke often though. I poke zere on IRC about it regularly. And a HUGE +1 to this topic in general. I find all the worldwide edits with no useful comment to be highly annoying. I agree that sometimes it will be a pretty general description if a lot of things were changed but generally if you are doing large XAPI requests to fix things, they will be pretty specific. There should be at least SOME attempt to be descriptive. If for no other reason than to alert me to the types of things that bots are correcting so that I can map them correctly when I add similar features in the future. I like to think my comments are usually pretty awesome myself :) http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/ToeBee/edits And yes, I do have one comment that reads Random additions/improvements around town. for an edit that was truly random. Toby ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] A plea for meaning ful changeset comments
On 30 July 2010 18:07, Lennard l...@xs4all.nl wrote: Maybe in the long run, power editors like JOSM will allow you to keep mutliple changesets open at the same time, switching between them by the click of a button, or even allowing you so easily sort and filter edits (all those with bus stations, in changeset 1, all others, in changeset 2). But that's something for the (rather more distant I assume) future. JOSM has been able to keep multiple changesets open since sometime last year. Actually, this feature has me wishing that changesets wouldn't autoclose after only one hour. Coupled with the Upload Selection feature, it can already do everything you describe above. That is useful of course, but it's still lacking compared to the modern versioning systems where you usually clone (a part of) the database and you can accumulate your changes locally and then push them upstream. What this means is that for example if you're mapping offline for a couple of days, JOSM only lets you upload all the changes wholesale after you're back online, you can not stack the changesets and make a push, or even go back and add something to a change that is already buried under new changes, and then go back to the top of the stack, and push once your commit series is ready and you're happy with it. Cheers ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] A plea for meaning ful changeset comments
Am 30.07.2010 18:51, schrieb Toby Murray: On Fri, Jul 30, 2010 at 8:34 AM, Peter Körnerosm-li...@mazdermind.de wrote: Unfortunately OWL does not show the Changeset comment in the RSS items, so I'll always have to click onto the web link, but I always read what my co-mappers are writing. Actually, it is supposed to. There is some bug that causes it to choke often though. I poke zere on IRC about it regularly. And, while we're at it, a link to the actual changeset would be nice, too. I'll have a look at the source, maybe I'm able to supply a patch. Peter ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] A plea for meaning ful changeset comments
+100! I very much agree with the emphasis on the community aspect of a nice (doesn't have to be great) changeset comment. Code versioning systems support revision comments and good comments help people who maintain the software understand ones contributions. Even Wikipedia highly values edit summaries (and people have opposed adminship of editors because of misleading, uncivil, or useless edit summaries): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Edit_summary On Fri, Jul 30, 2010 at 7:18 PM, Frederik Ramm frede...@remote.org wrote: Dear all, we've had the changeset feature for quite a while now and I believe it is very helpful in a number of ways. I can select an area and see the edit history for it (soon, hopefully, even ignoring those world-spanning changesets). I can click on a username and see what that user was up to in the last month (or at least what they thought they were up to). It is so much easier to read a short phrase about an edit than having to look at the area and history of affected objects. There are two groups of people however who refuse to put in proper changeset comments, and instead write ..., some mapping, fixed stuff, or even none of your business. One group consists of vandals and morons who never wanted to be part of the community in the first place; who consider any srutiny about their edits an invasion of their right to map crap at best, or want to hide what they're doing at worst. They write ... as a shorthand for kiss my ass community. It is useless to try and talk reason into these people so I won't even try. The other group consists of well-meaning mappers who are valuable members of our community but who perceive the need to enter a changeset comment as a kind of nagging, nannying, and who might be tempted to enter a useless comment as a form of protest against that. I'm sure everyone who has to work with version control systems of any sort knows the feeling - change one line of code and then have to write two lines of commit comment! To them, I say: Yes, you're right, it can be a pain sometimes, but if you practice it for a while, it will be an easy routine. If writing English takes you too long, use your national language, that's no problem. And you don't have to write long sentences, a few words are sufficient. But that little bit of time you spend when committing your changes adds so much value! OpenStreetMap is not about the data, it is about the community, and the community is exactly who benefits from your changeset comment - someone checking edits in an area, maybe even preparing something for the press to demonstrate how many people are working in an area (and how diverse their work is), someone wanting to get a quick idea of what another community member's area of expertise is... all that becomes easy with proper changeset comments. Changeset comments can even be messages to other community members - they see what you're doing and they might start to help out or do the same in their area. Don't be fooled; the small changeset comment that you enter when uploading stuff *will* be read by many people. Done well, changeset comments are tremendously helpful. Please use them! Bye Frederik ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk -- http://vaes9.codedgraphic.com ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] A plea for meaning ful changeset comments
On 30/07/2010, at 9:52 PM, Steve Bennett wrote: For me, very frequently, the changeset just represents a random bunch of edits I happened to be doing at one time, with not much cohesion. There are different suburbs all in the same changeset as I flitted about. My editing falls into two categories, casual editing and big tasks. I think I put in reasonable comments for big tasks (my current one is uploading National Parks data). For casual editing, I'm not sure what I could put in that would be useful. Often I start off adding some street numbers I've collected, and then trace those houses from nearmap, and then start tracing a creek, and then start doing something when that ends. When I set the changeset comment, I don't know exactly what I'll be fixing up - I know the location, but you can get that from the changeset anyway without any comment. For any kind of semi-automatic or large scale things, I agree that good changeset comments shouldn't be difficult to write and would be very useful, but I'm not sure about small-scale editing when you go along with things. -- James ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] A plea for meaning ful changeset comments
On Fri, 30 Jul 2010, Frederik Ramm wrote: Dear all, we've had the changeset feature for quite a while now and I believe it is very helpful in a number of ways. I thought I'd have a look at the documentation provided for the documentation called changeset comment The documentation I found was at http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:comment and http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Changesets and these give a completely different slant on the changeset comment. They discuss them being optional and note that anything mandatory annoys some mappers who will retaliate with garbage comments. Thanks to the persons who pointed out changeset comments I know realise that I am quite free to write anything or nothing useful. Yes I can see their potential use, however would the other persons in this thread who are dogmatic about their use read the existing documentation on the documentation. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
