On Mon, Oct 13, 2008 at 11:57:08PM +0100, Richard Fairhurst wrote: > > > While I'm here I might as well say something about the lack of a Save > button. > > I'm not violently against the concept: I think "unconvinced" is > perhaps the best way to describe my opinion. > > There are two big issues with it. One is that for edit sessions > lasting more than a couple of seconds, there has to be conflict > management. If you're a JOSM user, then you are de facto a clued-up, > computer-savvy type, so conflict management doesn't worry you. But if > you are a newbie - maybe even a schoolkid - trying just to edit your > local area, then being presented with "The following conflicts were > detected. Accept/Resolve/Revert?" will just utterly confuse you, and > you'll click the wrong thing and cause more errors. Or maybe just > close Potlatch and never return to OSM.
Well. I'm a bit unconvinced that we need to attract everyone, even these people :) And as for schoolkids - I think even schoolkids can learn JOSM. Heck, I even have example to prove it: A 9 year old nephew that's recently started doing his own tagging in JOSM :) Of course, his father looks over the things he's done from time to time... Personally, *I* don't dare using Potlach for the lack of a "save" button. Yes, I'll do it for the quick change (moving a single node, changing a property) that I see while looking at the map, but not for more things. I just find it too dangerous. > The second is that, in JOSM, your "canvas" is usually quite small - > i.e. you have downloaded a particular area and are working on that > exclusively. In Potlatch, because you can pan around an infinite map, > your canvas may be much bigger. You may have traced a 600km cycle > route (I know, I've done that! :) ) in one session. Yet you can't > zoom out to see the whole thing, because requesting a 600km bounding > box would break both the server and the browser. So you would be > clicking "Save" to upload changes that you can't actually see or > review, and that - in my opinion - defeats the point of it. Point taken. > What worries me most, because I've seen it before, is that people are > seizing on the first thing they don't like, and thinking that's the > reason why there are bad edits. People used to criticise Potlatch for > causing bad edits because there was no 'revert' feature, so I added a > revert feature (the H key). Then they criticised Potlatch for causing > bad edits because there was no 'test' mode, so I added a test mode. > Then they criticised Potlatch because there was no 'splash screen' > explaining things, so I added a splash screen. Now they criticise > Potlatch because there's no compulsory 'save' button. Well. Yes. We critize. Based on what we see people actually manage to do despite these safety measures...Granted, I thought the test mode would help *much* more. And it helped, but not enough. Revert-button is great, but you'll have to know that you need to revert and not just quit the browser... > the bad edits. The bad edits are principally because these guys are > newbies. Newbies make mistakes. (Experienced users don't make > mistakes with Potlatch just because it has no Save button.) *Ehem* - I don't trust myself not to :) Enough to not daring to use it for more advanced work. > And in a week's time, someone would be saying "Potlatch must be > banned unless it has a pony" (or something) and there'd be a lot of > postings saying "yes, the reason there are all these bad edits is > BECAUSE POTLATCH HAS NO PONY". And so, a few weeks later, Potlatch > would get a pony, which would make it even harder to use (ponies are > quite stubborn, you know) and require newbies to learn even more, and > then someone would decide on another "reason" for the bad edits... > and so on. > You are right, this is an endless task. But it's a necessary task. Bad edits are annoying as hell to the people who worked hard with them in the first time. Tools should be as foolproof as possible. And I would not too afraid to scare away someone by adding a submit button and conflict management, done wisely it need not be too annoying. But I'm no flash programmer :) And no, I don't want to ban potlach. But it needs to do more to stop the accidental bad edits :) Other than these, I have some suggestions for minor improvements that might help against some of this: What about... 1) Not allowing to merge things with different properties (unless one of them was non-tagged). 2) Not allowing to drag non-nodes so easily? Could be annoying, granted, but it's actually very seldom you need to? 3) Make it harder to delete things? Not allowing to delete something you didn't create (or owned at the start of the session) ? Potlach is obviously popular, and I recognize that we get lots of useful contribution through it too. But I do understand the rage of people who experience bad edits through it. -- - Vegard Engen, member of the first RFC1149 implementation team. _______________________________________________ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
