On 16/12/2008 15:58, Richard Fairhurst wrote: > Magically giving JOSM to newbies doesn't stop them making mistakes. It just > means they make mistakes with JOSM rather than with Potlatch.
That is indeed true. However, what makes Potlatch particularly susceptible to people making mistakes is the live editing. In that respect it is very unforgiving. You've gone some way to addressing this for people who don't realise this is what they are doing, though I suspect some still don't read what's in front of them. Throwing out a tools because it is "too easy" isn't the answer though. Improve it - and JOSM and the rest too, yes. But we could also work on Quality Control. We could be authoritarian and have edits checked before release - but people won't like that. Or we could make sure people are doing sanity checks on the area they know. On the whole people who make gross mistakes either are vandalising or misunderstand what they are doing and are easy to spot. There are many more subtle changes that look reasonable that only a local can check. These are much more pernicious and often arise because someone is convinced they are right and the original surveyor is wrong. (They _are_ sometimes justified, but sometimes haven't actually gone to look for themselves relying on casual memory, or misinterpret signs). No amount of making software better is going to deal with those kinds of changes. David _______________________________________________ talk mailing list [email protected] http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
