I found some discussions within OSM, that it would make sense to offer an OSM editor especially for beginners. To make it easy enough, they should not confuse the beginner with complicated stuff like relations and thus not show and support them. But does that make sense?
The user, who does not know about relations, will not have the chance to see, that some nodes of the street have got an important function. Such a node could be a member of a straight way i.e. a street: o.....o..o >From the view of the user of an editor without relation-support the node in the middle has no function. So he can move or delete it without problem. But this point could be the a beginning point of a route relation or member of a relation. As far as I can see at the moment, an editor, that does not show relations, is dangerous for OSM-data. Ich want to state reasons below: It is really hard, to setup in particular a long route relation. You need excellent knowledges of all places in detail. Because this is not possible i.e for an e-road with about 5000 km length, people set up projects in the wiki in order to establish this relation within month' and years as teamwork. The same applies i.e. to the public transport net, which is collected in many towns nearly complete, the relations of motorways, national- and other referenced roads, the boundaries (of towns and suburbs) or by relation splitted lanes of multilane roads with left-turn, right-turn-function etc etc. One of the most important advantages of the cycle- and hiking-map are the routes, which are long in many cases as well. With destroyed routes these maps lose much of their sense of exist. And all these routes can be destroyed within seconds by "harmless editings" and shoot down this long lasting work within seconds. For example it is really hard, i.e. to insert a short OSM-way. at the correct position of the relation, if you do not have excellent knowledge 1) of the object and 2) of every place in detail. Try it and you know, what I mean. That means, you have to wait for a person that has both and finds this dispersed way. And that could last very long. If the one, who established the route possibly in a rurely area, does not come back, the chances are good lasting years. If one founds this mistake in his home-area, he has no chance to heal it, if he has no clue i.e. from this bycycle-route or the public-transport. Thus an editor, that does not show relations, is dangerous for the OSM-data. Is it possible to establish an editor, that is easy enough for beginners without being dangerous for OSM? I think, yes. But excluding the relations is not the solution. However really helpful for beginners would be, if an editor could make the relations graphically editable or make their use as easy as tags. Pros and Contras are welcome. _______________________________________________ talk mailing list [email protected] http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
