OpenStreetMap
Frustration about iD editor's inability to easily draw rectangular buildings
Posted by Polyglot on 15 December 2017 in English.This tweet inspired me to write a new diary entry.
BHousel does not like the criticism he’s been getting for several years now.
Drawing rectangular buildings using the iD editor is a lot harder than it ought to be.
My opinion is that if you create a tool that is going to be used by thousands of mappers, you owe it to your users to make sure that they can produce quality work with ease. Especially if the effort to do so would outweigh by an enormous ratio the frustration shoddy work creates for HOT’s validators (and (re)mappers using that other mapping tool), who need to put more time into fixing the mess, than they would have actually mapping those buildings themselves in the first place. It’s not like the science of creating a rectangle based on adding 3 points using 3 clicks still needs to be invented.
This is an ongoing problem for many years. So either it gets fixed one day, or frustrated messages will happen to escape, every once in a while. Or they will get muffled and HOT validators will continue to silently give up on trying to fix the deluge of poorly mapped buildings. Or you can simply unsubscribe from HOT’s Twitter feed. Whatever works for you.
A more constructive solution would be to invite other programmers into the project. I can’t imagine there wouldn’t be candidates.
Here’s hoping that something good can come out of this.
Polyglot
Discussion
Comment from Zverik on 15 December 2017 at 14:45
The option to draw a rectangular building is not discoverable in iD. You have to right-click and then somehow know that one of the similar-looking icons corrects the angles.
I’d prefer a prominent button that appears right after you choose a building type: “The buildings seems skewed. [Make angles right]”.
Comment from Polyglot on 15 December 2017 at 14:57
What is really needed is a new button next to point, line and area that says: building. The areas it draws would be rectangular right away, and tagged building=yes.
And this is not a problem that only regards HOT mapping, so unsubscribing from that mailing list won’t help much, if anything. The reason why the problem becomes apparent to HOT mappers is that there is an extra step involved in mapping for HOT projects, performed by validatorsj, a species endangered by extinction.
Comment from -karlos- on 15 December 2017 at 15:05
I don’t use ID so much. And I could not see the details of your problem, so I used ID: There is no function to draw a rectangle. But there is a function to “rectangle a rectangle”. And there is a function to shift or rotate a rectangle.
Did you expect a function “Rectangle”? Next to “Area”? How should it work in detail? Yes, rectangles are done quite often. After drawing a “four-sided figure”, which is nearly a rectangle, ID could “offer” a rectanglificatoin automaticly?
There is a shortcut S to “square”! But it doesn’t work after drawing, even if the rectangle is selected. I had to deselect and select again. That’s an error, isn’t it?
Comment from Komяpa on 15 December 2017 at 15:13
Hi, there are no programmers in OSM.
There are, like, five still alive, and you’re upsetting one of them.
Details: https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/osmf-talk/2017-December/004728.html
There’s even nobody to grab a monetary bounty: osm.org/user/Kom%D1%8Fpa/diary/42853
Comment from Zverik on 15 December 2017 at 15:20
The iD project is very well-maintaned and actively developed.
Comment from Komяpa on 15 December 2017 at 15:24
@Zverik yes, but by one single person mostly: https://github.com/openstreetmap/iD/graphs/contributors?from=2017-01-12&to=2017-12-15&type=c
Comment from maxerickson on 15 December 2017 at 15:25
Take a look at https://github.com/openstreetmap/iD/commits/master
(go through a few pages)
iD is pretty clearly an active project that welcomes contributions.
Short of a complete and competent implementation of a building tool being rejected, it’s ridiculous (and awful) to blame any one person for iD not having it.
Comment from Zverik on 15 December 2017 at 15:31
To be fair, building_tools plugin, which you reference, is still not in JOSM core. Users have to know about it and install it, otherwise they will create the same skewed buildings. The ticket to include it in the core is the most voted, with many links inside that support its inclusion. It is six years old.
Comment from Polyglot on 15 December 2017 at 15:33
Hi Komяpa, Bryan is already used to being upset by me. :-) I left him alone for many months now. There actually are developers, but they are spread thin, as OSM is very broad.
-karlos- I don’t use iD either, but I am, occasionally, presented with the hubris in its wake.
There is indeed a function to square an area, if it’s not too irregular, at least. There is also an extensive tutorial explaining what’s the shortest way to developing RSI or a tennis elbow for people wanting to use it to draw more than a handful buildings. It is indeed annoying that one has to deselect and select again for ‘s’ to work, I’d also call that a bug (but not out loud, don’t want to upset Bryan TOO much either now).
Fixing that issue is not the solution to this problem though. A whole new map mode dedicated to drawing rectangular buildings is. I fail to understand why it has to take many years to actually develop this feature. I’m not much of a programmer myself though, so maybe I’m severely underestimating the required mathematics and analysis involved…
Comment from SomeoneElse on 15 December 2017 at 17:04
@Polyglot Without wishing to channel Dale Carnegie here, what are you actually hoping to achieve by this diary entry?
The list post that provoked the tweet was very broad and attacked one small part of a large problem (lack of training and lack of retention of remote mappers at organised events - see the thread from just before the offending list post on the HOT list).
Whether or not it’s an actual problem or not (do NGOs really think “that building isn’t square on OSM so I won’t include it when drawing up my humanitarian relief / malaria extinction / whatever plans”?) you seem to be do all you can to prevent progress in your desired direction.
Imagine if http://resultmaps.neis-one.org/osm-discussion-comments?uid=15188 , instead of being full of relatively polite comments contained comments saying that people hated your work, or that you shouldn’t X but instead do Y, and that somehow not doing Y was somehow a moral failing on your part and that you “owe it to” people to do Y. Would you start doing Y instead of X immediately? I’m guessing that like the majority of humans on the planet you probably wouldn’t.
If you actually want to change the way iD works, start at the “Participate!” section of the readme at https://github.com/openstreetmap/iD . The prerequisites aren’t major (though the challenges of contributing to any large JS codebase will likely take a bit of learning).
If that’s not a something you’re able to do then the wider issue (HOT new mapper retention and training) surely is. How can that process be improved so that people know that squaring buildings is even a thing, and instead of being only 30% likely to return to mapping are much more likely to do so? Instead of saying “there is a problem, X should do Y” ask “how can I help?”.
Best Regards, Andy
Full disclaimer - I’m a DWG member but this is just my personal view. With a DWG hat on I’ve handled complaints both ways about HOT mapping (“X’s mapping in $place wasn’t very good” and “Y deleted all the stuff I added there”).
Comment from Polyglot on 15 December 2017 at 17:22
Hi Andy,
Full disclosure, the HOT mailing list is one of the few that I’m absent from. I also think the iD editor is pretty good for beginner level mapping. Unfortunately one major thing it’s lacking is an easy tool for adding rectangular buildings that don’t end up as meaningless area=yes closedways.
My personal preference is to get people started on JOSM right away, but having tried that, I know it’s not easy either and mapper retention is definitely not higher.
So I was not reacting to the whole preceding discussion on that particular mailing list and I’m definitely not trying to attack Bryan personally in any way. I think he did an amazing job developing iD further.
Comment from SomeoneElse on 15 December 2017 at 17:33
@Polyglot Re the “JOSM vs iD” thing, I remember reading something recently (probably another diary entry?) where people did a cost-benefit analysis of iD vs JOSM (answer - it depends how long they’re in the room for and a few other variables - if you have people for an hour you don’t want to waste most of that struggling to install and learn JOSM). With a DWG hat and a finger in the air I reckon I see just as high a proportion of “new user issues” with JOSM as with iD; they’re just different sorts of issues (dragging a whole town 100km to the east instead of failing to square a building). JOSM’s great, and it’s the best tool for many jobs in OSM, but it’s not the best tool for every job (in fact I don’t use it in what might be called my “normal” mapping because it doesn’t do some of the things that I rely on that other editors do).
Comment from Alan Trick on 15 December 2017 at 19:48
It seems really weird that anyone would find this difficult. You
The only time it doesn’t work is if you are trying to square something where the angles are too far off. I think the reason you have to do 2 before 3 is that typing “s” at phase 2 will filter the tag groups. Also, 2 is significantly more important than 3 (what good is a tagless rectangle?) so I think the ordering is fine.