gravitystorm left a comment (openstreetmap/openstreetmap-website#6575)
I'm happy for some sort of changes to be made, but I don't agree with the
current proposal.
> In fairness, the availability of raw OSM data is one of the main things that
> differentiates us from other crowdsourced sites.
This is a key thing for me. We originally had three primary buttons, for
putting data in (Edit), seeing what's there (History) and getting the data out
(Export). Don't get me wrong, History and Export are far from perfect, but this
data accessibility can be seen as the entire purpose of OpenStreetMap, so
hiding it away would be a big step.
> * Add a “Data” section to the bottom of the Share panel that exports the raw
> data or shows a warning if the viewport is too big.
I don't agree that these are the same thing, or similar enough to combine. The
only commonality is having a bounding box selector.
With the share panel, you get a rendered map. Either as a link to a map, a
shortlink to a map, some html that shows a map, a link that goes to the map of
your choice, or an actual map image. Getting the raw data isn't getting a map -
you get something different, for a different audience, with a different
license. The only similarity is that some of the Export options have a bounding
box.
> If the user arrives there from a page that doesn’t have a map, it defaults to
> exporting whatever they last viewed on the map, probably something unrelated
> to their current task.
But that's an argument for removing the Edit link from the main menu too. After
all, if I'm on the communities page, and then click Edit, it "defaults to
[editing] whatever they last viewed on the map, probably something unrelated to
their current task."
> * Add links to Overpass, planet dumps, Geofabrik, etc. to the “Open Data”
> section of the About page.
That splits the Export use-case up and spreads it around unrelated places. I
think someone who wants to access the raw data would be better served by having
all the "small, larger, largest exports" information in the same place, so they
can decide what to do.
> A symptom of this split-screen effect is that both panels let you get into
> the same custom bbox editing mode on the map simultaneously,
This feels like a bug, rather than a fundamental problem. Perhaps we should be
making our panels exclusive, or only having panels on one side, or having the
two bboxes in sync, or something else.
---
I feel like the intended audience for the sharing and the export are two
distinct groups of people, trying to achieve two different tasks. I don't think
that it's a good solution to split the export task between different parts of
the website. And I'm cautious about moving the raison d'être of OSM out of the
main navigation, even if it's something that's infrequently used - I think it
has a narrative purpose beyond its immediate usefulness.
However, we shouldn't be constrained by what we have already.
For example, there's no need for the export page to look the same as the home
page - it's on a different URL, for a start. It could look like an article
(c.f. the welcome page, which looks like an article yet takes URL parameters)
but with a form at the bottom for choosing your area (c.f. home locations). Or
it could keep a similar layout to currently, but we make the map turn into
wireframe mode to indicate that you are in the "raw data" mode (c.f. xray mode
on kosmtik, maputnik etc). Or something else.
For the sharing panel, there's a lot of changes that could happen here too. Is
"Link / Shortlink / HTML" actually two different tasks? Why is there a geo url
there, since it's the only thing there that doesn't necessarily get you an
OpenStreetMap-based map? Is it helpful (or not) that overlays are included in
some options (links), but not others (images)? And that there's no overlay
control or even indications that they will be included here?
Overall I think the best approach is to consider all the tasks that the various
users are trying to complete - what are they trying to achieve, not what bit of
the UI they are using - and then make the user experience of those tasks as
best as possible.
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