OpenStreetMap
So I've put a bit of effort in recently to trying to put in all the residential areas around a city. I did it, and only part of it seemed to get uploaded, which wicked me off as I'm generally fairly observant for things such as failures.
Still, the missing bits I did again. They appeared nicely up on the Osmarender layer. Until today. A large number of them have gone. Data and all.
Screw this, I can't be arsed putting time and effort into a system where there is no method of commenting on changes, and rollback versions. If work I put in is simply going to get deleted without comment, then why should I put my own time into this?
Discussion
Comment from lyx on 26 January 2009 at 19:24
I expect there is some way for rolling back changes, it's just not exposed to the public interface. That would make it even more easy for malicious individuals to destroy other peoples work, at least if there is no corresponding "roll forward".
Comment from Dashers on 26 January 2009 at 19:27
It's tricky, as anybody could maliciously go in and delete a whole load of work. A version history would be good though, even if you can't roll back yourself on bulk. Just details of who made the change. At least then you can message them.
As it happens, I think I need my eyes checked, it all seems to be back. I guess my cache was funny or something, doesn't explain the lack of data though.
Comment from burto on 26 January 2009 at 20:20
I use JOSM to edit locally and then upload. I keep local copies and use a
version control program to save each major version so if it gets trashed on
the server, I still have my local copy. You don't have to be a computer wiz
to do that (but it helps!)
Comment from Dashers on 26 January 2009 at 21:11
That's an excellent idea. I generally stash my GPS traces, but never really thought about storing individual (large) edits. I may start doing that. Thanks for the tip burto.
Comment from HannesHH on 26 January 2009 at 21:22
You can get someone "important" to rollback changes if you ask on the mailing lists (or IRC).
This summer there will be major changes in the background (API upgrade), from what I remember there will also be a much better version control then.
Comment from Minh Nguyen on 26 January 2009 at 22:05
In Potlatch, you can select a node or ID and then click on its ID (to the left of all the key/value pairs). That brings up a history box, where you can revert pretty easily. Unfortunately, there’s no way to bring it up for completely deleted features.
Comment from Minh Nguyen on 26 January 2009 at 22:06
Typo: In Potlatch, you can select a node or way and then click on its ID…
Comment from RichardB on 26 January 2009 at 22:51
Um, doesn't Potlatch have an undelete function? It certainly used to. If you press something like "U" then it highlighted in red any way that had been deleted.
Comment from RichardB on 26 January 2009 at 23:04
Oh, and surely you don't need to store large edits locally - if someone delets loads of data then it could be restored from a recent Planet.osm file.
Comment from Minh Nguyen on 26 January 2009 at 23:36
Thanks, Richard. Didn’t know about that one.
Comment from burto on 27 January 2009 at 11:35
I don't store "loads" of data locally. My current local area OSM file is about
12MB. The version control software compresses the data so well that keeping the
history is no problem. I am using git which like most "modern" version control
systems allows you to put any directory tree under version control without having to set up a repository. It makes keeping local history trivial.
Comment from robx on 27 January 2009 at 11:53
Regarding "important" people rolling back, I think it's mostly a matter of having the technical ability to do the roll-back. Rolling back then is just uploading an old state of data, and can be done by anyone.
The only part which might be helped by "importance" is doing large uploads locally, which will go faster thanks to lower latency.
Comment from Igor Shubovych on 27 January 2009 at 21:11
The first rule from the Hitch-hiker's Guide to Mapping is "Don't panic" ;)
Everything can be restored. The receipts are above.