Talk:UK 2019 Q4 Project: Fixmes and Notes
Ideas for Triaging OSM Notes
I think it would be interesting to see if an effort to triage OMS notes could be useful, and make working with OSM notes more productive. A tool could potentially highlight notes that haven't had any replies yet as being in need of triaging. Possible outcomes would be dealing with and resolving the note (where there is enough info in the note or elsewhere to do so), somehow marking it as needing a ground survey or local knowledge to fix, or marking it as needing checking again at some specified future date. Unhelpful notes could be closed, and more information could be asked of the OP if necessary.
In the absence of a built-in system for flagging/tagging notes, some simple hash-tags could be used, that then tools could be encouraged to make use of. e.g. something like #GroundSurveyNeeded and #CheckAfter(yyyy-mm-dd). Notes marked as needing a ground survey could be hidden from an interface to help those doing remote triaging, and highlighted in tools for mappers working on the ground. (e.g. My "Survey Me" tool at https://osm.mathmos.net/survey/ already shows notes with the hashtag #surveyme, but I'm not wedded to that particular tag.) Notes flagged as needing a check after a certain date could be hidden until that particular date.
Something like this might make it easier to find and check up on old notes, and highlight ones to the right people at the right time. Of course it relies on people to use the computer readable tags consistently and for some tool authors to be interested. But perhaps this Quarterly project might provide a suitable critical mass to give it a go.