Plug-In for: You just edited OpenStreetMap!

[brycenesbitt]

This proposal is to make 'You just edited OpenStreetMap!' modular.

Facebook, Twitter and G+ would be plugins a user could select or deselect at will. A similar model is how Microsoft makes browser choices, and Google makes search provider plugins.

---

Greg Troxel <gdt@ir.bbn.com>
Aug 18 (1 day ago) to me, Frederik, talk 
Bryce Nesbitt <bryce2@obviously.com> writes:

> Switching focus to iD: there would be list of "post edit notification"
> plugins one could drag into place.
> Facebook, Twitter and G+ would be among those, along with whatever open
> source version you happen to track down or create.
> Anyone not wanting to be reminded of Mark Zuckerberg's smiling face could
> simply fail to install that plugin.

I think this is a great solution to the tension between OSM not
endorsing proprietary data sites and enabling people to do what they
want to do.  The key point is that it's opt-in for people that want to
use those sites.  By that I mean opt-in to have the buttons provided -
just saying "you can not click the button" isn't enough, as we'd
effectively be advertising those sites.

"share by email" certainly belongs on the list of ways to share.   It's
been around longer, and doesn't have intrinsic data licensing problems.

[tmcw]

Pull requests accepted, this is very low priority in the face of other pressing tasks for iD.

[brycenesbitt]

Perhaps the promotion of Facebook & Twitter is better left dormant within iD, until a patch to make it modular appears? While I don't have a problem with linking to commercial services, this is osm.org picking winners and loosers (where's G+ for example)?

[tmcw]

Please stay neutral. This is not promotion, and there's no 'secret opinion' driving the feature. If you don't want to share something on Facebook or Twitter, don't click the button.

And no, there should not be a list of 120 social media networks from which new servers drag and drop to customize this screen, and we shouldn't remove this option (which is used quite a bit) for some mistaken sense of neutrality.

[lxbarth]

I'm in favor of keeping Twitter + Facebook integration around. This is about sharing your love for OpenStreetMap on two extremely popular social media platforms.

[seav]

+1 on Twitter and Facebook integration. I don't personally use these features, but I think any chance of promoting OSM organically on these 2 very popular networks is mostly good. Making these things opt-in will just result in people not using it because very few people bother with changing settings unless they encounter a problem.

[apmon]

Imho, this should to be made at least opt-outable. I.e. have a "don't show me this again" option on the dialog. As with any editor you want to save early, save often, so you need to click away that dialog quite frequently. The change in iD 1.1 to move it to the sidebar is already a big improvement though compared to how it was originally as it is much less intrusive! So thanks for that. But no, it is not really "used quite a bit". According to your link there is a grand total of 8 people who used this in the last month. Compared to >20.000 editors a month.

[pnorman]

According to your link there is a grand total of 8 people who used this in the last month. Compared to >20.000 editors a month

His link doesn't capture all iD edit messages. This one should

I get about 30 unique users in a month.

[simonpoole]

Just a note on the side: the one button that -is- missing in this context is "Blog on OpenStreetMap". It doesn't make a lot of sense to have a strategy of making the OSM website more "social" and not actually pointing people to the existing functionality (and OSMers might be more interested in a random edit than twitter or FB users).

[iandees]

@simonpoole OSM doesn't really have a blogging platform. We have diaries. If we want them to be blog posts then we should call them that and make them a more obvious part of the community before asking people to post there. (The groups thing is getting us closer to that maybe).

Also, I'm +1 on keeping Twitter and Facebook posting. It helps OSM by spreading the word and by helping new mappers feel a tiny bit less isolated in their edit.

[brycenesbitt]

To be clear: as the proposer of this improvement I am +1 on keeping both Facebook and Twitter, even as default options. But then add G+. Then make them all uncheckable.

Really the social element we want longer term relates to OSM itself. Will my edit be lonely, unappreciated? Will I hear from another mapper only if I made a mistake or made someone mad? After my first edit, will someone care? Is there a mentor available in my area? Where can I go for help? Is there a chatterbox I can ask a question on?

[tmcw]

Looks like we can construct a G+ link with

https://plus.google.com/share?url={url}

Which seems reasonable. There's also the +1 button, but that actually does have creepy privacy implications :speak_no_evil:

[vincentdephily]

The OSM diaries are just OK as a bloging platform. Not pretty, but have all the basics. The big advantage they have for the current issue's purpose is that they are unarguably vendor-neutral, so that adding them in the default list should be uncontroversial.

I propose having only the OSM blogs in the default setting, and displaying a fairly prominent "other social medias" button beside it, perhaps with small-scale icons of the 2-3 most popular ones. Clicking or hovering that button will let you (un)tick all the available social media plugins. That way we keep the feature discoverable, and avoid the political discussion.

As for the slight-ly off-topic idea box: how about pinterest/flickr sharing ? The coolest thing would be to automatically create a before/after animated gif, although generating that would be complicated.

[PeterPablo]

The german IT magazine c't created social media buttons with improved privacy behaviour. The user first has to enable the buttons and the images are not loaded from the social media websites [1].

[1] http://www.heise.de/extras/socialshareprivacy/ (MIT license)

[vincentdephily]

That's another reason for not having FB/etc buttons activated by default (unless iD doesn't use the standard js code ?). But if those social media buttons are opt-in, I dont think we need a "2 clicks to protect your privacy" setup.

[tyrasd]

unless iD doesn't use the standard js code ?

AFAICT iD doesn't use the "standard js code": the facebook/twitter/etc. logos are hosted locally and the links are just plain links. No js or other content is included directly from external sources. So, I guess there is no privacy issue with the current implementation?

ps: is it really allowed to provide a "share on facebook" link without using the official facebook logo and API (hosted on fbs own servers)? Why isn't everyone else just doing that?

[tmcw]

Re - the privacy concern over buttons: iD does not use any Javascript from Facebook/Twitter/whoever. The 'share buttons' are just links, with images hosted on our side along with the rest of iD's resources. It's just as permitted as any other link from website to website - people tend to use 'official share links' for their prebaked styles and little counter numbers, but we decided against that for the privacy reasons you discuss now.

As for the slight-ly off-topic idea box: how about pinterest/flickr sharing ? The coolest thing would be to automatically create a before/after animated gif, although generating that would be complicated.

Viable for a later release, and in a separate discussion - we're very technically far from being able to generate images of the map, much less animated gifs.

[jfirebaugh]

For 1.1.5, the social media sharing options have been reduced in prominence relative to the OSM-specific option. As discussed above, we're not planning on making this plugin based at this point since you can ignore the buttons if you are not interested. In fact you don't even have to interact with the sidebar success message at all; it disappears as soon as you start interacting with the map.