Rate limiting for lines with far-too-many-nodes/points

Help and support
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I love maps. I love open projects. I love contributing. I love the idea that the effort of someone can compound into something greater than the sum of its parts.

Yet, as a internet veteran i grew disillusioned with the red tape in these projects over time. In my youth I was among the top 1000 contributors to Wikipedia. I have since stopped my contributions there completely, financially and otherwise. I have always been interested in the OpenStreetMap however there seemed to be a much higher learning curve. Now that I retired from the corporate world (tired of the red tape there too), I have more time in my hands and decided to finally learn and contribute to this project.

I figured I could trace the tracks and pathways visible by satellite in the depths of the Amazon Jungle to get it started. It turns out these lines go forever. They connect airfields, mining sites, villages, tribes… And after only 16 recorded edits (and granted, tracing some 3-4 reaaally long roads) and 3 hours working on it, I decided to save it, only to be faced with “Errors occurred while trying to save

Upload has been blocked due to rate limiting. Please try again later.“ despite checking the box “i would like someone to review my edits” (it is after all, my first contribution) and despite going through the tutorial (which should be recorded somewhere).

Upon researching further, I completely understand this was put in place as a way to curb vandalism (which can definitely be resolved in other ways without redtape, but i digress) however this is definitely discouraging for anybody trying to contribute in good faith. It makes one feel not welcomed, as if one must be an insider of a club in order to join the club. It goes against the idea of open collaborative projects and mirrors government bureaucracy in many ways.

The good news is that it looks like I can ‘download’ the changes.osc (which is a great thing if it works) as I would just be disappointed to see all of these hours of work going to waste. Obviously that as a new editor I have absolutely no voice or power to change anything, and, if this is the way the powers that be think it is best, I recognize when i’m not welcomed in the club and i’m old enough to not feel hurt about it. I’d just wish you the best, hoping you eventually reach the best solution soon. I left the corporate world that paid me so I most certainly wouldn’t bother leaving a free online project where I just started.

If I am somehow allowed to upload my contribution later, great! If not, I hope that in the very least this serves as feedback that would contribute for further improvements down the road. Wishing you all the very best in supplying a great source of mapping for the world! Thank you for all of the work so far.

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How big was the changes.osc that you were trying to load? I’ve just uploaded https://www.openstreetmap.org/changeset/179082080 as a “2nd changeset” (22 ways, 135 nodes). If I was editing with iD I’d typically save before then, but wanted to try and reproduce the issue that you were seeing (I wasn’t able to; I guess you made more changes).

Perhaps consider your first session as a “practice” and have another go, instead this time saving more often?

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the total for the file is 132kb. It’s also worth noting that I registered the account today, so my “limits” are likely the bare minimum (which, honestly, the new user should be warned ahead of time through a pop-up message when they are approaching [or have passed] their saving limit).

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Actually, I’d instead suggest that new users should be encourage to “save early, save often, and ask for reviews and act on those reviews”, to avoid even getting into the situation that you found yourself in.

I think that the rate limits as implemented currently are about right. The Data Working Group (I’m a member) still sees problematic edits fly under the radar of the new user limits, but much, much fewer than previously. What we also see is attempted poor-quality imports (and some just poor quality mapping) being prevented because new users were forced to take more time over their learning process. My test edit above (which I thought was quite large) was 47k; if you weren’t warned to save before 132kb that needs suggesting to the iD developers.

You haven’t managed to save anything yet, so I would suggest (as mentioned above) starting again and trying to save much more often.

1 Like
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The club has over 1,000,000 members! You’re welcome.

As you’ve the .osc, nothing is lost.

As new contributor, it’s better to start with small edits. You worked during hours. It’s better to tell you early if you do something wrong than that you worked a lot and then get “bad” feedback.

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One way to resolve this without redoing the work is to load your edits in to an editor that supports both loading .osc files and selective uploads (JOSM or Vespucci, and maybe othersi), and then simply upload the new and changed elements in small batches with some breaks in between.

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I agree wholeheartedly, however, a new user is not supposed to guess this by default. This type of information should be part of the tutorial and/or a warning message that pops up while the user is editing. Something along the lines of “To prevent losing work, save early, save often - as a new user you may be limited on the length of your first edits”.

Sounds like common sense now but I wish I was warned about this ahead of time. It is what it is. Lesson learned, no hard feelings.

I will edit in other parts of the map instead and once I improve my learning curve I’ll get back to the .osc file and editors. Thanks!

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I have no specific ideas right now (how to change tutorial, maybe block adding more edits and demand saving)

I created encourage users, especially new users to save early and save often ¡ Issue #11940 ¡ openstreetmap/iD ¡ GitHub for now

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