<html><body><div style="color:#000; background-color:#fff; font-family:times new roman, new york, times, serif;font-size:12pt"><div><span>> </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; ">Could you set out what those problems are, and what has been tried to date?</span></div><div><span style="font-size: 12pt; "><br></span></div><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 16px; font-family: 'times new roman', 'new york', times, serif; background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; "><span style="font-size: 12pt; ">I'll start with one, which is retention of new users. While registrations just recently climbed above 700K, active users are roughly 18K/month. Active users have maybe doubled in the past 3 years, while registered users has increased nearly fivefold. We've known about this problem for years, and should have taken steps to increase retention, while we've seen a significant decrease in retention rate.</span></div><div style="color: rgb(0, 0,
0); font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'times new roman', 'new york', times, serif; background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; "><span style="font-size: 12pt; "><br></span></div><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 16px; font-family: 'times new roman', 'new york', times, serif; background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; "><span style="font-size: 12pt; ">We've tried redesign competitions, design discussion lists, user stories, blessings by the Foundation for initiatives by individuals, hack weekends. There's been UX research, eye tracking, and recent data research (</span><a href="http://www.mdpi.com/2220-9964/1/2/146" style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 12pt; ">http://www.mdpi.com/2220-9964/1/2/146</a>). There are at least a dozen appropriate wiki pages listing all the problems, possible solutions. There have definitely been improvements here and there, but nothing has fundamentally changed. But in some ways, it's simple.
New users need to be better welcomed and oriented to OpenStreetMap. And users whose participation has dropped, or never took off at all, need to be reminded of what's going on in OSM.</div><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 16px; font-family: 'times new roman', 'new york', times, serif; background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; "><br></div><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 16px; font-family: 'times new roman', 'new york', times, serif; background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; ">My conclusion is that this point is so important, and so difficult to organize ad-hoc, there must be an intervention, even if a small one. Someone must have the responsibility, within the context and goals set by the OSM community and the OSMF, to take this forward and set the pace. The license change was important enough to temporarily hire someone to lead the charge, and that was a success ... it actually led to more contributions to the
effort, not less. This kind of intervention should become one of the tools in the OSMF toolbox, and one of the first things would be a focus on redesign and other developments for user retention. It's at least worth a try, everything else but has been tried.</div><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 16px; font-family: 'times new roman', 'new york', times, serif; background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; "><br></div><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 16px; font-family: 'times new roman', 'new york', times, serif; background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; ">-Mikel</div><div> </div><div>* Mikel Maron * +14152835207 @mikel s:mikelmaron<br><blockquote style="border-left: 2px solid rgb(16, 16, 255); margin-left: 5px; margin-top: 5px; padding-left: 5px;"> <div style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'times new roman', 'new york', times, serif; "> <div style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'times new roman', 'new york',
times, serif; "> <div dir="ltr"> <font size="2" face="Arial"> <hr size="1"> <b><span style="font-weight:bold;">From:</span></b> Tom Chance <tom@acrewoods.net><br> <b><span style="font-weight: bold;">To:</span></b> Mikel Maron <mikel_maron@yahoo.com> <br><b><span style="font-weight: bold;">Cc:</span></b> Richard Weait <richard@weait.com>; "osmf-talk@openstreetmap.org" <osmf-talk@openstreetmap.org> <br> <b><span style="font-weight: bold;">Sent:</span></b> Thursday, August 23, 2012 3:26 AM<br> <b><span style="font-weight: bold;">Subject:</span></b> Re: [Osmf-talk] Question to board members<br> </font> </div> <br>
<div id="yiv927558067"><div class="yiv927558067gmail_quote">On 22 August 2012 17:39, Mikel Maron <span dir="ltr"><<a rel="nofollow" ymailto="mailto:mikel_maron@yahoo.com" target="_blank" href="mailto:mikel_maron@yahoo.com">mikel_maron@yahoo.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="yiv927558067gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">
Poorly. We're still in the status quo that OSMF has been in the past four years. We're stuck on mostly the same problems, no reliable way to resolve them. Things need to change, constructively, with leadership that has a practical approach.</blockquote>
</div><br>Could you set out what those problems are, and what has been tried to date?<div><br></div><div>Regards,</div><div>Tom<br clear="all"><div><br></div>-- <br>http://tom.acrewoods.net http://twitter.com/tom_chance<br>
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