<html><body><div style="color:#000; background-color:#fff; font-family:times new roman, new york, times, serif;font-size:12pt"><div><span>So the question is, who is going to come forward and write the bot, and who is going to come forward to write documentation.</span></div><div><span><br></span></div><div><span>Any takers</span></div><div><span><br></span></div><div><span>Cheers</span></div><div><span><br></span></div><div><span>Bob</span></div><div><br></div><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; "><font size="2" face="Arial"><hr size="1"><b><span style="font-weight:bold;">From:</span></b> Richard Fairhurst <richard@systemed.net><br><b><span style="font-weight: bold;">To:</span></b> talk-gb@openstreetmap.org<br><b><span style="font-weight: bold;">Sent:</span></b> Friday, 10 June 2011, 20:09<br><b><span
style="font-weight: bold;">Subject:</span></b> Re: [Talk-GB] OSM Analysis New Data and bot<br></font><br>Ed Avis wrote:<br>> Richard Fairhurst writes:<br>>>But if we were to put as much effort into marketing OSM and<br>>>improving our tools as we do into writing and indeed discussing bots, <br>>>the 40% areas would be fixed.<br>><br>> If that were true, then it would be no contest. Given the choice between<br>> spending some effort doing an import and the same effort to recruit a huge <br>> army of mappers who can cover the whole country, any sane person would <br>> go for the mappers.<br><br>Lemme give you an example.<br><br>There are some really eloquent people on these lists. Granted, some of them<br>are eloquently arguing nonsense, but nonetheless, some really eloquent<br>people who can explain things lucidly, entertainingly, and convincingly.<br><br>So why does our documentation suck so hard?<br><br>Writing
good docs is not easy, but given the right people, it is certainly<br>no more difficult than writing a competent bot. Certainly I know which I'd<br>find easier (which makes it a bit ironic that I do programming for OSM<br>rather than writing, but hey). <br><br>There is approximately one person in the entire world who has made an effort<br>on documentation - stand up and take a bow, Richard Weait - but he can't do<br>it all by himself. And here we are all merrily talking about bots, while<br>every day dozens of people are signing up for OSM, staring at the screen,<br>and thinking "um, what the fuck do I do *now*?".<br><br>So how do we start to convert some of those sign-up-but-never-edit people<br>into real mappers? Get a group together. Have a mailing list (private if<br>needs be) to discuss what you're doing. Find an install of Dokuwiki or<br>Wordpress or whatever turns you on. Write some really good,<br>beginner-friendly docs. Start small: an
English-language guide to<br>contributing basic mapping to OSM. (Bells and whistles and<br>internationalisation can come later.)<br><br>This little step would do a whole lot more for OSM globally than some street<br>names in Dumfries & Galloway ever will. And you can start it today.<br><br>cheers<br>Richard<br><br><br><br>--<br>View this message in context: <a href="http://gis.638310.n2.nabble.com/OSM-Analysis-New-Data-and-bot-tp6455312p6463486.html" target="_blank">http://gis.638310.n2.nabble.com/OSM-Analysis-New-Data-and-bot-tp6455312p6463486.html</a><br>Sent from the Great Britain mailing list archive at Nabble.com.<br><br>_______________________________________________<br>Talk-GB mailing list<br><a ymailto="mailto:Talk-GB@openstreetmap.org" href="mailto:Talk-GB@openstreetmap.org">Talk-GB@openstreetmap.org</a><br><a href="http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-gb"
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