[OSM-dev] OSM Wishlist

[Matt Amos]

On Mon, 2012-10-15 at 18:13 +0200, Paweł Paprota wrote:
> > "top ten tasks" is  "These are the Top Ten Tasks that the OSM System 
> > Administrators"
> > What about the community ? This only is a todo list by the admins, for
> > the 
> > admins coded by the admins. So far so good, but that's not a wishlist,
> > or, at 
> > least, not a wishlist of the community.

the page says: "These are the Top Ten Tasks that the OSM System
Administrators would really like your development help on." so i think
it's unfair to say it's a list by the admins, for the admins. the
important part of the sentence is "... would really like your
development help on."

we (EWG) formulated this list as a curated selection of tasks that we
thought were generally important so that people who were looking for
something to do would have some idea of what "the most important"[1]
items were, and where their efforts would be most appreciated.

> Disclaimer: I have just started working on OSM a few weeks ago so I may
> be wrong with my impression about how things work.
> 
> Generally I would say that OSM works like a typical open source project
> - people who do the actual programming work choose what they want to
> work on. That's OK since this characteristic is the main attraction to
> open source for programmers around the world - they can work on what
> they like, instead of working on what their boss or a customer order
> them to work on.

exactly - there are no restrictions on what you should work on. the data
is open, the software is open, and you can work on whatever is
interesting to you.

and if, surrounded by this huge number of different things to work on,
you want to work on something that some people who are knowledgeable
about OSM think is important enough to have short-listed; that's the Top
Ten Tasks[1].

> I think every open source project, including the big ones has some
> challenges with "user voice being heard" or at least that's the
> impression. If you propose to change it by creating a community-driven
> (instead of "admin"-driven as you put it) wishlist, by any means - do
> it. The operative word being "do".

one problem (which probably started this thread) is that a wishlist is
potentially infinite. and, even treating it as an ideas-gathering forum,
the value becomes diluted with the quantity of ideas presented. the
hardest part of making the process useful is curating the list of wishes
and doing the work of turning it into a list of achievable and practical
items. and, as you rightly point out, the operative word is "do".

cheers,

matt

[1] this is not to say that other things aren't important. when the Top
Ten Tasks were written, our crystal ball was out of order so we sadly
couldn't predict the future. things change, and ten is much too small a
number to get everything that's important onto the list, so the TTTs are
a just a suggestion - they're not gospel.