[OSM-dev] OSM Wishlist

[Tom MacWright]

I'd love to get back to the topic of what's next.

At least my at-the-moment thought for why dev@ has been more efficient than
the mailing list is something pretty simple: when people post on here with
some bit of knowledge - like saying that something is already implemented,
or that there are potential performance problems, it's easy to know who
said it, and to ask for further information. This has been vital so far,
since this is a serious learning process as far as prior art. If we sign
every post on the Wiki (wiki-discussion style with ~~~), that might
constitute some improvement, but there's still no easy way of messaging as
well as writing there.

On Mon, Oct 15, 2012 at 9:37 AM, Matt Amos <zerebubuth at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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.
>
>
>
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>
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