[OSM-dev] Using native social SDK for signing in to OSM on mobile

Frederik Ramm frederik at remote.org
Wed Dec 23 22:18:05 UTC 2015


Hi,

   I have a rather non-technical remark about this recurring "we need to
make sign-up easier" topic.

My question is: Do we want to encourage casual editing?

And my answer is "not 100% sure but perhaps rather not".

There are some benefits to casual editing; if people could just fire off
a quick edit to something without even signing in then surely we could
get more people to do just that - upload a quick OCR'd photo of shop
opening times or whatever. Point, shoot, upload, bam! - OSM improved in
5 seconds. I see that benefit and I would like to have it.

But I also view us OSM contributors as a community. We share something.
We care for this project together. We participate in various
communication channels. We watch our backyard. We chat up new users and
invite them to meetings.

I think it is important for people to make a decision to join this
community. This decision is not just a quick "I agree" screen where you
put your work under a certain license; it also means you should know
that you're signing up for something here; that you take responsibility;
that you have to be contactable, and will be contacted, about your
contributions.

Making it too easy to breeze through the signup process, on a mobile
device, using your stored credentials from elsewhere - how can we expect
anyone who signs up this way to understand what this project is about,
what he's signing up to?

"Making signup easier" is certainly a good goal to have, but signup
includes getting people to understand OSM. A workflow that lets people
sign up in 5 seconds but lands us with users who don't even know what
the consequences of their actions are is not a step forward, it is
detrimental to the project in my opinion.

This is not saying you shouldn't write an easy to use mobile editor, or
you shouldn't attempt to reduce the mobile signup workflow to a few
clicks, but from anyone who ships an app that does quick signups I'd
like to see a concept of how they intend to make sure that users
understand what they are signing up for (legally and socially).

Bye
Frederik

-- 
Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frederik at remote.org  ##  N49°00'09" E008°23'33"



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