[OSM-newbies] [research survey] Your perspective in editing OpenStreetMap

[SomeoneElse]

(apologies for a reply fairly off-topic for the newbies list - I'm just 
replying to where it was posted)

On 29/04/2015 11:19, Giovanni Quattrone wrote:
>
> My name is Giovanni and I'm a researcher at University College London, 
> UK.
> I'm specialised in crowdsourcing research and in the past have done 
> many studies of OpenStreetMap.

OK - presumably you're aware of the discussion of previous research such 
as here(1) and here(2)?  I'm assuming you're familiar with the latter 
one because it's by someone you cite in one of your linked papers...  
There have been some fairly poorly-based questionnaires in the past, and 
while I'm sure that yours isn't like that at all, perhaps some of the 
questions could do with a bit more attention to detail?  For example, 
the "which editor" question ignores mobile editors completely and also 
ignores Potlatch 2, which new signups on IE currently get by default.

>
> I'm currently conducting a new OpenStreetMap study, and I'm asking for 
> your help. I'm trying to assess the extent to which information on OSM 
> is ever maintained or updated. Such knowledge helps understand how to 
> best support the OSM community with appropriate tools.

Presumably the survey part is to obtain an insight into mappers' 
motiviations and you'll actually get details on what gets maintained and 
what doesn't by looking at the lifecycle of data in OSM - perhaps grab 
some data from an old post-licence-change planet file and look at what's 
changed in selected areas there - what got updated, what got deleted and 
redrawn, and what changeset comments in which editors were used by 
mappers along the way?

...

>
> Your answers to the questionnaire will be stored securely and they 
> will be used only for research purposes.
> Confidentiality and anonymity will be maintained and it will not be 
> possible to identify you in any way.

Obviously an answer isn't anonymous if users link to a changeset of 
theirs (as I did) - presumably you're suggesting that people don't do that!

>
> Let me know if, after having completed the survey, you would like to 
> receive the outcomes of my research, I will be more than happy to 
> share them with you once ready.

I'd have thought that that'd be worth sharing in something like an OSM 
diary entry or by a mail to the main "talk" list perhaps?  I'd certainly 
be interested in the results - I suspect that the results will be very 
different in some OSM communities to others and would be interested in 
how you think things vary globally (I have a gut feel, based on some 
data, for some areas in GB but haven't tried to come up with any hard 
statistics).

Cheers,

Andy



(1) 
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk/2015-March/thread.html#72232

(2) 
https://povesham.wordpress.com/2011/07/16/observing-from-afar-or-joining-the-action-osm-and-giscience-research/ 


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