[Osmf-talk] [OSM-talk] "The Future of Free and Open-Source Maps" Slashdot.org , Saturday February 17, 2018

[Dan S]

Hi,

Interesting article and interesting discussion.

emacsen alleges osm is "declining" and "stalled" but provides no
evidence for this. The stats don't show any decline:
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Stats#Active_contributors_per_month
and I meet so many new mappers every time I go to a Missing Maps that
I don't know why he's using this red-flag language.

Putting those words aside, I guess his message is "OSM needs some big
initiatives such as API changes, and a less minimalist OSMF would do
that". That's maybe a fair point.

Some specific things that I _like_ in his suggestions:
* Paid premium map tile usage service, together with a shift towards
being happy when people use the default tileserver
* API evolution (my #1 hopes would be: explicitly allow multiple
values per key; changes in a "diffable" format like Overpass's
augmented diffs which could enable git-like forking and merging of
edits)
* Improved moderation/review - however, I agree that it's good to stay
open rather than over-moderated, and I do like & use the "changeset
comments" feature - I think it's the beginnings of good community
review interactions. (There's also the "request review" thing.) I
don't know why emacsen is so negative about those beginnings.
* Improved search (geocoding) on the main site - I know it's a really
big ask, though.

Out of all of those things, the paid premium map tiles seems like it'd
be simple to do...

BTW John, you said:

2018-02-17 13:53 GMT+00:00 john whelan <jwhelan0112 at gmail.com>:
> HOT has a validation process but if you look at their projects its rarely
> used and when it is a new mapper has been permitted to validate.

No - the validation process is used HEAVILY in HOT. There's no
screening of who may validate, but almost everyone is too scared to
validate and in practice it's almost never a problem. Even if a newbie
validates, it's still a second pair of eyes.

All the best,
Dan