[Talk-us] Community Involvement

[SteveC]

There are at least two English OSM books out soon that will go a long way to fixing things.


On Jul 22, 2010, at 4:04 PM, Kate Chapman wrote:

> From our trips to Haiti we have documents on data collection, editing
> to use of OSM.   They are focused on the Humanitarian tagging scheme
> though.
> 
> Here is the JOSM training manual:
> https://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0Ab5-nI93RBqoZGZxcHcycXRfMzFnaDQzejJmaw&hl=en
> The QGIS/Mapnik one:
> https://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0AUeMslP3EFo2ZHJkYnhiNF83ZHpjNXQ2Zno&hl=en
> 
> 
> -Kate
> 
> 
> 
> On Thu, Jul 22, 2010 at 8:29 AM, Hillsman, Edward <hillsman at cutr.usf.edu> wrote:
>> I also agree that this would be an excellent idea (I just introduced a class of about 25 students to OSM last night, and I really would like something clean and organized to point future classes to). If someone can put together an outline of such a Beginner's Guide, I'm willing to work on a section of it, and help reconcile it with other sections as they get written. Richard, given your experience and obvious thought on the matter, could you maybe sketch a high-level outline to get us started?
>> 
>> Ed
>> 
>> Edward L. Hillsman, Ph.D.
>> Senior Research Associate
>> Center for Urban Transportation Research
>> University of South Florida
>> 4202 Fowler Ave., CUT100
>> Tampa, FL  33620-5375
>> 813-974-2977 (tel)
>> 813-974-5168 (fax)
>> hillsman at cutr.usf.edu
>> http://www.cutr.usf.edu
>> 
>> 
>> 
>>> Date: Wed, 21 Jul 2010 10:07:32 -0700 (PDT)
>>> From: Richard Fairhurst <richard at systemed.net>
>>> To: talk-us at openstreetmap.org
>>> Subject: Re: [Talk-us] Community Involvement
>>> Message-ID: <1279732052442-5321954.post at n2.nabble.com>
>>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Apologies for butting in on your mailing list - thought this one was
>>> sufficiently non-US specific it deserved an answer.
>>> 
>>> Toby Murray wrote:
>>>> Yes, navigation is a pain. The "map features" page is a pretty
>>>> good index of things to map but it often links to proposal or stub
>>>> pages (like the doctors page) that don't give a lot of information
>>>> about "how to map this feature" but rather offer discussions about
>>>> the tag or some OSM jargon that is not really helpful to
>>>> newcomers. The problem is that as one gains more experience
>>>> within OSM those pages DO become somewhat helpful so there
>>>> is little incentive for experienced mappers to change them to
>>>> make it better for new mappers.
>>> 
>>> We desperately need a real OSM Beginners' Guide (rather than the apology
>>> that currently passes for one on the wiki), written by people who care
>>> about
>>> documentation, focusing on the basics, and liberally illustrated with pics
>>> and videos.
>>> 
>>> And I hate to say it, but it shouldn't be open to general public editing -
>>> otherwise you get the situation at the moment where people come along and
>>> add their personal hobby horses every other day, and it degenerates into an
>>> unreadable, sprawling, unfocused mess.
>>> 
>>> It's not just about tag documentation (to a certain extent, better editor
>>> presets are making that less important), but about a general introduction
>>> to
>>> OSM. A DokuWiki install on dev.osm.org, with a small team writing the core
>>> docs, would be a good way to do it. I'd love to have a go (after all, my
>>> day
>>> job is as a writer and editor), but what with Potlatch and all don't have
>>> the time to head up such an initiative. But it would be the single most
>>> useful thing anyone could do for OSM right now.
>>> 
>>> I did suggest to Mr Weait of this parish that he might like to be involved,
>>> as he has a clear track record in writing nice how-tos on his blog. Maybe
>>> we
>>> could get a team together?
>>> 
>>> cheers
>>> Richard
>>> --
>> 
>> 
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Steve

stevecoast.com