[Talk-us] Why we really don't get new users

[Ian Dees]

Such a thing already mostly exists in the preset system. iD has a fairly
extensive and growing set of presets that I encourage you to try (it
follows the example you give).

JOSM also has a preset system, but it's not nearly as obvious or as
complete (at least for the mapping I do). You access it by hitting F3 on
your keyboard when mapping.


On Mon, Mar 17, 2014 at 1:17 PM, <osm at charles.derkarl.org> wrote:

>
> I'm going to just point out the elephant in the room here. I don't think
> any
> normal user cares about the license at all. I think the actual reason its
> hard
> to get new mappers, especially those that are not nerdy and obsessive like
> myself is that *the ontology sucks*. There, I said it, so you don't have
> to.
>
> It's actually a few things related to how the ontology sucks:
>
> 1. The tagging of things bears little resemblance to things in the real
> world:
>         a. A lot of common things just don't have standard tags: examples:
> tax
> preparers like H&R Block, investment brokers like Charles Schwab, medical
> marijuana despensers here in California, recreational MJ shops in
> Colorado. I
> could go on.
>         b. the whole shop/amenity debate
>         c. common things that have really stupid tags, like barber shops
>
> 2. To be a useful mapper, one needs to memorize these arbitrary tags. It
> wouldn't be so hard if it weren't arbitrary (a salon is a shop? and it's
> called a hairdresser‽). But even if it weren't arbitrary, it'd still be
> hard
> to remember because things have synonyms, and no shop is called a chemist
> in
> the US.
>
> Corrolary: A bagel shop is a bagel shop, no muggle cares that a bagel shop
> is
> fast_food amenity that sells the bagel cuisine.
>
> 3. I went to a shop recently that sells espresso drinks, and gelato, but
> markets itself as a chocolate maker. (Specifically: Snake & Butterfly,
> Campbell,
> CA). There is absolutely no sane way to tag this in OSM today.
>
> 4. The wiki is a terrible platform for documenting the ontology because
> it's
> not machine readable and it's just a slow way to get information.
>
> I don't just mean to moan, though. What I'd like to do is propose a
> machine-
> readable ontology that we could provide to JOSM, Vespucci, etc, that would
> allow newbies to edit the map. I imagine a dictionary and associated tags.
> A
> user could type in "bagel" and all the reasonable properties show up, along
> with a description of what they're entering:
>
>         (A shop that sells primarily bagels, baked goods and breakfast
> foods)
>         (not what you're looking for? try <bakery> or <diner>)
>         name: [ textbox ]
>         opening hours: (a *UI* to enter times of week)
>         vegetarian ( ) friendly ( ) unfriendly ( ) exclusively
>         house number: [ textbox]
>         etc
>
> And by filling these properties in, the software would automatically
> convert it
> to the OSM ontology. All the client software would need to do is be able to
> parse our ontology file to provide all of this. And provide a sane UI, at
> last,
> for entering opening_hours.
>
> Charles
>
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