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

[Richard Weait]

On Mon, Mar 17, 2014 at 2:17 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.

I think that you are combining two separate issues.  Perhaps there is
no causation from sucky ontology to  "hard to get new mappers".

On the matter of getting new mappers.  Perhaps we'll just won't be
satisfied until everybody on the planet is also an OpenStreetMap
contributor.  That would be awesome.  I've written about mapper
motivation and outreach before.  I'll leave that one alone for now.

You aren't the first to suggest that "the ontology sucks".  There have
been previous similar declarations.  I recall a presentation at State
of the Map 2010 in Girona, Spain.  Have a look at the slides and video
by David Earl and see if things have changed at all.

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/SotM_2010_session:_Tag_Central:_a_Schema_for_OSM