[Talk-us] Growing OSM (was OpenStreetMap US elections: October 12 townhall with candidates)

[Andy Townsend]

On 14/10/2015 16:21, Steve Coast wrote:
> (snipped)
>
> What we’ve tried so far:
>
> * SOTM getting bigger every year
> * We tried paid ambassadors at CloudMade, running mapping parties with some success but the timeframe was very long to see people turn in to editors.
> * We've tried making the web editor nicer multiple times (potlatch, mapzen, iD etc) and that doesn’t lead to meaningful growth in editors.
> * Mapping parties appear to have some traction, but take a long time
> * Getting schools involved appears to work briefly, then everyone goes home or to the next class
> * Competitions to map areas (google also tried this for mapmaker)

 From a UK perspective, what _definitely_ increases the short-term 
signup rate is any sort of national press coverage.  Re social meetups, 
I don't know whether any of other the local groups can report 
differently, but in the East Midlands of England although we get a few 
OSM-curious people coming along I don't think we've seen any new "heavy 
mappers" coming into the project that way; people just stumble across 
the project somehow and sometimes stick around.

The rough analysis I did ages ago (in Italy I think) didn't suggest that 
local "welcome messages" had an effect on retention (over the couple of 
months that I looked at the data).  It didn't look at mapping quality 
though; maybe there was an effect there.

I suspect that "trying to be nice to newbies" has an effect (though I've 
no idea how you'd measure that independently of other variables) and I 
also suspect that "making the web editor nicer" has an effect too, but 
that can't really be measured independently either.

So I'd suggest just "get lots of press where the OpenStreetMap name is 
used" and "be really helpful to the new mappers who show up, no matter 
how many unwritten rules they break with their first edits"*.

Cheers,

Andy

* It's worth mentioning that most "comments to new mappers" _are_ really 
polite and helpful (see http://resultmaps.neis-one.org/osm-discussions ).