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

[Marc Gemis]

After 11 editions of "Mapper of the Month" in Belgium and number 12 coming,
we see that almost all people started mapping because they are coming for
from Open Source/Data communities or because the other map solutions are
lacking for their needs.

They need a map for hiking, cycling, etc. and the commercial providers do
not give them that.
The map from the commercial providers is not updated fast enough.
There are features (POIs, amenities) that are not available on the maps of
commercial providers, examples: AEDs, bread vending machines,
historical/listed buildings.

Perhaps the maps of the commercial providers fulfil the needs of the US
users better in those areas ? If not, why not contacting the communities
for which those commercial map are not sufficient ? Isn't that more
efficient than PR-message to the "whole" world ?

Do we really understand why OSM is popular in e.g. Germany and the UK ? Are
those reasons applicable in the USA as well, or why not ?

regards

m

On Wed, Oct 14, 2015 at 7:16 PM, Andy Townsend <ajt1047 at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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 ).
>
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