[OSM-talk] Improving community within the OSM site

[Martyn Welch]

On Tuesday 23 May 2006 09:09, Erik Johansson wrote:
> A "contact the users that edited this area" and "Messages for this
> area" box on the left side when you edit would be great.
>

Simply more links to the Comunity Portals in more prominent places would 
probably go a long way towards achieving this. Most of the local pages have a 
list of interested parties.

> To create the community we have to expose ourselves more, and not
> protect our privacy. As Wikipedia shows all info on edits (time and
> who) so why shouldn't we. The biggest privacy concern is the GPX
> tracks, not where you edit.
>

The obvious difference being that with wikipedia they can't work out /exactly/ 
where you have been in the real world...

> You can download all my GPX tracks, and you will know this of me:
> 1. where I buy my tea (great shop)
> 2. where I live
> 3. where I buy my thai food (wonderful food)
> 4. where I work
> 5. where I study
> 6. when I'm not doing what I should do.
>
> But that's because I choose not to edit my GPX files, and I don't
> really care about privacy.
>
> Am I alone thinking like this?

I doubt you are. I don't edit mine either. Infact I add nice comments to tell 
others exactly where the traces run to and from and via what mode of 
transport I used :-)

Just for the record: I work as an RA at Lancaster Uni, live in Bowerham and 
shop once a week in Sainsburys. :-)

Even so - I am quite happy with the level of privacy the current system 
affords. I wasn't bothered so I chose to loose a certain amount of my 
provicy, others are likely different. I wanted to contribute more - so I 
found ways to, by adding the town I live in to the wiki and joined the 
mailing list...

Martyn
-- 

Martyn Welch (welchm at comp.lancs.ac.uk)

PGP Key : http://ubicomp.lancs.ac.uk/~martyn/pgpkey/