[OSM-talk] 3000 registered users but the stats arn't all rosy

[Steve Chilton]

Andy makes a very valid point here, and I am surprised others haven't
commented thus.
There are tremendous strides being taken with OSM, but they are not all
visible. Certainly the public face of the project does not do justice to
these developments. Unfortunately, much of the action is behind the
scenes - by people coding, tinkering, discussing, etc.
OJW, Rob S and I are giving a talk/demo to Herts Linux Users Group on
Wed 13th Sept (info to go on wiki as soon as I have a moment, but
mentioned on talk before) and will be using live site, plus off-line
editors, etc as examples of what can be done. However, as we will be
talking to what I assume will be "techies" who may well have interest in
coding, etc, it would be very useful to be able to point to wiki
development page and say these are things being worked on, these are
things planned, "Can you help in any way?". That is the external
ratioanle for putting that info together.
Internally it would be very useful too. For instance who really knows
where we have got to on the import/adjust coastline data issue? OK the
decision making process on matters like this is another area altogether,
but when developments are in train they should be publically noted.
[Have I missed soemthing in the wiki btw?] Anyone frustrated by the
timeframes and usability of the API should be able to drill down and
find who was working on that, what they were trying to achieve, where
they could help, and when/if a change might be expected.
So, does anyone fancy coordinating the coordinate collaborators?! 
As Andy says, lets make the positives into more positives and really
show what collaborative efforts can produce.

Steve Chilton, Learning Support Fellow
Learning and Technical Support Unit Manager
School of Health and Social Sciences
Middlesex University
phone/fax: 020 8411 5355
email: steve8 at mdx.ac.uk

Chair of the Society of Cartographers:
http://www.soc.org.uk/
2006 SoC Summer School at Keele Uni:
http://www.esci.keele.ac.uk/soc/


-----Original Message-----
From: talk-bounces at openstreetmap.org
[mailto:talk-bounces at openstreetmap.org] On Behalf Of Andy Robinson
Sent: Friday, September 01, 2006 11:01 AM
To: talk at openstreetmap.org
Subject: [OSM-talk] 3000 registered users but the stats arn't all rosy


I've just uploaded a new set of graphical charts to the stats page.

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/index.php/Stats

They show that we surpassed 3000 registered users yesterday and that the
amount of hard core OSM activity is still on the rise. For instance we
are close to reaching 30 million track gps track points, a feat that
should be attained sometime next week. Also when ignoring the Tiger
import it is clear that the appetite for editing the map data (adding
new nodes) continues to rise. These are all good trends.

There are however a couple of other trends which are perhaps a warning
and where we should perhaps gather our focus in the coming months.

The first relates to the overall user base. The rise in users to 3000
belies the fact that the increase over the last 3 months has been linear
when we have increasing trends within the project itself. That suggests
that to widen the user base we need to get out more and promote the
project and I think the biggest turnoff to achieving that at the moment
is the website homepage. 

It would be helpful therefore (especially to head off criticism) if we
can have a platform development status page on the wiki with a more
defined roadmap for the coming 6 months. I know Steve and others are
working on certain aspects but we need some idea of where coding is
being done and what it hopes to achieve. At the moment I'm kind of at a
loss to know what is being done, what it will produce, and what would
then need to be done on top of that to change what we see as the flag
waver for the project, i.e. the home page and the navigation ability to
basic OSM mapping (static or active data).

To further this point I'd very much like to suggest we nominate someone
to be the development officer for OSMF who would at least in the first
instance be able to hold the central information about who is working on
what and where more support is needed. Hopefully some specific tasks
might come out of that to encourage the less ardent coders.

The other trend I noted related to the mailing list statistics. We had a
very heavy month in July with a lot of postings to talk. The postings in
August were almost half those of July and the number of subscribers
dropped for the first time  in the 10 months I've been watching the
numbers (now 243). Of course the summer holiday period may be part of
the reason, it's not clear.

The other point is that the number of subscribers to the dev list has
been static at 50 now for 7 months which is a sure sign we are not
drawing in new coding interest. That needs to change. What we need is
not just ideas to the mailing list but activity to draw in support so
please get out there and encourage and spread the word.

Please keep any responses to this email on a practical and supportive
level. We are all friends here and this is not the time or place to
criticise. The project is already a huge success; we just need to focus
on making it more so.

Cheers

Andy


Andy Robinson
Andy_J_Robinson at blueyonder.co.uk 




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