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

[Lars Aronsson]

Andy Robinson wrote:

> They show that we surpassed 3000 registered users yesterday and 

Thanks for providing statistics.  I like statistics.

However, "registered users" is a bubble of air.  It doesn't cost 
them anything to register and the registration gives us nothing.  
Perhaps they only registered to see if they could spam us.  We 
should instead count the contributions (uploads, edits, etc.) and 
the number of active contributors.

> the fact that the increase over the last 3 months has been linear

It is today September 1, and "the last 3 months" are June, July, 
and August.  In Scandinavia that is summer and since we have a 
great variation between winter and summer at 55-70 degrees north, 
most people are not indoors at their computers during the summer. 
These three months are not comparable to the rest of the year.  
On the other hand, it is not realistic to compare August 2006 with 
August 2005 for OpenStreetMap.

If I'm worried about anything, except for SQL performance, it's 
our limited geographic reach.  We're doing great in some 
countries, but nothing at all in others.  Perhaps we should divide 
statistics by geographic areas, just like Wikipedia compares the 
number of articles in different languages.  I guess we could use 
UTM's 6x8 degree zones for this.

I share your concerns for development, but I'm against the kind of 
central planning and appointing of roles that you propose.  I 
think it's more important to keep doors open to creative people 
who want to contribute.  When official roles are appointed, users 
tend to shy away from tasks that are appointed to others.


-- 
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se