[OSM-talk] OSM mailing list stats

[Lambertus]

Andy Robinson wrote:
> The mailing list figures reveal an interesting trend. The numbers subscribed
> to the general list (452) is now a lot lot lower than the number of users
> editing data each month, which as of yesterday was 734. The number of users
> editing is still on the steady upward trend. Over 10% of registered users
> were editors of nodes this last month. That's quite a change in takeup.
> There is a clearly discernable increase since Rails (We would need to
> analysis more closely to see if the amount of Potlatch data is significant
> here).
> 
> So what's interesting is that although we are seeing a large number of new
> users editing we are not seeing many new faces each month on the list
> (although an average increase of around 25 per month is something).
> 
> We may need to consider better ways, perhaps via the main www page, blog or
> wiki front page to communicate more info to the rising user base, a rolling
> news ticker might be useful, or a way of showing the blog subject lines,
> that sort of thing. I'm sure others can come up with some good ideas.
> 
One of the media is the forum where I see similar trends as you 
described above: the userbase (about 50) doubled in the last two months 
as did the number of visitors (about 760).

I'm (still) working on a mailing list <-> forum bridge (but mapping has 
priority though). Once/if the bridge is functioning the e.g. 10 latest 
active topic titles (mail and forum) could be displayed on the wiki 
frontpage or somesuch through the use of RSS/Atom 
(http://osm.na1400.info/extern.php?action=new&type=RSS).

Question remains though: are those ppl who are editing interested in 
(technical or generic) project news or do they just want to map? I 
wouldn't be surprised if it is the latter. If so it would indicate the 
project is slowly growing out of it's infancy from the userbase point of 
view...