[OSM-talk] Why OpenStreetMap is not Wikipedia

[Richard Fairhurst]

Lars Aronsson wrote:

> Frederik Ramm wrote about OSM vs. Wikipedia:
>
>> Wikipedia does not collect
>> raw data, it collects/creates an end product.
>
> This description of Wikipedia is wrong.

It's not, because...

> It would be better for Wikipedia if more readers went to other  
> mirror websites

...is the difference. The cyclemap isn't a mirror. OSM-on-Garmin isn't  
a mirror. OpenRouteService isn't a mirror. They are "creative and  
unexpected uses of the data" - heck, even t at h could be considered not  
a mirror. Whereas all those pagerank exercises that rehost Wikipedia  
to get some Google Adsense income are just that - mirrors. They add  
nothing to the original content.

So when you say

> Just like OSM, Wikipedia
> is about compiling free contents.  How this is presented can be
> determined by the user, who downloads the database dump and
> converts it to something useful: on the web, on CDROM or in print.

it kind of ignores the fact that a good 20% of OSM's userbase is  
involved in alternative presentations of the data, whereas barely 2%  
of Wikipedia page views come through anything other than the default  
Mediawiki view at somethingorother.wikipedia.org. [1]

cheers
Richard

[1] spurious statistics entirely made up for purpose of proving argument