[OSM-talk] Wiki contributions (was: new logo)

SteveC steve at asklater.com
Sun May 16 22:48:21 BST 2010


On May 16, 2010, at 2:42 PM, Frederik Ramm wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> Kai Krueger wrote:
>> There, we really could use some great designers, marketing and PR folk,
>> journalists or who ever else feels up to the task of presenting OSM to the
>> newbie in an appealing and accurate way to make sure they understand how the
>> project works and how they can contribute. 
>> 
>> And the best thing is, it is a wiki! So you don't need to be friends with
>> TomH to get it deployed, or argue with Matt about the logo, or RichardF
>> about what the best language is to write Potlatch in or... You can just do
>> it and you are much more likely to get the gratitude of all if you do.
> 
> I think there's a problem - the gratitude. I think that people, at least 
> if they have a reasonably sized ego, are more likely to embark on 
> something like "complete front page re-design" (let's make it a project, 
> let's have a project manager, let's do it big, let's give it a name, and 
> later everone says that YOU were the visionary who pulled it off) than a 
> meagre editing of Wiki pages.

Not really - it's that small changes are not going to get very far. You're not going to make the buttons shiny and increase usability, or move a paragraph to the left not right or something.

OSM's design is stuck at or near a local optimum

	http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_optimum

Only a large scale change is going to fix that, bar a few things that you've already shot down like having a feedback tab. Something so obvious and easy to do that I've been asked multiple times why on Earth we haven't done it.

Yours &c.

Steve





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