[OSM-talk] Survey about Incentives to contribute to OSM

[Serge Wroclawski]

On Wed, Mar 14, 2012 at 8:57 AM, Dominik Wilmsen <wilmsend at gmail.com> wrote:
> We would like to invite you to participate in a survey on motivations
> and obstacles to contribute
> geographic information to
> OpenStreetMap. OpenStreetMap is a collaborative project to create a
> free editable map of the world.
>
> This survey consists of up to eighteen questions and will take
> approximately five to (less than) ten minutes to complete.
>
> Participation in this survey is voluntary and anonymous.

Dominik,

There's an excellent discussion going on in another thread about
"guidelines for engagement" of the community. Obviously some of these
guidelines can't be followed retroactively, but some of the questions
certainly are relevant and I think would be of value to answer for the
community. The primary questions I have are  1. Will your paper be
published in an Open Access Journal, or if not in a journal, then made
available under a Free license? 2. Will the raw data be published
under the terms of a Free license?

In short:  What benefit do we OSM folks have in participating in your study?

This may appear on its surface to be an odd question, especially to
someone in academia, but our community is predicated on the premise of
communal sharing. Even if one believes in collective self interest,
the cornerstone of that is participation. You have come into our
community making a request and thereby inadvertently breaking social
mores of this group, which can certainly get people upset.

So if you wouldn't mind, please let us know if/how the results of this
study will be made useful to the OSM community.

Thank you,

- Serge