[OSM-talk] Nice problem to have

Tom MacWright tom at macwright.org
Fri Mar 16 14:39:07 GMT 2012


Making 60 changesets, spending a lot of time editing OpenStreetMap, and
going from being a public critic of the maps (versus Google Maps, of
course) to a public advocate is a big deal, even if it's just one person.

A 52% active user percentage isn't terribly low: it's similar to services
like twitter.

What's the point of being so dismissive of new users, and pessimistic on
whether they'll continue contributing? Why not actually try to encourage
people to contribute and make it easier for them, rather than scoffing at
their edits of 'just their own neighborhoods': that's where everyone
starts, after all.

Cheer up, we need an attitude readjustment.

On Fri, Mar 16, 2012 at 10:25 AM, Toby Murray <toby.murray at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Fri, Mar 16, 2012 at 2:57 AM, Peter Wendorff
> <wendorff at uni-paderborn.de> wrote:
> > Am 16.03.2012 08:31, schrieb Kai Krueger:
> >
> >> Kai Krueger wrote
> >>>
> >>> This imho shows that the publicity of Apple and Foursquare using OSM
> >>> directly resulted in new mappers for OSM. Although it isn't the
> complete
> >>> record, that was around the 13th of September 2009 (anyone know if
> there
> >>> was a special occasion arount that time?), it is the second highest
> >>> number
> >>> yet. Furthermore, with the news so fresh, perhaps we will still beat
> the
> >>> record.
> >>>
> >> Well, to answer my own question if we can beat the record of most new
> >> mappers in a week, it is a resounding yes. This week (beginning 8th of
> >> March) saw nearly 3300 new mappers, clearly beating the old record!
> >>
> >> Richard Fairhurst pointed out that the old record was set in the week
> >> Monopoly City Streets launched (a large scale internet game using
> >> OpenStreetMap data), so again due to a popular user of OpenStreetMap.
> >>
> >> So the more large sites use OSM, the faster the mapping community grows
> >> and
> >> therefore it is imho import for OSM and its community to care about its
> >> data
> >> consumers as it benefits from them even if they don't "give back".
> >>
> >> Kai
> >>
> > On the other hand it might be worth to look on the contributions of these
> > additional users.
> > How much do they contribute? Do they do more than adding their home or
> their
> > own shop?
>
> How is this different than any other new user?
>
> We have 120,000 accounts (52% of accounts with any edits) with nothing
> but 1 or 2 changesets and 180,000 (78%) with fewer than 10 changesets.
>
> And those numbers are from before this week. So I say new users are
> new users are new users, no matter where they come from. Most will
> make minimal changes. Some will do their town/neighborhood and a very
> few will become ongoing active contributers.
>
> Toby
>
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