[OSM-talk] Welcome box on the new map page

[Paul Norman]

> From: Lester Caine [mailto:lester at lsces.co.uk]
> Sent: Saturday, November 30, 2013 1:51 PM
> To: talk at openstreetmap.org
> Subject: Re: [OSM-talk] Welcome box on the new map page
> 
> Which is why I simply ask that the old layout is made available again as
that 
> only requires access to pages that already exist. 

There would be time costs in supporting the code for what are essentially 
duplicates of other pages. You have to test every change against both sets 
of pages, and then there is the distinct code that appears in one but not 
the other.

> What is currently being offered is probably acceptable to users who are 
> there with a view to contributing, and then requiring registration makes 
> sense, but for the vast majority of visitors brought here by USERS of 
> the data it's just not right. 

In EWG I brought up the opinion that a UI change should be evaluated on a) 
how well it converts visitors to mappers b) how well it retains 
visitors. Of course these are hard to measure, and it's not like the old 
site was rigerously evaluated against these criteria. 

The new site seems to be much better at directing visitors into becoming 
mappers. I have also shown it to inexperienced and new mappers and they 
found it an improvement. 

> I know that there is a lot of support for NOT providing services

I'd say there's a wide desire for offering services like OWL and routing 
on OSM.org. Of course, these take development hours, time, and money, so 
a wide desire doesn't translate into actually adding the services. 

> but until a suitable replacement can be created for the many thousands of
us 
> using embeded maps, maintaining usable operation is important. The 
> current changes are not compatible with using the embed function so THAT 
> should have beendepricated first and time provided for us to make 
> changes to existing usage! 

I looked at the embed HTML generated, and I don't see what doesn't work. 
All the links are valid, and the page that you land (the front page) 
seems more likely to covert the visitor to a mapper, because it now 
gives some text to explain where they've ended up.