[OSM-talk] OpenStreetMap Future Look

[Hans Schmidt]

Am 07.01.2013 08:22, schrieb Jo:
> Maybe the home page should not have a map on it (it's only a sample of 
> what is in the database anyway, which will always be lacking some 
> feature). Instead it could have links to openlinkmap.org 
> <http://openlinkmap.org/> (which is what you seem to want), 
> hikebikemap.de <http://hikebikemap.de/>, 
> http://demo.3liz.com/osmtransport/ and many more fine examples of 
> other ways to represent the available data.

The problem is, that the ordinary user is confused with that. He/she 
does not know what to choose, meaning he will leave right away and go 
for Google or Bing Maps. Of course, it is possible to make OSM purely 
for OSM mappers and more tech affectionate people, but I wonder if this 
is the right attitude. Just because someone is not that interested into 
something like that, he still wants to be able to use the map. If you 
think of it, everybody has some weak points in his knowledge: food, 
clothing, technology, languages; and for everything, there are services 
to make it easy for someone.
Therefore, in my opinion, it is necessary to develop the main OSM map: 
This is where the people look, and not somewhere else. If they have too 
much choice, they will not use it at all.
Of course, there can and should be other projects. But I think the main 
OSM map should be developed and incorporate much more features, 
especially being more interactive: Being able to click on items (e.g. 
click on a shop, and its further details with name, telephone number 
etc. will pop up), selecting bus lanes which will then be highlighted on 
the map, looking for all supermarkets in a city etc. The features which 
most of the users want should be there; only more specialized stuff 
needs an own map.

Wikipedia has become so widely used because it is extremely simple: just 
go on wikipedia.org, enter your search term and done. This is also 
necessary for OSM, I think: If you only heard the name openstreetmap, 
you look for openstreetmap in google, and then you want all the 
information on one page.

Of course, this may need full-time development, but I think many people 
would be willing to donate money for that purpose. I certainly would.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk/attachments/20130107/5a6a2cb5/attachment.html>