[OSM-talk] Nearby Users

[Greg Troxel]

Frederik Ramm <frederik at remote.org> writes:

>    I looked ad my personal "nearby users" list today for the first time
> in a while and found only 2 people with edits in the last year, 16
> people with no edits whatsoever, and the rest between "over one year
> ago" and "over five years ago". I know that OSM is vibrant in my corner
> of the woods but the "nearby users" list seems to disagree.
>
> We could simply not list those people who have zero edits. Or we could
> sort the list differently - but how? Currently it is sorted by distance;
> should it be sorted by how long ago someone did their last edit? Or by
> how prolific someone is? Or a combination of the two? Or a combination
> of proximity+currency+productivity?

I think it needs to be configurable to answer the various questions.
One way is the way it is now, which I generally don't find that useful.
The next view is to filter out people that haven't been active for a
long time, relative to their past activity.

Specific suggestions for the default view:

  - hide users with 0 edits who signed up more than 3 months ago (makes
    new people visible, and there aren't that many in 3 months so it's
    not distracting)
  - hide users with 0 edits in the last 12 months, but keep those with
    25 edits in months 12-23, 50 edits in 24-35, 100 in 36-47, etc., or
    some formula that feels like that

That will hide most people that never were active or are no longer
active, and I think in terms of finding people that are participating it
will be useful.  I'd call this the view "active", and have an "all" view
that does what we see now.

Also, show the signup time for each person.  Someone who signed up 5
years ago and has 0 edits is likely not interested; 4 months ago is
perhaps different. 

Another suggestion is to make the list longer; it seems truncated too
early.

I've sent messages to a few people with very low activity, and not heard
back.  People with some activity (10s of edits or more) I hear back from
much more frequently.  In Mass we've found that most (but not all)
people who are really active (100s of edits) are interested in being
part of the local community.
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