[OSM-talk] Some thoughts against remote mapping

[Andrew Wiseman]

>
> What I've been mulling over is the "home location" data on the
> profile. Right now it's close to useless. I'd like to be able to set
> multiple areas (not points) and rate them "can survey / good local
> knowledge / particularly interested".
>
>
^^^ This is an excellent idea and a feature I would definitely use.


Agreed! Forgive me if this is a little off topic, but to me related because
it's about finding people to make a local community.

We talked about this a bit at the HOT Birds of a Feather at State of the
Map -- to me it's a great idea. Why not ask some basic (and purely
optional) information when people join OSM, with some fields for that info,
especially location (with dropdowns and not free text, ideally) and maybe
other interest areas (e.g. humanitarian, biking, whatever else) and use
that to connect the user with their local group or other some interest
group. "You live in Country X or ideally City Y, here is the site for the
local group there." or "You noted you were interested in biking, here is
the site for that group." Something like that to help connect them and give
them someone to talk to or get involved with.

Right now it's all free text that people add themselves after they join, if
they choose to do so, which makes it hard to use.

To me, once people join, nothing happens. They are basically required to be
pro-active and go out and find what they want to do -- which is fine, but
not everyone is going to do that. I think some suggestions too would help.
It took me quite some time to find Pascal Neis's "Who's mapping around me"
tool, for example.[1]

I have no idea what the procedure is for talking about changing the login
page, however.

Andrew

[1] http://resultmaps.neis-one.org/oooc


On Wed, Jun 17, 2015 at 2:57 PM, Eleanor Tutt <eleanor.tutt at gmail.com>
wrote:

>
> On Tue, Jun 16, 2015 at 4:07 AM, moltonel 3x Combo <moltonel at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>>
>> What I've been mulling over is the "home location" data on the
>> profile. Right now it's close to useless. I'd like to be able to set
>> multiple areas (not points) and rate them "can survey / good local
>> knowledge / particularly interested".
>>
>>
> ^^^ This is an excellent idea and a feature I would definitely use.
>
> Also, this thread is of great interest to me, but I'm entering it quite
> late and many points have already been discussed. I'll just say a few
> things:
>
> 1)  I am thankful to Erica Hagen for her original post, as I think these
> are critical things to think about.
>
> 2)  Hagen's point that "there are degrees of local that we are failing to
> account for" reminds me of many discussions I've had in my own community
> about what it means to be "from a place," whose voices are viewed as
> representative of a neighborhood, who has access to power, etc. While much
> of the discussion here has been in the context of
> international/humanitarian mapping, these same questions play out on a
> micro scale in cities and neighborhoods. It is worth thinking about who is
> mapping in your own community and whether you are working to involve
> neighborhood residents, do offline outreach, etc. at home.
>
> Thanks,
> Eleanor
>
>
>
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>


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