[OSM-talk] Overhaul of https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Use_OpenStreetMap

MichaƂ Brzozowski www.haxor at gmail.com
Wed Nov 23 07:41:58 UTC 2016


Two weeks ago or so I thought of creating "Introduction for GIS users"
page or something like that (explaining how OSM is different from, for
a lack of better word, shapefile-based GIS).
We see many questions asked over and over, but the documentation isn't
really at the point of "if you can't understand it, you are an idiot".
There is now too little interest in the Wiki among most power users
(maybe owing to the fact that many see Wiki as "art for art's sake"
due to formal-yet-not-mandating-anything voting and ever-recurring
someone-has-changed-some-definition drama etc.).  As a result, the
accuracy, currency and accessibility of articles suffers.
There definitely should be an effort to improve the Wiki. It may be
interesting and educating to do an "act as a newbie" experiment and
see how real problems people had could be RTFM-ed.

The bottom line is that all we know is not some arcane magical
knowledge, we get it from the said Wiki and other manuals. It's just
that it's not easy to follow if you don't know how to do something.
Meanwhile, the grumpy part of me is sad that I can't yell RTFM to newbies (;

On Tue, Nov 22, 2016 at 10:29 PM, Simon Poole <simon at poole.ch> wrote:
> IMHO one of  https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Using_OpenStreetMap or
> https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Use_OpenStreetMap should be nuked.
> And the remaining page revised so that it actually makes some sense
> (which is likely easier with the page you want to work on).
>
> No setting his hopes high.
>
> Simon
>
> Am 22.11.2016 um 22:07 schrieb Roland Olbricht:
>> Hello everybody,
>>
>> I would like to overhaul one of the second level landing pages in the
>> wiki
>> https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Use_OpenStreetMap
>>
>> The main reason is that I've found a forum thread with a completely
>> misinformed user
>> https://forum.openstreetmap.org/viewtopic.php?id=56469
>> When trying to send a proper link to our documentation, I have
>> realized that indeed the wiki leaves a newbie seeking data no way to
>> find how to access it.
>>
>> For this reason I would like to add back the links to
>> https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Download
>> that used to be on the front page.
>>
>> To avoid disturbing a second level landing page, I have made a mock-up
>> https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/User:Roland.olbricht/Use_OSM
>>
>> Please feel free to discuss it on the wiki
>> https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Talk:Use_OpenStreetMap
>>
>> I suggest to move the mock-up to the real page in a week if no major
>> objections come up.
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>> Roland
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> talk mailing list
>> talk at openstreetmap.org
>> https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
>
>
>
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