Hi Peter, > > When you talk about Users, who are you talking about? To me, the users of > openstreetmap.org are a) mappers, who use the site to veryfiy their work and > b) people using (or aiming at using) the data in their projects, mashups, > products or papers. > > I, personally, don't see my neighbour, planning a trip to his parents, as a > user of openstreetmap.org *although* he may be a user of the > openstreetmap-data, nicely presented in another project.
Lets look at some of these downstream projects. In the US, craigslist is a huge site using OSM data right now. 60 million different people a year. Note, nowhere does it say that can EDIT the map and fix a mistake by going to osm.org site. How is somebody supposed to know that? http://boston.craigslist.org/search/aap?useMap=1&zoomToPosting=&query=&srchType=A&minAsk=&maxAsk=&bedrooms= Next up foursquare. https://foursquare.com/explore?cat=food&near=Pepperell%2C%20MA Again, users of foursquare don't have a clue that they can edit the map! You need to click on the "about this map" link and land into a very technical blog post that mentions OSM at the end, again without telling people that can EDIT the map. Now, I am very happy that these companies are using the map data, I really am. You can't expect the downstream data users to carry our water for us. We need a map that lots of people use, with a big fat EDIT button at the top. Dumping features from OSM.org because they might be useful for a weekend trip is shooting ourselves in the foot. Could you imagine a world where Wikipedia had a bunch of good looking consumer facing sites without edit buttons with just subtle hints back to a editor only site. We are geo wiki, lets not be afraid to act like one. Thanks Jason. _______________________________________________ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
