date:20130108


Hi Frederik,

I basically agree with everything that Jeff wrote in reply to your
e-mail so I won't reiterate the same points.

One thing to note - look at the numbers: between 2010 and today, the
number of users doubled and in the same period the number of active
contributors did not change nearly that much.

What does that say to you? For me it's a clear signal that there is
great interest in OSM but somehow OSM is failing most of those
interested. Welcome Working Group is a good way to find why but I think
it's pretty obvious when you look what OSM has to offer to a newcomer
who is used to services like YouTube and Facebook in terms of usability
and features.

There does not have to be a grand strategic plan in order to start
addressing the lowest hanging fruit like... umm, I don't know - being
able to see what was changed in my home area without having a lot of bot
edits displayed in the history tab? Being able to calculate a route or
click on a POI on a main page of a freaking mapping project?

I really don't want to discuss whether OSM main website should have
feature X or Y. I am interested in doing X and Y, I know that people are
interested in X and Y and are going to find it useful. So instead of
endless discussion I will just do it because I am a developer. In the
process of doing it I suddenly realize that I actually enjoy working on
this stuff but it takes a lot of effort so I ask around about funding
because I would like to continue working on it.

The simple fact is that some of the improvements won't ever be
implemented without people working full time on it (look at the Top Ten
Task list to get some idea). How do you propose to solve this problem
without funding people to develop them?

Paweł


___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] OpenStreetMap Future Look


On 01/07/2013 11:32 PM, Johan C wrote:

The Wikimedia Foundation launched a strategic planning process in
2009: http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page which, in 2010,
resulted in a collaborative vision for the movement till 2015.


Thanks for this link, I have not seen this before... it's kind of
mind-boggling when you compare this to OSM wiki and our efforts to
strategize. Like heaven and earth...

Paweł


___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] OpenStreetMap Future Look


Hi,

On 01/08/2013 06:08 AM, Jeff Meyer wrote:

Also, almost none of the observations are supported by data.
Can you provide any?


Frankly, I'm surprised that you should ask. The first couple of 
paragraphs in my message are essentially describing undisputable facts 
(naming companies that have paid for various developments, and that OSMF 
doesn't control that process). Then I say that people often deman all 
sorts of things from OSM which is practically supported by any 
longer-term reading of them mailing lists. Then I say that the current 
model requires that you do it yourself if you want something done which 
I believe doesn't need an explanation either. Then I go on to mention 
some risks/dangers I see; you can hardly ask for data that supports 
someone mentioning a risk - I mean, if I say if we are awash in cash 
there's the risk of more heated arguments about what to spend it for 
then what kind of data would you want to see?



I also find that many of the arguments in your mail are contrary to the
Mission Statement of the Foundation
(http://www.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Mission_Statement). As you are a
member of the OSMF Board of Directors, this is confusing to me.


I wasn't aware of contradicting the OSMF mission statement in that 
message, but in general board members are entitled to their own opinion 
even if it deviates from board resolution (as long as they don't claim 
to be speaking for the board).



Isn't one of the widest reaching and largest volunteer mapping forces in
the world worthy of a mature and well-oiled organization?


I wasn't saying we shouldn't have one, and in fact making OSMF work 
better is something I've been, and will be, working on.



The questions are: how well has it evolved? Could it have evolved
better? We don't know. We only know how it has performed in the absence
of a stronger leadership presence and with minimal fundraising. We could
investigate the alternative and see how that goes.


Yes but there won't be a way back. Once you have 10 employees you are 
extremely unlikely to get to a point where you can say well, maybe this 
wasn't so good after all, let's scale back. Especially not in a PR 
driven, over-heated IT climate where this would directly translate into 
headlines of failure.



Thing is, many of us know what they want individually, but we don't
have good methods of finding the collective will from that.

What methods are considered good? Is voting a bad method of divining the
collective will?


I have very strong opinions on this - yes, for our project, voting is a 
very bad method of divining the collective will, for a number of 
reasons. It excludes too many people (who don't understand what the vote 
is about or who don't speak the language or whose cultural background 
makes it hard for them to grasp the consequences), and also it sidelines 
minorities. Large democratic systems tend to have mechanisms in place to 
avoid or at least balance these effects; we don't. In OSM, 15 people can 
vote to deprecate a tag all of us are using and it won't even get noticed ;)


There's also the question of who can vote at all and what kind of 
majority you need to make a decision.


I would like to get to a point where we can say: The OSMF determines 
important points of the OSM future, and if you want to participate in 
that side of the project, then join the OSMF. Once the OSMF has enough 
members, from a wide enough section of the OSM community, I think it can 
start acting like that, but with 400 largely European white males as 
their membership compared to a million people who have an account with 
OSM we can hardly claim to be representative.


Voting is bad but at the same time we don't have a working alternative. 
Which, for me, means that we should be very careful about what we use 
voting for. For example I don't think that a simple majority of either 
OSMF members or OSM community members should be allowed to define what 
the project's core values are.



As one of the OSMF's missions is to grow the membership, why say, if
we attract more people?


The question is whether giving people a nice map portal will attract 
them only to that map portal, or whether we'd be able to attract them to 
the project.


In my opinion there are too many people whose understanding of OSM is 
that it should be a popular map web site where people go to if they want 
to find a route or mark their house on a map. This is not what I am after.



For example, what are we doing to (a) attract those who are likely to
contribute, and (b) improve the user experience for those people who are
contributing, and possibly (c) expanding the methods of contribution.


Look around you and you see all these things happening, by a totally 
diverse group of actors, without central orchestration. (In fact you 
might not see them all because while we are having this discussion, a 
dedicated community member in Sydney might be giving an interview to a 
local paper about OSM,

Re: [OSM-talk] OpenStreetMap Future Look

Dear Jeff,

have you ever though about organizing a market-wide vote whether Pepsi Coke 
or Coca Coke is preferred? And put up a vision that Coke A shall finally 
surrender?

Not?

Please just step back for a moment and take into account to possibility that 
OSM is more like a market and less like an organization.

As you like evidence, let's go through the key elements.

The mappers or users or stakeholders or simply the somehow involved persons:
- In an organization, we have one or few distinct forms of membership
- In a market, there is no clear distinction between a market player and a 
non-market player. You don't need a permission to buy a Coke and you can do so 
only once every decade, you only need a credit card.

Our mappers contribute on very distinct levels of activity, and registration is 
commonly seen as a technical necessity (like the credit card). For example, it 
is likely not a membership because for a lot of deceded people there accounts 
will simply left off untouch, not somehow deleted.

Different measures of active contributor are established and they all give 
different numbers. In particular, when voting was discussed around the 
license change, it was a very broad consensus that no selection of people was 
legit as a voting body.

This sounds very much like a market, not like an organization.

The same is right for tools development: Mapnik and all the other tools you 
mentioned have all been developed without a strategic vision and without formal 
permission from whomever.

Again, sounds more like a market than an organization.

You miss the flow of money? It's not a market of money and goods but rather of 
data and ideas.

The key difference is redundancy: On a market, you get what you want when you 
find a supplier for it, regardless whether your demand conincides with the 
demand of the majority or not. The greek concept of agora fits well.

In an organization, you need some kind of majority (might be your boss only or 
in a more democratic case, a majority by numbers) to steamroll down the 
minority's will. This is not how OSM ever worked or not how OSM shall ever work 
in the future. It is how Google and Apple work but exactly what most of us 
dislike on those companies.

The OSMF sees themself rather like a regulating body for this market-like 
agora, not as the market itself. Now, as you won't expect FTC to have a 
vision which products have to be sold more, please don't abuse OSMF to 
formulate such a vision.

Maybe we can add a clarifying statement to the OSMF mission statement if you 
have misunderstood it?

Best regards,

Roland

___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] OpenStreetMap Future Look

2013-01-08 Thread Richard Fairhurst

Paweł Paprota wrote:
 The simple fact is that some of the improvements won't ever be
 implemented without people working full time on it (look at the Top 
 Ten Task list to get some idea). How do you propose to solve this 
 problem without funding people to develop them?

Complete disarming honesty time: the thing that puts me off working on OSM
code (and heaven knows I've spent enough time on it over the years) isn't
the lack of remuneration. It's the community, and its sense of entitlement.

Something has gone wrong with the OSM community and I wish I knew how to fix
it. Writing code for OSM has become a really thankless, unpleasant business.
Most of the Top Ten Tasks, though ambitious - that's why they're in the Top
Ten, after all - are perfectly within the capability of one developer with a
vague acquaintance with OSM and a modest design sensibility. (Of them all,
the hardest is actually being tackled - by you, of course, Paweł!)

But really, why bother? You'll only get crap thrown at you for doing so.
Every time there's even a modest layout improvement to the front page, all
hell breaks loose on some forum or other and there's an outcry of Why
wasn't I consulted?. Let's keep the WMF comparison going: I don't think the
Wikipedia, or Linux, guys consult the entire fucking community every time
they swap two bytes in the code. But for some reason, much of our community
expects it, and vocally, without being prepared to lift a finger to help.

Thing is, if you actually look below the surface of the lists and the
diaries and the chat snipers and all of that, there's a huge, silent layer
of contributors new and old, just as there's always been, quietly getting on
with mapping the world (when, that is, they're not being angry-messaged by
experienced users to say YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG). They're the guys who make
OSM what it is, not the voices on the lists. But I'm not strong enough to
ignore the noisy ones, and I wish I was.

cheers
Richard





--
View this message in context: 
http://gis.19327.n5.nabble.com/OpenStreetMap-Future-Look-tp5743118p5743359.html
Sent from the General Discussion mailing list archive at Nabble.com.

___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] OpenStreetMap Future Look


Hi,

On 01/08/2013 10:14 AM, Paweł Paprota wrote:

What does that say to you? For me it's a clear signal that there is
great interest in OSM but somehow OSM is failing most of those
interested. Welcome Working Group is a good way to find why but I think
it's pretty obvious when you look what OSM has to offer to a newcomer
who is used to services like YouTube and Facebook in terms of usability
and features.


It has been said that many people sign up to OSM because they believe 
they'll have advanced user features (more maps? your own map style? 
whatever). Without any research into this, you cannot conclude that 
those who sign up would have been mappers if only our web interface was 
more like Facebook.


Also, I think that your comparison with Facebook is totally out of 
place; OSM is a site where you sign up if you want to survey the planet, 
whereas Facebook is a site where you sign up if you want to be in touch 
with your friends. OSM is a project where people work on a common goal 
together; this is something completely different than Facebook. If 
someone told me I signed up to OSM but was so different from Facebook 
that I couldn't do anything they will probably get a rather puzzled 
look from me!



There does not have to be a grand strategic plan in order to start
addressing the lowest hanging fruit like... umm, I don't know - being
able to see what was changed in my home area without having a lot of bot
edits displayed in the history tab?


Yes, it's great that you tackled that and I hope that we'll have the 
hardware to support it.



Being able to calculate a route


That's being brewing for quite a while but we'll get there.


or click on a POI


Until now we've been a relatively unimportant target for spammers but we 
will have to be very careful, especially if we want to offer pop-up 
bubbles that link to an URL. This may be the first time we'll have to 
invent something where links are verified by a third party before they 
go up on the page.



on a main page


I don't understand the obsession with wanting everything on the main 
page. We're not a business that needs the ad revenue; we're an open 
project and one of the great things that we want people to understand is 
how everyone can build cool stuff with OSM. What better way than to link 
to stuff other people have built? (Kind of like the Schaufenster on 
www.openstreetmap.de - I'd like to move the map away from our main 
page like www.openstreetmap.de did.)



I really don't want to discuss whether OSM main website should have
feature X or Y. I am interested in doing X and Y, I know that people are
interested in X and Y and are going to find it useful. So instead of
endless discussion I will just do it because I am a developer. In the
process of doing it I suddenly realize that I actually enjoy working on
this stuff but it takes a lot of effort so I ask around about funding
because I would like to continue working on it.


Makes sense. Much better than having a committee tell you what to code 
next, no?



The simple fact is that some of the improvements won't ever be
implemented without people working full time on it


I'm not sure if that is a simple fact. Nobody has ever (to my knowledge) 
approached OSMF and said I'll code feature #4 on your top ten tasks 
list if you give me so-and-so much money. I don't know what would 
happen if someone did. OSMF could either reject, or accept and pay, or 
talk to other parties who might be interested in the issue.


I have, by the way, done that myself, too, in the past; on several 
occasions I was approached by someone who wanted additions coded for 
JOSM or other OSM related tools and I built them and added them to the 
code base. In at least one situation I had an idea myself and approached 
a company working with OSM and asked if they'd be interested in funding 
it. I've never asked for, or received money directly from OSMF though.



How do you propose to solve this problem
without funding people to develop them?


The problem that the Top ten tasks are not ticked off quickly enough? 
It's the first time someone refers to this as a problem, and the first 
time someone asks me to propose a solution for it. If I found it to be a 
problem, I'd probably pick one and implement it. Personally though, I 
have a few other things that I think are important too and I prefer to 
work on instead - my list of Top Ten Tasks is a different one.


Bye
Frederik

--
Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frede...@remote.org  ##  N49°00'09 E008°23'33

___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] House Numbers

2013-01-08 Thread Janko Mihelić

2013/1/7 John F. Eldredge j...@jfeldredge.com


 In some cases, address interpolation may produce addresses that don't
 exist on the ground. My parents lived for years on a street that has
 several sharp turns. In order to keep the addresses more-or-less in sync
 between the two sides of the street, a number of potential house numbers
 were skipped at the inside of the sharp turns.


That's why i don't use interpolation from start to end of a street. I use
it from one to the other end of a block, never more than 10 numbers, when I
go through them and see there's all of them there.

Janko
___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] OpenStreetMap Future Look


Hi Roland,


Mapnik and all the other tools you mentioned have all been developed
without a strategic vision and without formal permission from
whomever


Because they are single-purpose libraries that don't really need any
strategic vision other than do we use XML/CSS/C/C++ for this decisions.

Putting it all together and creating something like OSM.org and the OSM
core platform is a completely different thing. What you get with a
market-like approach in this case is a dozen of small websites to do the
same thing which is of course cool because you can pick and choose but
does that help the core project?


In an organization, you need some kind of majority (might be your
boss only or in a more democratic case, a majority by numbers) to
steamroll down the minority's will


I don't think we're talking about things like that... it is not black or
white (corporate-like organization or no organization at all). There is
something in between that best suits the OSM spirit.

I'm more and more convinced that it is *not* OSMF as I simply don't
understand what is the role of OSMF as such. I can tell what specific
working groups are doing but the overall organization is undefined and
I'm not sure I really care to find out or discuss what it should be -
this looks like a giant waste of time.

Paweł

___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] OpenStreetMap Future Look





It has been said that many people sign up to OSM because they believe
 they'll have advanced user features (more maps? your own map style?
 whatever). Without any research into this, you cannot conclude that
 those who sign up would have been mappers if only our web interface
was more like Facebook.

Also, I think that your comparison with Facebook is totally out of
place; OSM is a site where you sign up if you want to survey the
planet, whereas Facebook is a site where you sign up if you want to
be in touch with your friends. OSM is a project where people work on
a common goal together; this is something completely different than
Facebook. If someone told me I signed up to OSM but was so different
from Facebook that I couldn't do anything they will probably get a
rather puzzled look from me!



I didn't mean Facebook literally, I just used it as an example of a
website that is from the 21st century.



I don't understand the obsession with wanting everything on the main
 page. We're not a business that needs the ad revenue; we're an open
 project and one of the great things that we want people to
understand is how everyone can build cool stuff with OSM. What better
way than to link to stuff other people have built? (Kind of like the
Schaufenster on www.openstreetmap.de - I'd like to move the map
away from our main page like www.openstreetmap.de did.)



My vision goes beyond that (or maybe not beyond but in a different
direction...) as I believe that having a proper modern website that
shows off different tools (like routing) and most of all - user
contributions and data we have - will ultimately help the project at all
levels.


I really don't want to discuss whether OSM main website should
have feature X or Y. I am interested in doing X and Y, I know that
people are interested in X and Y and are going to find it useful.
So instead of endless discussion I will just do it because I am a
developer. In the process of doing it I suddenly realize that I
actually enjoy working on this stuff but it takes a lot of effort
so I ask around about funding because I would like to continue
working on it.


Makes sense. Much better than having a committee tell you what to
code next, no?



And no one is/was suggesting we have such committee.


The simple fact is that some of the improvements won't ever be
implemented without people working full time on it


I'm not sure if that is a simple fact. Nobody has ever (to my
knowledge) approached OSMF and said I'll code feature #4 on your top
ten tasks list if you give me so-and-so much money. I don't know
what would happen if someone did. OSMF could either reject, or accept
and pay, or talk to other parties who might be interested in the
issue.

I have, by the way, done that myself, too, in the past; on several
occasions I was approached by someone who wanted additions coded for
 JOSM or other OSM related tools and I built them and added them to
the code base. In at least one situation I had an idea myself and
approached a company working with OSM and asked if they'd be
interested in funding it. I've never asked for, or received money
directly from OSMF though.



I don't think you appreciate the complexity of the OSM main website and
related services. JOSM and standalone tools and scripts are just single
purpose tools which are rather easy to code (although of course require
a lot of effort). There are no user-driven scalability, point of
failure, hardware, security and integration challenges involved.

And that's why TTT list moves so slowly. Have you followed EWG
discussions about the main issues from that list? After attending
several IRC meetings and reading some logs it is clear to me that some
of those issues are fundamentally different from what you try to compare
it to above.

I also have done some OSM contracting work but compared to OSM main
website it was no challenge at all - no scale, only one country extract,
no history. Where's the engineering fun in that? Providing a modern,
well-integrated and usable main website for OSM is a great challenge I
would like to take part in. If you don't think this is a good goal for
the community then that's fine, after all it's an open community so
everyone can work on what they want to.

Paweł

___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] OpenStreetMap Future Look

Dear Pawel,

 And that's why TTT list moves so slowly.

Please tell people the truth, you actively contribute to impede the Top Ten 
Tasks. Let's take a look at

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Top_Ten_Tasks#Clickable_POIs_on_the_frontpage
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Top_Ten_Tasks#POI_inspection_tool_on_the_frontpage

There are several solutions that can be used off the shelves, including
http://overpass-api.de/open_layers_popup.html

 Have you followed EWG discussions about the main issues from that list?

Now, let's look at EWG minutes of October 15th 
http://www.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Working_Group_Minutes/EWG_2012-10-15

I offered to solve one of the tasks, including to care for the becessary 
support, and a couple of people liked to ides to have the problem solved.

18:17:18 drol I suggest to use now the Overpass Popup feature, because it is 
ready to use.
...
18:18:08 zere but, as drol suggests, there's already working code for doing 
this by click interception and db query
...
18:33:45 drol Installation means: just copy the JavaScript code. You can 
configure the categories there. I also voluteer to configure it in the way the 
community wants.
18:33:46 zere ok. let's put it to a poll. the question is: should we try for 
the overpass-style approach (hopefully quickly)? (the alternative being to go 
the vector-tiles route) +1 / -1, please.
...
18:34:33 ppawel -1
[altogether mixed result]

The task was then postponed for indefinite time, because you promised to do 
some work you have not done since October.

  I have, by the way, done that myself, too, in the past; on several
  occasions I was approached by someone who wanted additions coded for
   JOSM or other OSM related tools and I built them and added them to
  the code base. In at least one situation I had an idea myself and
  approached a company working with OSM and asked if they'd be
  interested in funding it. I've never asked for, or received money
  directly from OSMF though.

 I don't think you appreciate the complexity of the OSM main website and
 related services. JOSM and standalone tools and scripts are just single
 purpose tools which are rather easy to code (although of course require
 a lot of effort). There are no user-driven scalability, point of
 failure, hardware, security and integration challenges involved.

There are several stable working installations of rendering chains out there, 
including CycleMaps, the German openstreetmap servers and others. There is more 
than one installations of nominatim. It's not rocket science, in partciular not 
from a programming point of view. It's a matter of long time care and 
responsibility, and that's exactly the point for which the admin team deserves 
acknowledgement. I do acknowledge that reliability, carried out by responsible 
humans, not by some magic super-software.

By contrast, your list user-driven scalability, point of failure, hardware, 
security and integration challenges, 21st century web site are just 
buzzwords. For example, security
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_Security
has a well-defined meaning that already includes availablity which is the 
reason to do scalability and avoid designing a single point of failure.

In particular, one virtue of security exactly to prevent overwhelming 
complexity is to divide and conquer. Adding features not only to the main site 
but even intermix them with the core system (the main OSM DB) makes the task 
indeed difficult. But this is due to bad design, not because the task is 
difficult.

My two cents.

Roland

___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] OpenStreetMap Future Look


Hi,

On 01/08/2013 12:02 PM, Paweł Paprota wrote:

Providing a modern, well-integrated and usable main website for OSM
is a great challenge I would like to take part in. If you don't think
this is a good goal for the community then that's fine, after all
it's an open community so everyone can work on what they want to.


Definitely! Many of the best things in OSM on which we now rely
heavily - including Mapnik which renders our maps, Osmosis which is the
foundation for all our data replication server and client side, or
various editors - have been started by individuals who did this because
they, like you, had fun in doing it. Even essential parts of today's
data model have been developed in that fashion (Look, I built something
cool, what do you think about it?).

That is exactly the approach that I would recommend if someone were to 
ask me how to move forward - have a small discussion if you want but 
essentially, just build the damn thing, or at least a prototype for 
people to play with, and get people interested.


It often takes longer than expected; I remember approaching Dennis, the 
man behind OSRM, about three years ago, asking him if he saw any options 
to make their university routing engine usable for OSM. A lot has 
happened since then and I'm convinced we'll have some sort of routing on 
openstreetmap.org in due course but I wouldn't have thought that it 
would take so long. Dennis has meanwhile chosen to showcase their 
algorithm on a server of their own at project-osrm.org but that's not a 
bad thing; they received a lot of valuable feedback and were able to 
improve their engine and by the time we'll run it on osm.org it will be 
relatively mature.


Building stuff on your own gives you the freedom to go down whatever 
path you want, and if you build good stuff then it will eventually come 
closer to the OSM core, and possible even be added to the central web 
site. But even without being run and operated by OSMF, stuff can be 
tightly integrated - think the OpenCycleMap which is directly accessible 
from our main page, or think TagInfo which is tightly integrated with 
the Wiki, both on platforms that operate separately. I'd also love to 
integrate some of the (proto)social features that Pascal has built - the 
heatmaps and the contributors in your vicinity maps. After these 
things have existed for a while and when the community has found them 
usable, why not approach the makers and talk about integration with our 
main site while still having things separately operated? The model 
certainly doesn't work for everything but I think an ecosystem is more 
than just coders working on the rails port.


That also helps to keep complexity down.

Bye
Frederik

--
Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frede...@remote.org  ##  N49°00'09 E008°23'33

___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

[OSM-talk] [OT] job position as software developer with openstreetmap data in Italy

2013-01-08 Thread Maurizio Napolitano

I apologize for cross-posting.
The FBK - Foundation Bruno Kessler of Trento, Italy is looking to hire a
python/java/javascript developer with experience in processing
openstreetmap data.

More information here
http://risorseumane.fbk.eu/sites/risorseumane.fbk.eu/files/Call%20IT_OSM2013%20DEF.pdf

thanks

___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] OpenStreetMap Future Look

2013-01-08 Thread Christian Quest

2013/1/8 Frederik Ramm frede...@remote.org:
 That is exactly the approach that I would recommend if someone were to ask
 me how to move forward - have a small discussion if you want but
 essentially, just build the damn thing, or at least a prototype for people
 to play with, and get people interested.


+1 !

Less talks, more action ;)

OSM like many opensource projects is a do-o-craty...

But some talks are good too to coordinate actions and avoid overlapping work.


-- 
Christian Quest - OpenStreetMap France - http://openstreetmap.fr/u/cquest

___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] OpenStreetMap Future Look

On Tue, Jan 8, 2013 at 3:54 PM, Christian Quest cqu...@openstreetmap.fr wrote:

 2013/1/8 Frederik Ramm frede...@remote.org:
  That is exactly the approach that I would recommend if someone were to ask
  me how to move forward - have a small discussion if you want but
  essentially, just build the damn thing, or at least a prototype for people
  to play with, and get people interested.
 

 +1 !

 Less talks, more action ;)

 OSM like many opensource projects is a do-o-craty...

 But some talks are good too to coordinate actions and avoid overlapping work.

+1, too!

a diverse group of people trying new ideas, building cool new stuff
and having fun would seem to be the ideal approach. i certainly think
that such a thing is possible, and that we can build something awesome
together.

of course there's a place in this (as Clifford originally pointed out)
for an equivalent to Red Hat to donate the time of their employees
towards this diverse group, in a similar manner to how the Linux
community works.

the alternative (WMF) suggestion seems like very much a top-down,
committee-oriented thing - i hope the irony of a five year plan
wasn't lost on them*. personally, i think this would remove a lot of
the diversity and creativity of the development community.

cheers,

matt

*: Plan is law, fulfillment is duty, over-fulfillment is honor!

___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] OpenStreetMap Future Look


On 01/08/2013 01:16 PM, Roland Olbricht wrote:

 Please tell people the truth, you actively contribute to impede the
 Top Ten Tasks. Let's take a look at


If you think that this solution (Overpass popup) would be suitable for
the main website, why don't you just develop it and propose the merge
instead of throwing around accusations?

Why would anyone care about my -1 which is my technical opinion
(dependency on Overpass API) and not really any political sabotage as
you seem to imply (and which I won't even dignify with an answer...)?


 The task was then postponed for indefinite time, because you
 promised to do some work you have not done since October.


I don't recall having any action item relevant to clikable POI's, if I
did then I failed to do it because I was/am working on OWL and that's
not a crime. I don't see why anyone would wait for me if they were to
implement clikable POI's.


 There are several stable working installations of rendering chains
 out there, including CycleMaps, the German openstreetmap servers and
 others. There is more than one installations of nominatim. It's not
 rocket science, in partciular not from a programming point of view.
 It's a matter of long time care and responsibility, and that's
 exactly the point for which the admin team deserves acknowledgement.
 I do acknowledge that reliability, carried out by responsible humans,
 not by some magic super-software.


Rendering chain does not really fully describe the main website. Also
the fact that something is running on German or whatever servers does
not mean too much in the context of the main website.

 By contrast, your list user-driven scalability, point of failure,
 hardware, security and integration challenges, 21st century web
 site are just buzzwords. For example, security
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_Security has a well-defined
 meaning that already includes availablity which is the reason to do
 scalability and avoid designing a single point of failure.

 In particular, one virtue of security exactly to prevent
 overwhelming complexity is to divide and conquer. Adding features not
 only to the main site but even intermix them with the core system
 (the main OSM DB) makes the task indeed difficult. But this is due to
 bad design, not because the task is difficult.


It's your choice if you want to dismiss challenges I described and call
them buzzwords. If you really think that then there's not much to discuss...

Paweł

___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] OpenStreetMap Future Look




(...)


What you describe sounds good in theory (ecosystem) but in practice it
does not work that way. You can't just pick and choose some cool
projects and integrate them into the main site. Software (in particular,
open source software) is not a puzzle that can be easily thrown together
and create something bigger than one piece.

Look at distro packaging people - there is tremendous amount of work
going into delivering upstream projects to actual users at the end. Look
at all the glue between all components (like D-Bus, systemd etc) that is
needed for a fully working system.

Now take this Linux methaphor and apply it to OSM and its main website.
In my time that I spent following Rails Port and in general main website
development (about 6 months) I have seen 2 maybe 3 people writing major
pieces of code for Rails Port, some of those pieces have been rejected
from merging for various reasons.

All I'm saying that it's not as easy as you make it sound and pursuing
funding for improving the main website is a viable thing to do,
otherwise we will have to keep waiting X years or maybe forever for some
of the more complex pieces to be fit into the puzzle.

Paweł

___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] OpenStreetMap Future Look


Hi Richard,

I just came back from a few hours of skiing, full of enthusiasm to
continue my work on OWL and interested how the discussion in this thread
evolved and what do I see? Accusations of sabotage thrown at me...

So basically - I think I start to understand what you said.

Paweł


___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] OpenStreetMap Future Look

2013-01-08 Thread Jeff Meyer

On Tue, Jan 8, 2013 at 2:00 AM, Frederik Ramm frede...@remote.org wrote:

 what kind of data would you want to see?


Data supported by numbers, external studies, some employment of the
scientific method that include evaluation of alternatives or the absence of
what has been done, rather than long speculations in email.

Data kind of like what you ask for here:

On Tue, Jan 8, 2013 at 2:29 AM, Frederik Ramm frede...@remote.org wrote:

 Without any research into this, you cannot conclude that those who sign up
 would have been mappers if only our web interface was more like Facebook.


I've started putting together a collection of this type of information at:
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/User_Studies

On Tue, Jan 8, 2013 at 2:00 AM, Frederik Ramm frede...@remote.org wrote:

 I would like a lean and project-driven organisation that supports
 individual, clear-cut projects - from the small let's build a system that
 allows mappers to invite everyone in their vicinity to an event to the
 large let's build a system that makes sure OSM editing still works if the
 university where our central server sits goes offline, or things like
 let's try to have one mapping party in each country of the world,
 whatever.


Fantastic.

If this is true, why are most of your reactions to suggestions explanations
of why those suggestions are bad ideas?

Why not just say, Hey, good idea. Go for it. Here's a link to the typical
process for getting new features added?

You do go on to loosely describe this process in more detail, and I'll
probably adapt that for more wiki documentation.

That said, your first reaction to the suggestion of adding routing to the
home page is negative. Then, later, you describe one routing effort you've
been working on as good - and - it sounds like someone's already made a
decision to add it to OSM.

On Tue, Jan 8, 2013 at 7:00 AM, Frederik Ramm frede...@remote.org wrote:

 by the time we'll run it on osm.org it will be relatively mature.


Criticizing an idea without revealing that you're involved with a similar
project. What's up with that?

Has a decision been made that that *is* the routing engine that will be
added to OSM? If so, great. I look forward to it. Has that been publicized
in the community?

On Tue, Jan 8, 2013 at 2:04 AM, Roland Olbricht roland.olbri...@gmx.de
 wrote:

 Please just step back for a moment and take into account to possibility
 that OSM is more like a market and less like an organization.


Except, in an market, I don't have people telling me that I'm not allowed
to buy Pepsi, Coke, Fanta, or whatever, even those items are for sale and I
have the money and I'm not breaking any laws. The contrary seems to be the
norm here on this  other OSM lists.

Richard's comments support this perception, as well as the perceptions
about receptivity to new features.

On Tue, Jan 8, 2013 at 2:09 AM, Richard Fairhurst rich...@systemed.netwrote:

 But really, why bother? You'll only get crap thrown at you for doing so.
 Every time there's even a modest layout improvement to the front page, all
 hell breaks loose on some forum or other and there's an outcry of Why
 wasn't I consulted?.


Thing is, if you actually look below the surface of the lists and the
 diaries and the chat snipers and all of that, there's a huge, silent layer
 of contributors new and old, just as there's always been, quietly getting
 on
 with mapping the world (when, that is, they're not being angry-messaged by
 experienced users to say YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG). They're the guys who
 make
 OSM what it is, not the voices on the lists. But I'm not strong enough to
 ignore the noisy ones, and I wish I was.


Agreed. Part of the reason I speak up on these lists is because the angry
and discouraging voices shouldn't be allowed to dominate.

- Jeff


-- 
Jeff Meyer
Global World History Atlas
www.gwhat.org
j...@gwhat.org
206-676-2347
www.openstreetmap.org/user/jeffmeyer
___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] OpenStreetMap Future Look

2013-01-08 Thread Jeff Meyer

Paweł -

Please do not be discouraged by the voice of one person delivering an
ad-hominem attack.

There are plenty of people - including myself - who are excited by your
sabotage of OSM efforts through OWL. Where can I send the dynamite?

I encourage others who are supportive of your efforts to speak up. Too
often, there is silence in response to rude behavior on these lists.

Thanks, Jeff

On Tue, Jan 8, 2013 at 10:07 AM, Paweł Paprota ppa...@fastmail.fm wrote:

 Hi Richard,

 I just came back from a few hours of skiing, full of enthusiasm to
 continue my work on OWL and interested how the discussion in this thread
 evolved and what do I see? Accusations of sabotage thrown at me...

 So basically - I think I start to understand what you said.

 Paweł



 __**_
 talk mailing list
 talk@openstreetmap.org
 http://lists.openstreetmap.**org/listinfo/talkhttp://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk




-- 
Jeff Meyer
Global World History Atlas
www.gwhat.org
j...@gwhat.org
206-676-2347
www.openstreetmap.org/user/jeffmeyer
___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] OpenStreetMap Future Look


Hi Jeff,

On 01/08/2013 07:48 PM, Jeff Meyer wrote:

Paweł -

Please do not be discouraged by the voice of one person delivering
an ad-hominem attack.

There are plenty of people - including myself - who are excited by
your sabotage of OSM efforts through OWL. Where can I send the
dynamite?

I encourage others who are supportive of your efforts to speak up.
Too often, there is silence in response to rude behavior on these
lists.



That's OK, I had grown a thick skin in recent years so I'm not bothered
by such e-mails. I just don't understand why we can't just talk to each
other.

I thought more about Roland's e-mail and it's maybe not as clear cut as
it may seem...

While I obviously was not trying to sabotage anything I do understand
why Roland may feel hurt by what I said at that meeting. Well, I didn't
say that much (basically -1 and that I don't agree with this solution)
- and that may precisely be the problem.

EWG meetings are one-hour sessions where random people like me can say
stuff. It's not the greatest way to discuss major features like
clickable POI's - there is simply no time. So a short -1 to describe
someone's months of work can be hurtful - I know I would be hurt if that
was how OWL or other work I'm passionate about was treated.

So I hereby apologize if that is how and why Roland felt. It seems in 
this case I myself am guilty of what I'm trying to argue against - 
simplifying what is not that simple - I should have explained my opinion 
better.


Let's just all come together and hug.

Paweł

___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] OpenStreetMap Future Look




OpenStreetMap: Maps with a human touch


A bit off-topic but this sentence from Clifford's footer really stuck
with me.

Maps with a human touch - I like that, perhaps it could be more widely
used as a OSM slogan :-)

Paweł

___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] OpenStreetMap Future Look

On Tue, Jan 8, 2013 at 6:06 PM, Paweł Paprota ppa...@fastmail.fm wrote:

 (...)


 What you describe sounds good in theory (ecosystem) but in practice it
 does not work that way. You can't just pick and choose some cool
 projects and integrate them into the main site.

it's possible - and it's been done several times in the past. that's
not to say it's easy, or that no code needs to be written for such
integration, but it does work that way.

 Software (in particular,
 open source software) is not a puzzle that can be easily thrown together
 and create something bigger than one piece.

i agree - it's not easy. not with any kind of software that hasn't
been written with that specific purpose in mind.

 Look at distro packaging people - there is tremendous amount of work
 going into delivering upstream projects to actual users at the end. Look
 at all the glue between all components (like D-Bus, systemd etc) that is
 needed for a fully working system.

 Now take this Linux methaphor and apply it to OSM and its main website.
 In my time that I spent following Rails Port and in general main website
 development (about 6 months) I have seen 2 maybe 3 people writing major
 pieces of code for Rails Port, some of those pieces have been rejected
 from merging for various reasons.

i, and i hope everyone else too, applaud those people for their
efforts. however, as every maintainer learns, it's a difficult
balancing act to merge new features while keeping quality high - which
sometimes means that some things don't get merged first time. i'm
certain that this happens in the linux kernel too, and it's happened
to me in the rails_port: i took the feedback, improved my code and
re-submitted.

 All I'm saying that it's not as easy as you make it sound and pursuing
 funding for improving the main website is a viable thing to do,

hard to tell who made it sound easy, as the quoted post is missing,
and i wouldn't say that anything involving production software is
every truly easy.

 otherwise we will have to keep waiting X years or maybe forever for some
 of the more complex pieces to be fit into the puzzle.

i think we can be more optimistic than that - we're all trying to
improve OSM, so rather than endlessly discussing all the negative
things, perhaps we could get back to doing what we enjoy: writing code
/ mapping / etc...

cheers,

matt

___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] OpenStreetMap Future Look


Now take this Linux methaphor and apply it to OSM and its main
website. In my time that I spent following Rails Port and in
general main website development (about 6 months) I have seen 2
maybe 3 people writing major pieces of code for Rails Port, some of
those pieces have been rejected from merging for various reasons.


i, and i hope everyone else too, applaud those people for their
efforts. however, as every maintainer learns, it's a difficult
balancing act to merge new features while keeping quality high -
which sometimes means that some things don't get merged first time.
i'm certain that this happens in the linux kernel too, and it's
happened to me in the rails_port: i took the feedback, improved my
code and re-submitted.



I did not make my point clear enough. I meant that that *there are only
2 or maybe 3 people* writing major pieces of code for Rails Port and
then again it's not always easy to merge it (which is a good thing, I
agree).

Ideally people from the ecosystem would be willing to write some code to
integrate their cool projects into the main site. That is clearly not
happening.



i think we can be more optimistic than that - we're all trying to
improve OSM, so rather than endlessly discussing all the negative
things, perhaps we could get back to doing what we enjoy: writing
code / mapping / etc...



Sure, that's always good but note that another thread about OSM's future
ends in basically no conclusion. Or rather the conclusion seems to be
that all is fine and the future is secured with the current approach.

Paweł


___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] OpenStreetMap Future Look

2013-01-08 Thread Clifford Snow

On Tue, Jan 8, 2013 at 11:20 AM, Paweł Paprota ppa...@fastmail.fm wrote:

 Sure, that's always good but note that another thread about OSM's future
 ends in basically no conclusion. Or rather the conclusion seems to be
 that all is fine and the future is secured with the current approach.


I've been giving this some thought. There are a number of divergent
opinions on the future of OSM. But basically we all agree we want to
continue to improve the maps, systems, documentation, etc. We just disagree
on the process. While there were a number of people that gave feedback, we
have many more people that haven't been heard from. What I'd like to
suggest is a survey.

I will develop a survey with the help of anyone that wishes to contribute.
Because not everyone subscribes to the mailing lists, I'll ask the
gatekeeper to the website if we can have a link up on both the wiki and
osm.org main page. After an agreed upon timeframe we will publish the
results.

-- 
Clifford

OpenStreetMap: Maps with a human touch
___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] OpenStreetMap Future Look

Dear Jeff,

 Has a decision been made that that *is* the routing engine that will be
 added to OSM? If so, great. I look forward to it. Has that been publicized
 in the community?

Please have a look into the wiki:
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Top_Ten_Tasks#Routing_frontend
The demonstration instance shows that several routing engines are offered, 
including OSRM.

I would call that the location where I expect that information.

Or in the metaphore, we haven't taken a decision for Pepsi, but rather offer 
Coke, Pepsi and even Club Mate alongside :)

The formal process to add yet another routing engine is to actually write it 
and then to talk to User:Amm.

 Data supported by numbers, external studies, some employment of the
 scientific method that include evaluation of alternatives or the absence of
 what has been done, rather than long speculations in email.

Hey, good idea. Go for it.

If you want data, please write an email to Pascal Neis. He has conducted 
several studies about OSM and is surely happy for new ideas.
 
The other road would be to throw money after consultants. That are the 70% of 
money on Wikipedia Frederik has mentioned. If you have money leftover, feel 
free to ask a consultant of your choice and publish the result here (and in 
the wiki). Would you otherwise really want to divert money from OSMF for 
development and hardware and to consultants?

Before this gets into a cultural gap: In Germany consultants appear to be 
primarly paid to convey the opinion of the funder, because the funder doesn't 
want to tell his opinion openly and directly. A typical example is when 
management wants to cut away jobs. Open-ended research is done rather in the 
scientiic community. This may be different in your home country.

 That said, your first reaction to the suggestion of adding routing to the
 home page is negative. Then, later, you describe one routing effort you've
 been working on as good - and - it sounds like someone's already made a
 decision to add it to OSM.

I think you have misunderstood Frederik. Every routing engine is welcome, and 
so is every additional editor, rendering engine and so on.

The whole point is that a no stage OSMF needs to approve, fund or manage any 
particular project. Frederik, I and probably a lot of other people see this as 
feature and asset both of OSM and OSMF, not as a flaw.
 
Cheers,

Roland


___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] OpenStreetMap Future Look

On Tue, Jan 8, 2013 at 7:20 PM, Paweł Paprota ppa...@fastmail.fm wrote:
 Ideally people from the ecosystem would be willing to write some code to
 integrate their cool projects into the main site. That is clearly not
 happening.

sure, ideally. it doesn't happen often and there are a wide range of
reasons for it, often simply that integration into the site requires
completely different skills from implementing the original cool
project, or that it seems too complex or time-consuming to do so.

finding out why and trying to improve the situation are parts of why
EWG was set up. but, as you said before, sometimes it's not the
greatest way to discuss major features. but surely better than not
discussing them at all?

 i think we can be more optimistic than that - we're all trying to
 improve OSM, so rather than endlessly discussing all the negative
 things, perhaps we could get back to doing what we enjoy: writing
 code / mapping / etc...

 Sure, that's always good but note that another thread about OSM's future
 ends in basically no conclusion. Or rather the conclusion seems to be
 that all is fine and the future is secured with the current approach.

in any large project and whenever a group of people get together there
will be differences in view, and it is often difficult to get
consensus (sometimes even more difficult than integrating software).
but just because it is difficult doesn't mean that the result isn't
worth trying to achieve: these threads (and WG discussions) are part
of the process of approaching the future - one can't expect a single
meeting or discussion thread to satisfy everyone, or necessarily come
to any solid conclusion at all.

cheers,

matt

___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] OpenStreetMap Future Look


On 01/08/2013 08:32 PM, Clifford Snow wrote:


I will develop a survey with the help of anyone that wishes to
contribute.


That's a potentially good initiative but I would be careful so that it
does not degenerate into another kind of todo or wishlist, like this:

http://osm.uservoice.com/forums/41047-general

From my point of view the main problem is that there is simply not
enough people doing stuff (with the main site). For example: I have
subscribed to a lot (dozens) of wiki pages with technical documentation
several weeks ago. To this day I have only got maybe one notification
that someone changed something on these pages.

Like I said before, there is plenty of obvious work to be done before
we need to resort to defining a grand vision of the future.

My complaint about lack of conclusion to this thread was more about the
fact that... well, more about an impression than a fact I guess since I
can't seem to name it... there does not seem to be much momentum yet for
doing stuff like WikiMedia. Looking at their approach really shows how
more mature (although not always right - all those formal processes,
ewww) they are.

Paweł

___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] OpenStreetMap Future Look

Dear Pawel,

 EWG meetings are one-hour sessions where random people like me can say
 stuff. It's not the greatest way to discuss major features like
 clickable POI's - there is simply no time. So a short -1 to describe
 someone's months of work can be hurtful - I know I would be hurt if that
 was how OWL or other work I'm passionate about was treated.
 
 So I hereby apologize if that is how and why Roland felt.

Thank you for calming down. I'm myself sorry that my mail has sounded like an 
accusation. You have very well described what I have felt at that point, and I 
wanted to described my feelings.

I apologize that my mail made you feel accused.

I agree that we should learn from it that IRC is a difficult place to discuss 
major features.

 Let's just all come together and hug.

+1

Cheers,

Roland


___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] OpenStreetMap Future Look

Dear Matt,

  Ideally people from the ecosystem would be willing to write some code to
  integrate their cool projects into the main site. That is clearly not
  happening.
 
 sure, ideally. it doesn't happen often and there are a wide range of
 reasons for it, often simply that integration into the site requires
 completely different skills from implementing the original cool
 project, or that it seems too complex or time-consuming to do so.
 
 finding out why and trying to improve the situation are parts of why
 EWG was set up. but, as you said before, sometimes it's not the
 greatest way to discuss major features. but surely better than not
 discussing them at all?

Thank you. For me it is new insight that writing more code for the Rails Port 
is an issue. I've just added a clarifying remark to the wiki, please feel free 
to clarify it further.

In particular, would you appreciate a rails branch with the POI layer to 
faciliate a later integration?

Cheers,

Roland


___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

[OSM-talk] Thank you

2013-01-08 Thread Rob Nickerson

Richard, (All,)

I read your email below and it saddened me that you feel this way. I
therefore want to write a quick thank-you on behalf of the silent layer of
contributors. We are grateful for the work that all developers put into
OSM and please do not feel disheartened by a few negative responses. When I
meet up with other mappers face-to-face there is still a lot of positivity
towards the project, and any negative comments are perhaps a sign that
people are passionate and care about it too. Unfortunately we are all
guilty of not giving enough positive feedback and therefore it the negative
comments can start to look like a personal attack. They most certainly are
not.

Please keep up the good work - we got over the change to ODbL, we can
tackle anything :-)

All the best
Rob


== Quote: ==

Complete disarming honesty time: the thing that puts me off working on OSM
code (and heaven knows I've spent enough time on it over the years) isn't
the lack of remuneration. It's the community, and its sense of entitlement.

Something has gone wrong with the OSM community and I wish I knew how to fix
it. Writing code for OSM has become a really thankless, unpleasant business.
Most of the Top Ten Tasks, though ambitious - that's why they're in the Top
Ten, after all - are perfectly within the capability of one developer with a
vague acquaintance with OSM and a modest design sensibility. (Of them all,
the hardest is actually being tackled - by you, of course, Paweł!)

But really, why bother? You'll only get crap thrown at you for doing so.
Every time there's even a modest layout improvement to the front page, all
hell breaks loose on some forum or other and there's an outcry of Why
wasn't I consulted?. Let's keep the WMF comparison going: I don't think the
Wikipedia, or Linux, guys consult the entire fucking community every time
they swap two bytes in the code. But for some reason, much of our community
expects it, and vocally, without being prepared to lift a finger to help.

Thing is, if you actually look below the surface of the lists and the
diaries and the chat snipers and all of that, there's a huge, silent layer
of contributors new and old, just as there's always been, quietly getting on
with mapping the world (when, that is, they're not being angry-messaged by
experienced users to say YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG). They're the guys who make
OSM what it is, not the voices on the lists. But I'm not strong enough to
ignore the noisy ones, and I wish I was.

cheers
Richard
___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] OpenStreetMap Future Look

On Tue, Jan 8, 2013 at 8:19 PM, Roland Olbricht roland.olbri...@gmx.de wrote:
 Dear Matt,

  Ideally people from the ecosystem would be willing to write some code to
  integrate their cool projects into the main site. That is clearly not
  happening.

 sure, ideally. it doesn't happen often and there are a wide range of
 reasons for it, often simply that integration into the site requires
 completely different skills from implementing the original cool
 project, or that it seems too complex or time-consuming to do so.

 finding out why and trying to improve the situation are parts of why
 EWG was set up. but, as you said before, sometimes it's not the
 greatest way to discuss major features. but surely better than not
 discussing them at all?

 Thank you. For me it is new insight that writing more code for the Rails Port
 is an issue. I've just added a clarifying remark to the wiki, please feel free
 to clarify it further.

oh dear... strike another one for Getting The Message Out... :-(

 In particular, would you appreciate a rails branch with the POI layer to
 faciliate a later integration?

yes, please! :-)

cheers,

matt

___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] OpenStreetMap Future Look

2013-01-08 Thread Johan C

+ 1 to the ideas by Clifford and Pawel. I took another look at
http://osmstats.altogetherlost.com/index.php?item=countries . Yesterdays
edits are done by 2.5K.members, of which almost a quarter made edits in
Germany. For a big country like the US: 176 members did an edit there
yesterday. I personally don't think that's a lot. If we want to have the
best maps, I would like to see this number rising from 176 to for example
2.000 in a few years time.

It's mentioned that the present developing methodology (trial and error /
RD approach) is good. I share that thought. It's an invaluable asset
(strong point) which we should carefully guard. It has given us Mapnik,
JOSM etc.

It's been mentioned that we shouldn't talk much. That's true, Using mkgmap
I constantly try to realize that OSM in my country is better than
TeleAtlas/Navteq. These professional maps are one of the reasons I use OSM
a lot: it's my personal experience that they never listen to customer
feedback with their 'reporters'. But without talking the weaknesses will
only slowly improve. Simply because we don't indentify the weaknesses,
don't prioritize them and therefore don't act to improve them.

It's also been mentioned that it's a threat for OSM if too much people get
involved. I don't agree. Some OSM'ers developed great tools to respond to
vandalism. And it's always possible to have a more sophisticated system: I
don't think it's okay if a brandnew OSM'er adjusts a country border. By the
way: the boundaries in OSM are another weakness. Ever tried to use them in
a map which covers more than one country?

It's also mentioned that strategic planning will cost a small fortune. Yep,
it's possible to do it that way. It's also possible to keep cost down to
zero: just gather some people who - in an open process (Wiki / SOTM) - want
to think about the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats for
OSM. About that point: I'm available to join the Strategic Working Group (
http://www.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Strategic_Working_Group ). I hope some
others (Pawel, Clifford, ?) will also be available to join the SWG.

Cheers, Johan

And I love the idea of a good slogan like the mentioned 'Maps with a human
touch'

2013/1/8 Paweł Paprota ppa...@fastmail.fm

On 01/08/2013 08:32 PM, Clifford Snow wrote:

I will develop a survey with the help of anyone that wishes to
contribute.

That's a potentially good initiative but I would be careful so that it
does not degenerate into another kind of todo or wishlist, like this:

http://osm.uservoice.com/**forums/41047-generalhttp://osm.uservoice.com/forums/41047-general

From my point of view the main problem is that there is simply not
enough people doing stuff (with the main site). For example: I have
subscribed to a lot (dozens) of wiki pages with technical documentation
several weeks ago. To this day I have only got maybe one notification
that someone changed something on these pages.

Like I said before, there is plenty of obvious work to be done before
we need to resort to defining a grand vision of the future.

My complaint about lack of conclusion to this thread was more about the
fact that... well, more about an impression than a fact I guess since I
can't seem to name it... there does not seem to be much momentum yet for
doing stuff like WikiMedia. Looking at their approach really shows how
more mature (although not always right - all those formal processes,
ewww) they are.

Paweł

__**_
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.**org/listinfo/talkhttp://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] Thank you

2013-01-08 Thread Johan C

+ 1

2013/1/8 Rob Nickerson rob.j.nicker...@gmail.com


 Richard, (All,)

 I read your email below and it saddened me that you feel this way. I
 therefore want to write a quick thank-you on behalf of the silent layer of
 contributors. We are grateful for the work that all developers put into
 OSM and please do not feel disheartened by a few negative responses. When I
 meet up with other mappers face-to-face there is still a lot of positivity
 towards the project, and any negative comments are perhaps a sign that
 people are passionate and care about it too. Unfortunately we are all
 guilty of not giving enough positive feedback and therefore it the negative
 comments can start to look like a personal attack. They most certainly are
 not.

 Please keep up the good work - we got over the change to ODbL, we can
 tackle anything :-)

 All the best
 Rob


 == Quote: ==

 Complete disarming honesty time: the thing that puts me off working on OSM
 code (and heaven knows I've spent enough time on it over the years) isn't
 the lack of remuneration. It's the community, and its sense of entitlement.

 Something has gone wrong with the OSM community and I wish I knew how to fix
 it. Writing code for OSM has become a really thankless, unpleasant business.
 Most of the Top Ten Tasks, though ambitious - that's why they're in the Top
 Ten, after all - are perfectly within the capability of one developer with a
 vague acquaintance with OSM and a modest design sensibility. (Of them all,
 the hardest is actually being tackled - by you, of course, Paweł!)

 But really, why bother? You'll only get crap thrown at you for doing so.
 Every time there's even a modest layout improvement to the front page, all
 hell breaks loose on some forum or other and there's an outcry of Why
 wasn't I consulted?. Let's keep the WMF comparison going: I don't think the
 Wikipedia, or Linux, guys consult the entire fucking community every time
 they swap two bytes in the code. But for some reason, much of our community
 expects it, and vocally, without being prepared to lift a finger to help.

 Thing is, if you actually look below the surface of the lists and the
 diaries and the chat snipers and all of that, there's a huge, silent layer
 of contributors new and old, just as there's always been, quietly getting on
 with mapping the world (when, that is, they're not being angry-messaged by
 experienced users to say YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG). They're the guys who make
 OSM what it is, not the voices on the lists. But I'm not strong enough to
 ignore the noisy ones, and I wish I was.

 cheers
 Richard



 ___
 talk mailing list
 talk@openstreetmap.org
 http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk


___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] Thank you

2013-01-08 Thread Alex Barth

+1

On Jan 8, 2013, at 3:26 PM, Rob Nickerson rob.j.nicker...@gmail.com wrote:

 
 Richard, (All,)
 
 I read your email below and it saddened me that you feel this way. I 
 therefore want to write a quick thank-you on behalf of the silent layer of 
 contributors. We are grateful for the work that all developers put into OSM 
 and please do not feel disheartened by a few negative responses. When I meet 
 up with other mappers face-to-face there is still a lot of positivity towards 
 the project, and any negative comments are perhaps a sign that people are 
 passionate and care about it too. Unfortunately we are all guilty of not 
 giving enough positive feedback and therefore it the negative comments can 
 start to look like a personal attack. They most certainly are not.
 
 Please keep up the good work - we got over the change to ODbL, we can tackle 
 anything :-) 
 
 All the best
 Rob
 
 
 == Quote: ==
 Complete disarming honesty time: the thing that puts me off working on OSM
 code (and heaven knows I've spent enough time on it over the years) isn't
 the lack of remuneration. It's the community, and its sense of entitlement.
 
 Something has gone wrong with the OSM community and I wish I knew how to fix
 it. Writing code for OSM has become a really thankless, unpleasant business.
 Most of the Top Ten Tasks, though ambitious - that's why they're in the Top
 Ten, after all - are perfectly within the capability of one developer with a
 vague acquaintance with OSM and a modest design sensibility. (Of them all,
 the hardest is actually being tackled - by you, of course, Paweł!)
 
 But really, why bother? You'll only get crap thrown at you for doing so.
 Every time there's even a modest layout improvement to the front page, all
 hell breaks loose on some forum or other and there's an outcry of Why
 wasn't I consulted?. Let's keep the WMF comparison going: I don't think the
 Wikipedia, or Linux, guys consult the entire fucking community every time
 they swap two bytes in the code. But for some reason, much of our community
 expects it, and vocally, without being prepared to lift a finger to help.
 
 Thing is, if you actually look below the surface of the lists and the
 diaries and the chat snipers and all of that, there's a huge, silent layer
 of contributors new and old, just as there's always been, quietly getting on
 with mapping the world (when, that is, they're not being angry-messaged by
 experienced users to say YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG). They're the guys who make
 OSM what it is, not the voices on the lists. But I'm not strong enough to
 ignore the noisy ones, and I wish I was.
 
 cheers
 Richard
 
 ___
 talk mailing list
 talk@openstreetmap.org
 http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Alex Barth
http://twitter.com/lxbarth
tel (+1) 202 250 3633





___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

[OSM-talk] Simple improvement(s) to openstreetmap.org

2013-01-08 Thread Rovastar

I joined the mailing list just to get involved in the OpenStreetMap Future
Look discussion and join in the fight but now it has turned into a love in.
:-) *hugs*

What about a easier more practical suggestion to improve OpenStreetMap.org!

My idea is simple can someone add modern social media networks logos/links
to the home page.

Nearly every site now has twitter, facebook, google plus, youtube channel,
etc links. We have these social media outlets lets tell people about them.

They could easily go under the Make a donation button as a 2x2 grid of
icons for the big 4 social networks.

I think this would improve the connectivity of the site to our other social
outlets. Give an official stamp of approval. Improve the social aspect of
it, increase numbers to these social channels. Help people find video
tutorial and spread the word of osm further.

I cannot see any harm in this it would take up very little screen real
estate and I think look a more professional cohesive community.

Now I do it is do-ocracy and technically very easy to do but for me but to
recreate the osm site and get access etc will take me forever. I am sure
someone with access could do this html change quicker and I can do some
mapping.

.so what you think. +1 and -1's welcome.

(I also want routing, higher zoom levels (not only for the map detail but it
must be terrifying to newbies when the lowest zoom level before you click
edit could result in thousands of nodes on a half a mile square area when
they only want to name 1 street or add a pub), history tweaks (nice one
Pawel), social member to member features, extra mapnik map detail (lets
display rollercoasters (there are 'best of osm' detailed theme park but
major features missing :) ), skateboard parks, etc too), etc but this post
is not about that. ;)

Cheers,

John



--
View this message in context: 
http://gis.19327.n5.nabble.com/Simple-improvement-s-to-openstreetmap-org-tp5743501.html
Sent from the General Discussion mailing list archive at Nabble.com.

___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] Simple improvement(s) to openstreetmap.org

2013-01-08 Thread Jean-Marc Liotier

On 01/08/2013 10:31 PM, Rovastar wrote:
 Nearly every site now has twitter, facebook, google plus, youtube channel,
 etc links. We have these social media outlets lets tell people about them.

 They could easily go under the Make a donation button as a 2x2 grid of
 icons for the big 4 social networks.

 I think this would improve the connectivity of the site to our other social
 outlets. Give an official stamp of approval. Improve the social aspect of
 it, increase numbers to these social channels. Help people find video
 tutorial and spread the word of osm further.

 I cannot see any harm in this it would take up very little screen real
 estate and I think look a more professional cohesive community.
I may be a grumpy old dinosaur but I don't see how diluting the
Openstreetmap brand into the bland broth of proprietary centralized
social services that plague the Internet nowadays will bring any
value... But that's just my worthless opinion - and there are luckily
other methods available to determine what will be valuable to us. Asking
users and prospects does not work because the user's wishes may not
quite be what he needs and the prospect may not even know what he wants.
So we might rather turn to observing their behaviour and deducing what
to bring forth to them : to improve something first requires measuring it.

Let's take an utterly consensual goal for example : increasing the
number of new contributors. We do have cute graphs to monitor that -
but, unless I'm mistaken, we don't seem know much about where those
people come from. How did they land on the web site, what brought them
there, what information did they look for, what they searched for on the
site, where did their cursor hover, what did they click on, what other
sites in the Openstreetmap galaxy did they visit, how long did they take
to make up their minds and register, what display resolution should the
web editor be optimized for, what sort of data do they contribute and
how does that relate to the way we acquired them ? The site's
administrators already have some fragments of the picture - but we need
a better one and we need to bring it out so that improvement proposals
are rooted in more nourishing data and less fancyful speculation : we
are not our target. To get that better picture, we need to start with
web analytics tools - the bread and butter of online marketers
nowadays... Yes, I'm afraid we are actually talking about marketing -
don't feel dirty : it is just another free software job and the only
objective way to make the home page improvement discussions more efficient.

There is already an analytics tool at http://piwik.openstreetmap.org -
it monitors http://www.openstreetmap.org... But why don't we instrument
the wiki with it ? Or everything else for that matter ? And who has
access to those reports ? Is there any reason not to make them public ?

Openstreetmap is not a unique case : in the end it is all about
conversions - just like any other web site that sells something
(Openstreetmap sells free collaborative mapping). So let's set goals,
conversion funnels, funnel segmentations, engagement metrics; let's
quantify everything in sight, track abandonment rates and qualify them
too. Then let's set up experimental improvements, observe how they
modify user behaviour, measure, decide whether to keep them, rinse,
repeat. Some people will soon want to get fancy with A/B testing or
behavioral targeting, but we'll certainly want to keep it simple - at
least until Openstreetmap's iterative funnel optimization process
reaches such decreasing returns that it hungers for cutting edge
sophistication.

So let's feed the discussion with data, generate hypothesis, test them
and iterate. Hypothesis generation and how to test them is going to
raise debates, but that will be more rational than random wishlist items
thrown at the mailing list. But first, can we agree that user behaviour
data is the raw material ?


___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] OpenStreetMap Future Look


Jeff,

On 08.01.2013 19:22, Jeff Meyer wrote:

what kind of data would you want to see?


Data supported by numbers, external studies, some employment of the
scientific method that include evaluation of alternatives or the absence
of what has been done, rather than long speculations in email.

Data kind of like what you ask for here:


But your request for supporting my post through data was *before* I 
posted the message from Pawel about without any research into this...?



If this is true, why are most of your reactions to suggestions
explanations of why those suggestions are bad ideas?


I think that many suggestions would receive a much warmer welcome if 
they were worded more like a call to action and less as a complaint.


Compare:

Hey folks, I've been thinking it would be great if there was a way to 
announce my mapping event to all mappers in the vicinity. I've looked at 
the rails port code and I have some ideas how to do it, but before I 
implement something I'd like to know if any work has been done on that 
already? Also I think I might some help in setting up my rails instance, 
is there a howto somewhere or would someone be willing to help me 
through IRC or so?


(To which I'd probably reply, great idea, I'd like to see that, but make 
sure you implement this via some sort of opt-in mechanism because we 
have had complaints about such invitations in the past.) [*]


with:

Hey folks, this OSM web site is a real problem with its 90s design and 
lack of social features. This is going to fall over soon if you don't 
act. I mean, even the simplest things aren't possible - I tried to 
invite mappers in the vicinity to my mapping event and it cost me three 
hours. I think this is a real problem, and it also demonstrates the 
general lack of ambition in OSM. I think you should collect more 
donations and hire developers because otherwise these problems are never 
going to get fixed.


(To which I'd probably reply that I don't think the lack of this 
particular feature is such a big deal and that all the problem talk 
helps little.)


These are hypothetical examples and nobody has said either of these 
things, but they are both essentially about the lack of a certain 
feature, and they will get mixed receptions.


But there's another thing. I've been on these lists for a very long time 
and have discussed many aspects of OSM(F) with many people. Most ideas 
brought up here are not new; most of these discussions I have been 
through lots of times. This means that I often know, or at least have a 
hunch, where a certain idea might have a weakness. Read again the 
hypothetical reply marked [*] above - it is intended as a completely 
positve response but even that contains a pointer to a problem 
(opt-in) which might give someone the impression that I was rejecting 
or criticising the idea even though I was just relaying results of 
earlier discussions or experience we had.


I have also sometimes reacted negatively to priority setting. If you say 
it would be nice to have A then I might say sure, sounds good; if 
you then continue ... therefore I want OSMF to make a plan how to 
achieve A and acquire the necessary funding then I might say uh, wait 
a minute, I think that the limited manpower that OSMF has at its 
disposal should perhaps not be commited to A so lightly, at least not 
without thinking if B or C would achieve more for the same effort.


This might come accross as Fred says A is a bad idea but in fact it 
isn't - it's just A might not be as important as you think.



Why not just say, Hey, good idea. Go for it. Here's a link to the
typical process for getting new features added?


I'll try to do more of that.


That said, your first reaction to the suggestion of adding routing to
the home page is negative. Then, later, you describe one routing effort
you've been working on as good - and - it sounds like someone's already
made a decision to add it to OSM.


Let's not say decision; once you are in it for a while, you have a 
feeling for what is likely to happen. Many things in OSM are not 
decided, they are just discussed for a long time and a decision then 
evolves.


If you want to read up on past discussions regarding the routing 
issue, this might be a good starting point:


http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/strategic/2011-January/000215.html

http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/strategic/2011-March/000278.html

On 11th March 2011, the Stratgic working group resolved to recommend 
adding routing to the OSM site, albeit with the main vision of using as 
a debugging tool (see 
http://www.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Working_Group_Minutes/SWG_2011-03-11) 
and without recommending a specific routing engine.


On 13th April, the OSMF board discussed the issue and minuted: SWG 
Routing policy accepted. Emilie to advise TWG and return with budget 
requirement. On 11th June 2011 the board minutes contain the sentence 
Development is progressing in the community. At the moment there

Re: [OSM-talk] OpenStreetMap Future Look


Hi Pawel,

On 08.01.2013 21:00, Paweł Paprota wrote:

there does not seem to be much momentum yet for
doing stuff like WikiMedia. Looking at their approach really shows how
more mature (although not always right - all those formal processes,
ewww) they are.


It will be an interesting challenge for us to copy the good things in 
Wiki{p/m}edia and leave out the bad things. I've written a rather 
long-ish blog post about similarities (and not) between uns and them 
last April, here:


http://osm.gryph.de/2012/04/learn-from-wikipedia/

The good thing about Wiki{p/m}edia is that there is a lot of research 
and I've quoted from, and linked to, a number of good articles in that 
blog entry.


I'd love to have a discussion about that but I'd recommend starting a 
new thread for it.


I do tend to agree with Matt though when he says that at least in some 
respects the Red Hat model sounds sweeter than the WMF model. In fact, 
as I pointed out in another post, we're seeing a little of that already 
if you look at Mapbox et al.


Bye
Frederik

--
Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frede...@remote.org  ##  N49°00'09 E008°23'33

___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] OpenStreetMap Future Look