I also agree that this would be an excellent idea (I just introduced a class of about 25 students to OSM last night, and I really would like something clean and organized to point future classes to). If someone can put together an outline of such a Beginner's Guide, I'm willing to work on a section of it, and help reconcile it with other sections as they get written. Richard, given your experience and obvious thought on the matter, could you maybe sketch a high-level outline to get us started?
Ed Edward L. Hillsman, Ph.D. Senior Research Associate Center for Urban Transportation Research University of South Florida 4202 Fowler Ave., CUT100 Tampa, FL 33620-5375 813-974-2977 (tel) 813-974-5168 (fax) [email protected] http://www.cutr.usf.edu > Date: Wed, 21 Jul 2010 10:07:32 -0700 (PDT) > From: Richard Fairhurst <[email protected]> > To: [email protected] > Subject: Re: [Talk-us] Community Involvement > Message-ID: <[email protected]> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii > > > Apologies for butting in on your mailing list - thought this one was > sufficiently non-US specific it deserved an answer. > > Toby Murray wrote: > > Yes, navigation is a pain. The "map features" page is a pretty > > good index of things to map but it often links to proposal or stub > > pages (like the doctors page) that don't give a lot of information > > about "how to map this feature" but rather offer discussions about > > the tag or some OSM jargon that is not really helpful to > > newcomers. The problem is that as one gains more experience > > within OSM those pages DO become somewhat helpful so there > > is little incentive for experienced mappers to change them to > > make it better for new mappers. > > We desperately need a real OSM Beginners' Guide (rather than the apology > that currently passes for one on the wiki), written by people who care > about > documentation, focusing on the basics, and liberally illustrated with pics > and videos. > > And I hate to say it, but it shouldn't be open to general public editing - > otherwise you get the situation at the moment where people come along and > add their personal hobby horses every other day, and it degenerates into an > unreadable, sprawling, unfocused mess. > > It's not just about tag documentation (to a certain extent, better editor > presets are making that less important), but about a general introduction > to > OSM. A DokuWiki install on dev.osm.org, with a small team writing the core > docs, would be a good way to do it. I'd love to have a go (after all, my > day > job is as a writer and editor), but what with Potlatch and all don't have > the time to head up such an initiative. But it would be the single most > useful thing anyone could do for OSM right now. > > I did suggest to Mr Weait of this parish that he might like to be involved, > as he has a clear track record in writing nice how-tos on his blog. Maybe > we > could get a team together? > > cheers > Richard > -- _______________________________________________ Talk-us mailing list [email protected] http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
