On Sat, Dec 8, 2012 at 2:32 PM, Charlotte Wolter <techl...@techlady.com> wrote: > Martijn, > > Your reply illustrates what is wrong with with OSM's approach to > giving members, especially new ones, the tools they need.
Can we please stick to steps regarding moving forward, rather than blame and doomsaying? Such comments do not bring the conversation forward, but have a negative effect. > The attitude that that information is there if you are willing to > look for it is very flawed. Any organization that wants to be > inclusive and to encourage others to participate needs to provide > them with information that is definitive and easy to access. I think all of us are in agreement that good documentation is a worthwhile goal, the issues we encounter are: 1. We have no "definitives". There is no oversight committe and those self-appointed committes we do have are often divorced from the actual data. The result is often that documentation aimed at newbies needs to be proscriptive, but documentation within the community needs to be descriptive. 2. Creating high quality documentation is difficult. It's enormously time consuming. Even my "off the cuff" videos were nothing but that. My intro video series is about two hours in length, but represented a sold month of work. If I had to do it in a written form, it would have taken many man hours. And maintenance of that would be even moreso. > Otherwise, OSM runs the danger of being an exclusive club of > insiders who know all the secrets, while everyone else is > essentially left out of the party. > Long-term, this will lead to OSM's demise. If this were true, then we would not be seeing the growth in OSM mappers and adopters. You may feel very strongly, but this comment comes off as a sort of "scare tactic", where I'd prefer a more solution oriented discussion. > We need to create a Wiki that everyone can understand, > use and reply on. Sure, this is a worthwhile goal. > I propose that we create a definitive wki, overseen by a > working group. This would not mean that the wiki never would > change. But it would > enable a reliable, source of information for newcomers and, I believe, would > greatly improve map quality. Are you proposing a new wiki, other than the existing one, or are you suggesting that there would be a cleanup effort on the existing wiki? If it's the former, then I don't think a wiki is necessarily what you want; instead, you probably want to be contributing to one of the many documentation projects that exist, including proprietary, commercial sources such as Frederik Ramm's high quality book, or Free sources, such as the OSM guide that HOT created. Sources like these are easy to curate, but as someone who put a great deal of effort into making documentation in the form of videos, I will tell you that these sources are often not seen by the general public. If it's the later, then that already happened, and that committee has disbanded, but if you are willing to put the time and effort forth to begin editing the wiki, then I'm sure others would join you and that you would soon have a group of dedicated editors. In other words, I suggest taking on the effort yourself, and seeing what comes of it, then as people take an interest, you can begin to re-formalize the process. - Serge _______________________________________________ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
