I made exactly this point a while back on the diversity-talk list. The consequence of this is that by self-limiting *who* the mappers are, we also limit the types of things that will ever appear on the map.
It’s even evident in your statement "This map geek and his son?” — a point that well made by Alyssa Wright in her discussion at SotM of the gendered nature of OSM data. Plus, most (all?) of the tools assume you might want to edit anything and everything on the map. Most people probably don’t, and seeing streets and ways and relations when all you really wanted to do was add your child’s school, or the new bike path for them to get school is going to be an immediate turn off. That being said, things like PushPin and iD have gone a long way to lowering the barrier to entry, but it’s still pretty damn substantial. Darrell On Mar 17, 2014, at 5:13 PM, Bryce Nesbitt <bry...@obviously.com> wrote: > On Mon, Mar 17, 2014 at 11:17 AM, <o...@charles.derkarl.org> wrote: > > I'm going to just point out the elephant in the room here. I don't think any > normal user cares about the license at all. I think the actual reason its hard > to get new mappers, especially those that are not nerdy and obsessive like > myself is that *the ontology sucks*. There, I said it, so you don't have to. > > I think the real reason is that there's just one model: mapping as an end to > itself. > Just look at the outreach material: it talks about mapping as an end, and > encourages > people to get involved in this nebulous thing called mapping, as if that was > enough. > > Map geeks? Check. > This map geek and his son? Check. > Other people? Hmm. > > How about "map all the pubs in your area"? Or "Find the world's best map of > hiking trails > and help keep the map strong by editing if needed"? Or "contribute to the > world's > best map of speed cameras"? Or "Map free library locations (e.g. > http://littlefreelibrary.org/ and clones)? > > Maybe the pool of obsessive mappers is drawing thin. > The pool of pub enthusiasts, however, is as strong as ever. > _______________________________________________ > Talk-us mailing list > Talk-us@openstreetmap.org > https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
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