Christoph Böhme wrote: > Hi everyone > > in my opinion OSM should not try to compete with mapping websites by > offering more and more tools for using maps. This is because I think > such an endeavour would have three problems: First, how to decide > which of the hundreds of tools out there are integrated on the OSM > website and which are not? People will surely have very different > opinions about what an online map needs. Second, offering map services > to the end-user will bind a lot of resources (humans & computers) which > could otherwise be used to improve the data. And third, I think, it can > lead to a centralisation of the OSM ecosphere with projects not being > on the main website not gaining much attention since they are not > considered a real part of OSM anymore. > > However, OSM obviously needs some showcase to advertise what you can do > with the data. But why not creating a real showcase then? A set of > webpages which explain with some examples what it actually means to > have open geo-data and not just a free-beer map. The showcase could > show examples for common use cases like user-defined renderings, > different routing services, etc and provide links to pages offering > these services. The main website website could then just have a big link > saying: "See what you can do with OpenStreetMaps!" > > A disadvantage of concentrating solely on the data is that normal > website users will be unlikely to ever see the OSM website and thus > never become aware that they can help to improve the map they are > seeing on a website. > I think this problem could be approached by encouraging users of OSM > data to add links like "Are things missing on this map?" or "Is there > an error on this map?" to their maps which link to a page explaining > that the map used on the website is an open map and that users can > easily add the missing data themselves if they want to (or they could > at least create an Openstreetbug). > > Cheers, > Christoph >
I agree with this... to a point. I think OpenStreetMap needs a "shop window" - perhaps a different website altogether. I can talk enthusiastically about OSM to all and sundry, but it'd be nice to point them somewhere where they can go and be blown away with what can be achieved using the power of OSM data. I'm not only thinking of the standard slippy-map, but contour layers, routing, poi's, etc, etc. I'd like people to see what OSM is capable of and perhaps encourage them to contribute themselves, or utilise OSM data in their own applications (which is ultimately what this project is all about). This separate website would have a different ethos compared to OSM.org - it would need to include everything that a professional mapping website would have, and contain very little technical (OSM) jargon. I'm sure there are plenty of people out there that simply don't care about how the data is collected, stored and licenced - they just see that it looks pretty cool and they enjoy the experience of using it. I know that plenty of people link to and use Wikipedia without fully knowing (or caring) about the model it's built upon. This is just my opinion, and I know the work involved in setting up something like this would be significant, but the benefits in my opinion would be huge. Alan. _______________________________________________ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
