Re: [OSM-talk] Barriers of Entry
Ian said: >Training and skills acquisition before undertaking complex tasks is a fairly commonplace activity in our society. No but the difference between Stalinism and OSM is that we do not *oblige* people to follow a training process. >History is indeed full of these mistakes, these mistakes are the reasons we have schools, universities, drivers licences, and many other forms >of training and qualification. Then you are probable also in favor of a obligatory school in politics before being allowed to vote for your parliament? I am not sure you are aware of the principles of open data and of crowd collected data, or at least do not speak accordingly. The power of OSM is the number thing. Many users equal out the uneven data from beginners and vandals. But if you want to start an OSM college, I will not be the one to stop you ! Gert Gremmen - Openstreetmap.nl (alias: cetest) P Before printing, think about the environment. Van: Ian Sergeant [mailto:iserg...@hih.com.au] Verzonden: Thursday, September 15, 2011 8:07 AM Aan: ce-test, qualified testing bv - Gert Gremmen CC: Talk@OSM Onderwerp: RE: [OSM-talk] Barriers of Entry "Gert Gremmen" wrote on 15/09/2011 03:51:11 PM: > I definitely do NOT want a *diploma* system > with less or more "approved" users.. N > We don't want OSM to change into Brave New World, > 1984 or distinct between users on other characteristics > History is full of such mistakes. Training and skills acquisition before undertaking complex tasks is a fairly commonplace activity in our society. It really doesn't equate to a "Brave New World". History is indeed full of these mistakes, these mistakes are the reasons we have schools, universities, drivers licences, and many other forms of training and qualification. Not every task can be made simple, and our society is often structured such that people expect everything they are actually allowed to do to be harmless. If you lower the barrier to entry, and make something appear simple that isn't, you aren't doing anyone any favours. I'm sure we can ask someone to demonstate their ability to do a complex task before undertaking it, without too much danger of taking a step closer to the OSM equivalent of a Stalinist regime :-) Ian. <>___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] SOTM streaming!
On 15 September 2011 10:30, Toby Murray wrote: > I just linked all of my videos on the SOTM 2011 wiki page: > http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/State_Of_The_Map_2011 Thanks a lot :) > Enjoy! As for the parts that aren't good enough to be enjoyable... > well... you should have come to SOTM in person! :) Well if SOTM was somewhere in asia and near to India I would surely try to attend if I dont get stuck in any of those damned visa hassles . Until then its videos, blogs and presentations for me . Regards, Pavithran -- pavithran sakamuri http://look-pavi.blogspot.com ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Barriers of Entry
"Gert Gremmen" wrote on 15/09/2011 03:51:11 PM: > I definitely do NOT want a *diploma* system > with less or more "approved" users.. N > We don't want OSM to change into Brave New World, > 1984 or distinct between users on other characteristics > History is full of such mistakes. Training and skills acquisition before undertaking complex tasks is a fairly commonplace activity in our society. It really doesn't equate to a "Brave New World". History is indeed full of these mistakes, these mistakes are the reasons we have schools, universities, drivers licences, and many other forms of training and qualification. Not every task can be made simple, and our society is often structured such that people expect everything they are actually allowed to do to be harmless. If you lower the barrier to entry, and make something appear simple that isn't, you aren't doing anyone any favours. I'm sure we can ask someone to demonstate their ability to do a complex task before undertaking it, without too much danger of taking a step closer to the OSM equivalent of a Stalinist regime :-) Ian.___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Barriers of Entry
I definitely do NOT want a *diploma* system with less or more "approved" users.. N We don't want OSM to change into Brave New World, 1984 or distinct between users on other characteristics History is full of such mistakes. If a novice wants to start with JOSM , so be it, but we want him to be attracted to something he understands right now and prefer that before understanding the power of a real editor. We just need a large set of tools (editors) that automatically attract the right user level. And add to that a set of heuristic control measures in software that refuse / flag / conditionally approve edits made by stupidity / mouse errors / vandalism / ignorance. -Oorspronkelijk bericht- Van: Jaakko Helleranta.com [mailto:jaa...@helleranta.com] Verzonden: donderdag 15 september 2011 4:34 Aan: Ian Sergeant; ce-test, qualified testing bv - Gert Gremmen CC: Talk@OSM Onderwerp: Re: [OSM-talk] Barriers of Entry I very much like Ian's idea. Coincidentally I talked about this with some people at SotM. It seems to me that a number of people have started editing osm after a significant delay because they've felt the barriers badly (both regarding tools and technical creation of the map as well as fear of breaking the data). I remember these fears / issues being one cause for my delayed start to contributing to osm. Now, what if we had a more or less obviously "optional" (opt-out) graduated access scheme? What if we simply required the promise of users to say that "I know how to edit this & that feature", "Sure I understand what tertiary roads are over unclassified/residential -- and I promise not to tag all roads I edit with tertiary!", "I'll definitely look into empty nodes history before deleting them to make sure that no one has deleted the tags by accident", or "Of course I won't mess up the coastline". Etc. What if we simply trusted that people can recognize when they are able to do certain types of "more difficult" edits? There could also be an "I'd love it if someone more experienced (or self-confident) could double check that my edits are ok before they get submitted to the live database!" option. Since there were multiple people at SotM who think they would have started editing sooner than they ended up doing I'm wondering how many people there r out there that have signed up but have never made an edit that could already have made edits if we would have such options in place? I'm also pretty confident that such options, even when set to be voluntary, could reduce some common quality problems. Cheers from Haiti (which I think would benefit from some of the above mentioned options), jaakkoh Sent from my BlackBerry(r) device from Digicel -- Mobile: +509-37-26 91 54, Skype/GoogleTalk: jhelleranta -Original Message- From: Ian Sergeant Date: Thu, 15 Sep 2011 09:02:08 To: ce-test, qualified testing bv - Gert Gremmen Cc: Talk Openstreetmap Subject: Re: [OSM-talk] Barriers of Entry ___ 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] SOTM streaming!
I just made one more pass through my uploads and cleared out some junk where the wireless network ate my broadcast during the HOT presentation. I haven't watched all of the videos myself but I will say the quality varies a lot depending on the network connection, where I was sitting in the room, etc. So don't expect miracles. But there are definitely some watchable sessions. Any sessions where the fosslc videos have been uploaded will have much better audio and a better view of the slides but no view of the stage/presenter. I assume more of these will be coming in the next week. I just linked all of my videos on the SOTM 2011 wiki page: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/State_Of_The_Map_2011 Enjoy! As for the parts that aren't good enough to be enjoyable... well... you should have come to SOTM in person! :) Toby On Sun, Sep 11, 2011 at 10:45 AM, Toby Murray wrote: > I went through last night and reworked the video names and > descriptions on the recorded videos a bit. Some of them had default > descriptions and such. I think I am going to set a 3G data usage > record this month. :) > > Yay for unlimited plans. > > Toby > > On Fri, Sep 9, 2011 at 10:47 AM, Toby Murray wrote: >> So I brought a webcam to SOTM. I am broadcasting on ustream. Unfortunately >> my poor netbook doesn't have the CPU to do things very well so the video is >> kind of worthless but I hear the audio is good. And there are ads. But if >> you want to follow along... >> >> http://www.ustream.tv/channel/KSUToebee >> >> Toby > ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Barriers of Entry
I very much like Ian's idea. Coincidentally I talked about this with some people at SotM. It seems to me that a number of people have started editing osm after a significant delay because they've felt the barriers badly (both regarding tools and technical creation of the map as well as fear of breaking the data). I remember these fears / issues being one cause for my delayed start to contributing to osm. Now, what if we had a more or less obviously "optional" (opt-out) graduated access scheme? What if we simply required the promise of users to say that "I know how to edit this & that feature", "Sure I understand what tertiary roads are over unclassified/residential -- and I promise not to tag all roads I edit with tertiary!", "I'll definitely look into empty nodes history before deleting them to make sure that no one has deleted the tags by accident", or "Of course I won't mess up the coastline". Etc. What if we simply trusted that people can recognize when they are able to do certain types of "more difficult" edits? There could also be an "I'd love it if someone more experienced (or self-confident) could double check that my edits are ok before they get submitted to the live database!" option. Since there were multiple people at SotM who think they would have started editing sooner than they ended up doing I'm wondering how many people there r out there that have signed up but have never made an edit that could already have made edits if we would have such options in place? I'm also pretty confident that such options, even when set to be voluntary, could reduce some common quality problems. Cheers from Haiti (which I think would benefit from some of the above mentioned options), jaakkoh Sent from my BlackBerry® device from Digicel -- Mobile: +509-37-26 91 54, Skype/GoogleTalk: jhelleranta -Original Message- From: Ian Sergeant Date: Thu, 15 Sep 2011 09:02:08 To: ce-test, qualified testing bv - Gert Gremmen Cc: Talk Openstreetmap Subject: Re: [OSM-talk] Barriers of Entry ___ 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] Barriers of Entry
"Gert Gremmen" wrote on 15/09/2011 04:43:43 AM: > I am not sure yet on what to do with such edits when > detected yet, but what the heck, we are thousands to find a solution Sounds like a problem that may be solved by some kind of graduated access scheme. Anyone can sign up and add a POI to the map, or add information to an existing object (add an address, add a bus stop, bakery, or oneway annotation). At the next grade threshold, you can alter existing information. (change a way type, change a oneway annotation, etc). At the next grade threshold, you can free to move, delete, etc. Throw in a close link to openstreetbugs, so people can report what they can't change. No protection against the malicious user intent on doing damage and with time on their hands, but it is a way of allowing access to the easy stuff to all, and everything to those prepared to spend a little time to understand what is involved. If the API enforces the policy, then front end editors can deal with it as they will, and the oneway competition, or address quiz are still possibilities. Of course how people progress to the next grade would be an interesting system to devise. Perhaps a multiple choice quiz comparing wiki voting to tagwatch? :-) Ian.___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Barriers of Entry
+1 Serge I do not think that the experts (read : experienced) OSM such as Frederik, SteveC and many others including myself have the skills to actually fine tune OSM to new users. We know too much details, are too involved and probably too worried about misuse, data soup (yes me too) and too caring about "our data". (That mechanism is also debit to the License problems and the troubles around it: other topic) Regarding the quality of data, I suggest strongly that a number of different software editors get developed, each targeted to a specific data source (or user classifying himself as so). A bar/café/restaurant POI editor - yes as simple as that- allowing people that recently visited a restaurant, are a restaurant owner or just live in front of it to enter it accordingly to the map. Approximate place, name and type of food is something that almost anyone can do, no entry barrier required. These new users probably are not interested in all OSM tagging subtleties, but there first successful entrance of a POI will trigger more to come , and possibly the interest in OSM and ultimately the fine art of cartography (other editors.) Furthermore I believe that some heuristic software (server side?) should monitor edits for probability. An entire block of streets shifting for more then 100 meters is such an unlikely wanted edit. So is a road crossing another road of the same type (without node!). Such software would capture a lot of edit mistakes. Ultimately it should be such intelligent software that a user actually needs a lot of OSM skills to be able to actually create data soup. I am not sure yet on what to do with such edits when detected yet, but what the heck, we are thousands to find a solution Gert -Oorspronkelijk bericht- Van: Serge Wroclawski [mailto:emac...@gmail.com] Verzonden: woensdag 14 september 2011 20:08 Aan: Frederik Ramm CC: Talk Openstreetmap Onderwerp: Re: [OSM-talk] Barriers of Entry I respectfully disagree with most of your email, comments inline: On Wed, Sep 14, 2011 at 3:24 AM, Frederik Ramm wrote: > Hi, > There are barriers of > entry in the form of entrance exams at places like universities, with the > aim of assessing the likelihood of someone succeeding in their studies. I have a bit of contention with this but I'll accept the fact that there is a correlation between entrance exams and academic success, but I will rebut this premise later in the mail. > And > of course there are job interviews, where employers sometimes raise the > barrier of entry so high that only one in 1000 can pass. This is a simple premise that can be rebutted in this context. The issue of an employer is that of limited resources. When the resources are large and free, the problems become different. > Barriers of entry are not always a bad thing; they might keep you and from > entering a tunnel for which your vehicle is too wide, or they might make it > less likely for you to spend years at university with little chance to earn > a degree. The argument that a university should have entrance exams to keep people out in order to prevent them from failing out has firstly, a misunderstanding of the education system, and a misunderstanding of education in general. For discussions of universities, I can only speak about the US. In the US, institutions do have cutoffs for entrance, and will drop the students they don't feel would "make the cut", but they do not then automatically take the top N highest percent. What they do instead is to look for a wide diversity in the students, with the intent that a university provides oppotunity to a great number of students, and the understanding that diversity builds strength. Maybe this is different in Europe, but in the US, this is how things are. Now I want to address testing in general, and why testing itself is flawed, especially in how it relates to OSM (since this is where the mail ultimately leads. The purpose of education is to educate, and to "build citizens", not merely blast knowledge out and see who catches it. This is why we are seeing programs which test different teaching methods, which show that through different ways of approaching the material, we see different results. Studies are showing that by using some teaching methods, those students who did poorly previously now excel. Knowing this to be true, educators can reform the curriculum to be effective to different groups. How this relates to OSM later on in the mail. > In OpenStreetMap, people sometimes point to our barriers of entry and > blindly claim that they must be bad for us. The main page not welcoming > enough, the editor too difficult, the path to signup too cumbersome, and on > and on. Some "barriers to entry" are not barriers to entry, but just barriers. Using your analogy of a school, if we have a school where all students walk to school, perhaps we should not place this school on the top of a mountain. Similarly if the front page is unfriendly, we sh
Re: [OSM-talk] Barriers of Entry
Hi, On 09/14/2011 08:07 PM, Serge Wroclawski wrote: "I'm concerned about uneducated newbies messing up OSM, so we need ways to prevent that." Hm, not really. My post was actually aiming at those who *without further thinking* claim that tearing down barriers was always a good thing. If you thoroughly analyze the situation and come to the conclusion that there's a group of people who have the means, the brains, and the willingness to make a valuable contribution but there's a certain barrier that keeps them from doing so, then of course it is good to remove that barrier. (And of course, as someone else said, removing the barrier could also mean leaving the barrier itself in place but giving people the help or information they need to cross it.) What I was mainly arguing against is the idea that everyone can make a positive contribution if only we get them to (a) learn of OSM, (b) sign up and (c) fire up Potlatch or JOSM. There are many people who will not be able to make a contribution even then, and even if we give them your videos and a nice Potlatch tutorial. And it is *better* to provide adequate information upfront, so that these people decide for themselves that OSM is maybe not for them, than to lure them into OSM with promises of simplicity that evaporate as soon as they click the mouse. All I'm asking for is for the project to present itself honestly; to announce on the packaging what you find inside. 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] Barriers of Entry
I respectfully disagree with most of your email, comments inline: On Wed, Sep 14, 2011 at 3:24 AM, Frederik Ramm wrote: > Hi, > There are barriers of > entry in the form of entrance exams at places like universities, with the > aim of assessing the likelihood of someone succeeding in their studies. I have a bit of contention with this but I'll accept the fact that there is a correlation between entrance exams and academic success, but I will rebut this premise later in the mail. > And > of course there are job interviews, where employers sometimes raise the > barrier of entry so high that only one in 1000 can pass. This is a simple premise that can be rebutted in this context. The issue of an employer is that of limited resources. When the resources are large and free, the problems become different. > Barriers of entry are not always a bad thing; they might keep you and from > entering a tunnel for which your vehicle is too wide, or they might make it > less likely for you to spend years at university with little chance to earn > a degree. The argument that a university should have entrance exams to keep people out in order to prevent them from failing out has firstly, a misunderstanding of the education system, and a misunderstanding of education in general. For discussions of universities, I can only speak about the US. In the US, institutions do have cutoffs for entrance, and will drop the students they don't feel would "make the cut", but they do not then automatically take the top N highest percent. What they do instead is to look for a wide diversity in the students, with the intent that a university provides oppotunity to a great number of students, and the understanding that diversity builds strength. Maybe this is different in Europe, but in the US, this is how things are. Now I want to address testing in general, and why testing itself is flawed, especially in how it relates to OSM (since this is where the mail ultimately leads. The purpose of education is to educate, and to "build citizens", not merely blast knowledge out and see who catches it. This is why we are seeing programs which test different teaching methods, which show that through different ways of approaching the material, we see different results. Studies are showing that by using some teaching methods, those students who did poorly previously now excel. Knowing this to be true, educators can reform the curriculum to be effective to different groups. How this relates to OSM later on in the mail. > In OpenStreetMap, people sometimes point to our barriers of entry and > blindly claim that they must be bad for us. The main page not welcoming > enough, the editor too difficult, the path to signup too cumbersome, and on > and on. Some "barriers to entry" are not barriers to entry, but just barriers. Using your analogy of a school, if we have a school where all students walk to school, perhaps we should not place this school on the top of a mountain. Similarly if the front page is unfriendly, we should not say "Ah, well that's the cost you pay for trying to use OSM", but rather work with people to fix it. > Now some of this might be true and I don't want to keep people from > improving the overall OSM user experience. This seems like you know your argument is faulty and reacting accordingly. > However one has to keep in mind that what we're doing here is, and will > always be, more complex than, say, taking your dog for a walk. It depends on the task. Let's take the example of not walking your dog, but baking a cake. If I said to you "Bake a cake", you could perhaps do it. It might require some instruction, but chances are you could do it. Now let's say that you had to start from scratch. That means you need to grow your own wheat, mill it, raise your own chickens, harvest and process the sugar, etc. Baking a cake is hard! But we don't do that. We simplify parts of the task which aren't essential to the task itself. And some people even use cake mix, further reducing the work required in baking a cake. Some geographic tasks are hard, but we can simplify them to the components that people need to focus on, and make them easy. Examples can be provided upon request. > For OpenStreetMap, we don't gain anything from making it look like > participating in OSM was the easiest thing in the world. You have to possess > some skills, and you have to be willing to engage with other people, or else > your contribution is unlikely to be pleasant for you or the project. I feel like this is a reaction to something that you're not pointing out except in the abstract. Who will argue against community involvement? Not me. But I may say that not every OSMer needs to be participating on the tagging list, and can safely use the builtins in their editor. > Taking > part in OpenStreetMap requires more sophistication than, say, tweeting about > where you're having dinner. I think a Foursquare-type app would be very useful. It w
Re: [OSM-talk] Barriers of Entry
Barriers to entry are good when they prevent us from doing some thing bad. On Wed, Sep 14, 2011 at 9:24 AM, Frederik Ramm wrote: > Hi, > > there are many different types of barriers. There are of course those we > tag with "barrier", the physical ones. They are used to keep unwanted, > unauthorized or unsuitable people or vehicles out. Congestion e.g. blocking walkways or cycleways is bad. Pollution is bad. There are barriers of entry in the form of entrance exams at places like > universities, with the aim of assessing the likelihood of someone succeeding > in their studies. Students keeping the professors busy with the school curriculum is bad. Students dropping out with large amounts of debt is bad. And of course there are job interviews, where employers sometimes raise the > barrier of entry so high that only one in 1000 can pass. > Paying someone more than they are producing is bad. Firing someone is often expensive and disruptive. > In OpenStreetMap, people sometimes point to our barriers of entry and > blindly claim that they must be bad for us. The main page not welcoming > enough, the editor too difficult, the path to signup too cumbersome, and on > and on. > If a newbie tries to change something and makes a mess (1), it's only a bad thing if it's difficult to spot the mistake(2) and revert it (3). The only important thing is that (2) and (3) must be much easier than (1). We don't need "barriers to entry". ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
[OSM-talk] SOTM blog collection
can someone post all the blog links here on their SOTM posts ? Its sad that I can't find any in http://www.openstreetmap.org/diary Regards, Pavithran -- pavithran sakamuri http://look-pavi.blogspot.com ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Barriers of Entry
Hi, On 14.09.2011 09:24, Frederik Ramm wrote: Barriers of entry are good if they accurately reflect the demands that lie further down the road. A barrier that prohibits 3m wide vehicles from entering a tunnel that will narrow down to less than 3m in the middle is not an arbitrary restriction that should be torn down but something that helps everyone. Weird picture. Vehicles have fixed widths, whereas OSM users have the ability to learn and to adopt to the demands that come up during the process. For OpenStreetMap, we don't gain anything from making it look like participating in OSM was the easiest thing in the world. You have to possess some skills, --> you have to have the willingness to acquire some skills. The current situation seems to be that only those highly ambitious and tireless people have a chance to become involved persistently. I think lower entry barriers could attract some very good people that would now turn away from the project after three hours of effortless fiddling and digging around. cheers ant ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Barriers of Entry
There's no difference between someone who goes through the traditional signup process and messes up the data VS someone coming in via a Facebook login or the "Friendly page" and messes up the data. It's only a question of scale - do we pick up enough quality users from convenient logins to make it worth the trouble? Perhaps barriers are good for regions that are already saturated with mappers. On 9/14/2011 4:02 AM, Peter Wendorff wrote: I agree, that full-feature-editors (comparable e.g. with JOSM) are not possible to use without skills (or they are dangerous to harm the database because of users not knowing what they do). But an "address completion editor", where it's easy to fill in post codes, streetnames and housenumbers could be useful - easy to use and less error prone. +1 Customized editors such as the Skobbler "Address Game" can solicit input from those would not otherwise be interested in learning all the details. Similarly, a "one-way street editor" which allows anyone to verify and correct all the one-way streets that they know about would be a candidate for mass participation. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Barriers of Entry
Hi Frederik +0.5 to your thoughts. On the one hand, yes, I agree: We should not aim to make OSM look like not needing any skills, but on the other hand there are in fact parts of OSM where help with not much more skills than "taking a dog for a walk" is possible. That is not necessarily the map database itself. But in reporting bugs via e.g. OSB (at least partly) I see one possible source of help. Specialised Editors to complete particular tasks, that need not much efford, could be another one. I agree, that full-feature-editors (comparable e.g. with JOSM) are not possible to use without skills (or they are dangerous to harm the database because of users not knowing what they do). But an "address completion editor", where it's easy to fill in post codes, streetnames and housenumbers could be useful - easy to use and less error prone. It's true: Users need skills to participate (further) in OSM. But if we don't want to only have technophile people with computer skills, we have to motivate less skilled people to learn more. regards Peter Am 14.09.2011 09:24, schrieb Frederik Ramm: Hi, there are many different types of barriers. There are of course those we tag with "barrier", the physical ones. They are used to keep unwanted, unauthorized or unsuitable people or vehicles out. There are barriers of entry in the form of entrance exams at places like universities, with the aim of assessing the likelihood of someone succeeding in their studies. And of course there are job interviews, where employers sometimes raise the barrier of entry so high that only one in 1000 can pass. Barriers of entry are not always a bad thing; they might keep you and from entering a tunnel for which your vehicle is too wide, or they might make it less likely for you to spend years at university with little chance to earn a degree. In OpenStreetMap, people sometimes point to our barriers of entry and blindly claim that they must be bad for us. The main page not welcoming enough, the editor too difficult, the path to signup too cumbersome, and on and on. Now some of this might be true and I don't want to keep people from improving the overall OSM user experience. However one has to keep in mind that what we're doing here is, and will always be, more complex than, say, taking your dog for a walk. Making a map does require a certain amount of abstract thinking, and of being able to picture things in your mind. Taking part in OSM does require a certain willingness to engage with a community; OSM is not for loners. And so on. Barriers of entry are good if they accurately reflect the demands that lie further down the road. A barrier that prohibits 3m wide vehicles from entering a tunnel that will narrow down to less than 3m in the middle is not an arbitrary restriction that should be torn down but something that helps everyone. For OpenStreetMap, we don't gain anything from making it look like participating in OSM was the easiest thing in the world. You have to possess some skills, and you have to be willing to engage with other people, or else your contribution is unlikely to be pleasant for you or the project. Taking part in OpenStreetMap requires more sophistication than, say, tweeting about where you're having dinner. We must keep that in mind. I think it works reasonably well at the moment, more or less by accident. OSMers are very self-selected, you don't stumble across OSM (and much less the signup page) unless you invest at least a little effort in looking. But this might change if we have more exposure in the future. If we think about design and user friendliness, abolishing barriers of entry unquestioningly would do us a huge disservice and only lead to frustration on all sides. A barrier of entry that discourages those who unlikely to make an edit without breaking 10 things, or those who can make an edit but are unlikely to answer a question from another community member about it, could be a healthy barrier. Before someone misunderstands that, I'm not saying we should introduce some kind of entry exams or so. Anyone who wants to participate should be allowed to. But it should not be our aim to make the whole world want to participate because only a fraction of them can. Bye Frederik ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
[OSM-talk] Barriers of Entry
Hi, there are many different types of barriers. There are of course those we tag with "barrier", the physical ones. They are used to keep unwanted, unauthorized or unsuitable people or vehicles out. There are barriers of entry in the form of entrance exams at places like universities, with the aim of assessing the likelihood of someone succeeding in their studies. And of course there are job interviews, where employers sometimes raise the barrier of entry so high that only one in 1000 can pass. Barriers of entry are not always a bad thing; they might keep you and from entering a tunnel for which your vehicle is too wide, or they might make it less likely for you to spend years at university with little chance to earn a degree. In OpenStreetMap, people sometimes point to our barriers of entry and blindly claim that they must be bad for us. The main page not welcoming enough, the editor too difficult, the path to signup too cumbersome, and on and on. Now some of this might be true and I don't want to keep people from improving the overall OSM user experience. However one has to keep in mind that what we're doing here is, and will always be, more complex than, say, taking your dog for a walk. Making a map does require a certain amount of abstract thinking, and of being able to picture things in your mind. Taking part in OSM does require a certain willingness to engage with a community; OSM is not for loners. And so on. Barriers of entry are good if they accurately reflect the demands that lie further down the road. A barrier that prohibits 3m wide vehicles from entering a tunnel that will narrow down to less than 3m in the middle is not an arbitrary restriction that should be torn down but something that helps everyone. For OpenStreetMap, we don't gain anything from making it look like participating in OSM was the easiest thing in the world. You have to possess some skills, and you have to be willing to engage with other people, or else your contribution is unlikely to be pleasant for you or the project. Taking part in OpenStreetMap requires more sophistication than, say, tweeting about where you're having dinner. We must keep that in mind. I think it works reasonably well at the moment, more or less by accident. OSMers are very self-selected, you don't stumble across OSM (and much less the signup page) unless you invest at least a little effort in looking. But this might change if we have more exposure in the future. If we think about design and user friendliness, abolishing barriers of entry unquestioningly would do us a huge disservice and only lead to frustration on all sides. A barrier of entry that discourages those who unlikely to make an edit without breaking 10 things, or those who can make an edit but are unlikely to answer a question from another community member about it, could be a healthy barrier. Before someone misunderstands that, I'm not saying we should introduce some kind of entry exams or so. Anyone who wants to participate should be allowed to. But it should not be our aim to make the whole world want to participate because only a fraction of them can. Bye Frederik ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
