Re: [OSM-talk] Thoughts on OSM design, and looking forward and back
Hi I'm !i! by the way I'm one new admin of our uservoice service. regards Matthias ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Thoughts on OSM design, and looking forward and back
On 24/02/2010 00:02, SteveC wrote: UserVoice is a neat feedback-as-a-service website which lets anyone put a feedback tab on their site and collect user views on what should be fixed/added. Sounds useful. I haven't seen such a feedback tab on the OpenStreetMap site though - is there one? Sorry, I probably ought to take my newbie questions to a different group. -- Steve ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Thoughts on OSM design, and looking forward and back
Nick Whitelegg wrote: I ran a mapping party in Fareham, Hampshire, UK in which three newbies came, back at the start of November. These three newbies, who were reasonably adept at using computers but not geeks, if you get what I mean, were able to successfully use JOSM - something harder than Potlatch, perhaps - to add street names to unnamed streets in Fareham. So I'm not sure that either editor is that hard to use given a proper demonstration. Nick Nick, The users that you mention as an example, have already made an initial commitment to OSM by even being at a mapping party. The people I'm thinking of are those who haven't had, nor are likely to have the opportunity for that type of initial experience. In the US, propably 90%+ of the area (although granted not 90% of the mappable objects) are in areas where there are no active user organizations, or possibly any current active mappers. Potential newbies need to see something that will tweak their interest, and that they can interact with from a cold start, with no human assistance, probably based on a defect/omission that they have seen in OSM or one of the commercial maps. I'm not sure if anyone is thinking along the lines of allowing a user to immediately make changes, without signing up for an account. There are pros and cons to that. I'm neutral on the issue, as long as proper precautions are taken. If the capability to make changes without an account were provided, then I certainy agree that the edits should be limited to only adding POIs and street names. Even changing names shouldn't be allowed, since that opens the vandalism can of worms much more. And, if the changes are anonimous (i.e., without an account), they should include a unique newbie user tag, so that any time an experienced user wants to take a look at the newbie changes to see if a vandal has been at work, it will be easy to do. And, reversion of changes under that tag, should require minimum coordination. If an account is required, then I think providing something like a dumbed down Potlatch would be more appropriate. I really do believe that a simple clean interface to making changes at the next level, whatever that is, would be appropriate. Obviously the allowed features list is debatable. I would like to see a little more than Roy wants, but significantly less than full Potlatch. I'm sure there are many different opinions, all with some level of validity. And, I think I agree with Roy to some extent, in that it would be better to err on the lower capability side than the higher to start with. If experience shows that the initial level of capabability is not leading to significant mapping problems, and the newbies think it is too restrictive, then adding a considered increment in capability would be merited. That is one advantage of basing the limited editor on a full fledged editor. It would be easier to shift capability from one level to the other, in either direction. I have to admit that I only took a cursory look at an early Potlatch 2 development, but will certainly give it another look. I typically use JOSM. Probably because I just feel more confortable working off line, and the variety of plug-ins attracts me. But, I do use Potlatch occasionally for doing the quick simple things that are rarely much more than I think appropriate for the intermediate newbie. With some optional interactive instructions (you have placed that way node on or near another way, should they be connected?). I think Potlatch's templates could easily be used in a restrictive manner that only allows a limited selectable subset of attributes with no free text entry, except for names. Yes, I agree with whoever suggested it (Liz?) that a wiki for allowed newbie features and other design suggestions would be a great idea. There have been some good ideas thrown out, and it's too hard to capture and organize them in talk. (Hmm. My talk messages continue to be way too long!) -- Randy ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Thoughts on OSM design, and looking forward and back
Roy Wallace wrote: On Fri, Feb 26, 2010 at 11:28 PM, Gervase Markham gerv-gm...@gerv.net wrote: ... I suggest that the way to get people involved is to have them see the map, and use the map for the things they would otherwise use Google Maps for, and then have the thought process That's wrong. Hey - I could fix it!. Yes, or more accurately: That's wrong. Hey - I could fix it - *and then use it*! Precisely my thought! -- Randy ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Thoughts on OSM design, and looking forward and back
When I originally signed up I found the whole thing a tad daunting and overwhelming originally, nothing was very clear about what it was I was supposed to be doing, beyond fixing simple mistakes, or how to use GPS traces to enter data that wasn't available from imagery. I'd just like to make a comment on this newbie thing, having only just picked up on this thread. I ran a mapping party in Fareham, Hampshire, UK in which three newbies came, back at the start of November. These three newbies, who were reasonably adept at using computers but not geeks, if you get what I mean, were able to successfully use JOSM - something harder than Potlatch, perhaps - to add street names to unnamed streets in Fareham. So I'm not sure that either editor is *that* hard to use given a proper demonstration. My own feeling is that the average newbie is more likely to want to contribute POIs or name roads than add completely new data. So maybe something which allows users to easily do that would be ideal. This requires more server side intelligence though... for example, the server needs to auto-detect if someone tries to add a POI with the same name and type within a certain distance of an already-existing POI, and reject it if so. If this was the case, then simple, lightweight AJAX-based editors, more restricted than Potlatch or JOSM but optimised for these sorts of tasks, could be built. Nick ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Thoughts on OSM design, and looking forward and back
On 26 February 2010 20:31, Nick Whitelegg nick.whitel...@solent.ac.uk wrote: This requires more server side intelligence though... for example, the server needs to auto-detect if someone tries to add a POI with the same name and type within a certain distance of an already-existing POI, and reject it if so. If this was the case, then simple, lightweight AJAX-based editors, more restricted than Potlatch or JOSM but optimised for these sorts of tasks, could be built. This kind of limitation could be difficult to enforce, I often see fuel stations on corners across from each other, and in one case I saw the same branded location opposite of each other. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Thoughts on OSM design, and looking forward and back
On Wed, Feb 24, 2010 at 11:07 AM, SteveC st...@asklater.com wrote: ...or figuring out how to attract more flash coders. Speaking for myself, I didn't know there were opportunities to work on PL2. A few more obvious mentions around the place that developers are required, with a short list of interesting tasks to work on, would be a start. Steve ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Thoughts on OSM design, and looking forward and back
On Fri, Feb 26, 2010 at 12:47 PM, Steve Bennett stevag...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Feb 24, 2010 at 11:07 AM, SteveC st...@asklater.com wrote: ...or figuring out how to attract more flash coders. Speaking for myself, I didn't know there were opportunities to work on PL2. A few more obvious mentions around the place that developers are required, with a short list of interesting tasks to work on, would be a start. There have been a number of posts to dev on the subject, sorry you missed them. If you want to get involved then that's great. You can see the code here and check it out of SVN: http://trac.openstreetmap.org/browser/applications/editors/potlatch2/ The readme should help you get set up and the TODO file has a bunch of things that need doing in it. There's also a potlatch-dev list if you want to sign up to that to get any help or discuss directions. Dave ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Thoughts on OSM design, and looking forward and back
On 23/02/10 23:42, SteveC wrote: You don't seem to make any realistic suggestions for moving forward and just, instead, suggest potlatch is fine as is the front page. That doesn't seem to be in touch with the reality of every newbie who encounters the project, does it? Steve: There's an enormous difference between disagreeing with the points you make, and objecting to how you make them. When I was little, I was generally rude and abrasive. I remember saying tearfully to one of my teachers why can't people just listen to what I say and ignore how I'm saying it?. But the world doesn't work like that. People are people, not computers. Sure, you don't like the way I communicate sometimes but do you have any ideas at all on improving things other than the status quo and pissing on someone for doing anything? Steve: Everything is a load of %$%£$ Andy: It's not good to go around insulting everyone. Steve: Haven't you got any constructive suggestions? Non-sequitur. On that point, I suppose I could write a big flowery essay on how awesome everyone is, Straw man. Gerv ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Thoughts on OSM design, and looking forward and back
On 24/02/10 17:19, Tom Hughes wrote: I completely disagree. We're running a project to map the world, not a project to provide an end user site to compete with google maps. I claim false dichotomy. With code, the best way to hook someone into your project is to make it super-easy to get the code, make it work, make a change and then _see_the_change_ in their copy. (This is why it's easier to get involved in a scripting-language project with no dependencies than with something which requires a 1-hour compilation phase and 17 libraries - and more people do.) Similarly, with OSM, I suggest that the way to get people involved is to have them see the map, and use the map for the things they would otherwise use Google Maps for, and _then_ have the thought process That's wrong. Hey - I could fix it!. Gerv ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Thoughts on OSM design, and looking forward and back
On Fri, Feb 26, 2010 at 11:28 PM, Gervase Markham gerv-gm...@gerv.net wrote: ... I suggest that the way to get people involved is to have them see the map, and use the map for the things they would otherwise use Google Maps for, and _then_ have the thought process That's wrong. Hey - I could fix it!. Yes, or more accurately: That's wrong. Hey - I could fix it - *and then use it*! ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Thoughts on OSM design, and looking forward - and back
I have not followed the entire discussion but I think that Vic Morgan view is very synthetic and interesting. I'll just add a couple of questions: - How much is the ratio Contributors / users in Wikipedia ? - How much is it in OSM ? Vincent -Message d'origine- De : talk-boun...@openstreetmap.org [mailto:talk-boun...@openstreetmap.org] De la part de Vic Morgan Envoyé : jeudi 25 février 2010 00:31 À : talk@openstreetmap.org Objet : Re: [OSM-talk] Thoughts on OSM design, and looking forward - and back I just thought that you'd like the opinion of a (not so) newbie in this intense discussion. In order to attract people (potential mappers) to the site it has to offer something back - it has to have functionality. Not functionality to the mapper - Potlatch is quite adequate for my level of expertise - but both a reason and a reward for taking an interest in OSM. I'd suggest that some of this functionality could be provided by links to a couple of recently mentioned sites, and probably others; 1. Openrouteservice.org This is a clear demonstration of how the OSM data can be used to provide a useful service to the user. It's a usable and useful tool, and as an added bonus readily demonstrates any weaknesses in local OSM data. 2. Maposmatic.org Anyone visiting OSM will have an interest in getting a map of some description. Ordinary punters will have no interest whatsoever in rendering - all they want is a map. Maposmatic provides just that, without bogging the user down in technical detail. Between them these two sites offer the rewards that might just tempt people into contributing to the OSM project because they can connect data gathering with an end-product, without inviting the user to undertake an instant course in half-a-dozen arcane IT subjects. So my message is - add functionality and usability to the OSM entry point by linking to usable, useful sites. Why else would they want to visit the site? If the site is genuinely useful, and perhaps inspiring, they'll come again and may start to contribute. Once they are 'hooked' you can expose them to appalling mire of the OSM Wiki and so-called help pages. By then they may have the inspiration to plough through it all to satisfy their own particular needs. UrbanRambler. ___ 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] Thoughts on OSM design, and looking forward - and back
Vic Morgan wrote: I just thought that you'd like the opinion of a (not so) newbie in this intense discussion. In order to attract people (potential mappers) to the site it has to offer something back - it has to have functionality. Not functionality to the mapper - Potlatch is quite adequate for my level of expertise - but both a reason and a reward for taking an interest in OSM. I'd suggest that some of this functionality could be provided by links to a couple of recently mentioned sites, and probably others; 1. Openrouteservice.org This is a clear demonstration of how the OSM data can be used to provide a useful service to the user. It's a usable and useful tool, and as an added bonus readily demonstrates any weaknesses in local OSM data. 2. Maposmatic.org Anyone visiting OSM will have an interest in getting a map of some description. Ordinary punters will have no interest whatsoever in rendering - all they want is a map. Maposmatic provides just that, without bogging the user down in technical detail. Between them these two sites offer the rewards that might just tempt people into contributing to the OSM project because they can connect data gathering with an end-product, without inviting the user to undertake an instant course in half-a-dozen arcane IT subjects. So my message is - add functionality and usability to the OSM entry point by linking to usable, useful sites. Why else would they want to visit the site? If the site is genuinely useful, and perhaps inspiring, they'll come again and may start to contribute. Once they are 'hooked' you can expose them to appalling mire of the OSM Wiki and so-called help pages. By then they may have the inspiration to plough through it all to satisfy their own particular needs. UrbanRambler. I think Vic has very nearly placed his finger on the issue. Many of the older OSMers are deeply entrenched in the ideology of OSM is not a map, but a database of the world and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. But, this approach is only useful to a second tier of developers, such as the Cloudmades of the world who take the data and create useful products from it. There is a certain class of people, i.e. many of those on this list, for whom collecting the data is in and of itself an intriguing and useful activity. However, I am not really one of those. I came to OSM, because I was tired of the crappy maps, either out of date or in error, that were available for my areas of interest and I was told about this project that would let me actually fix the maps myself. I suspect the casual OSM visitors, hopefully users, hopefully contributors, initially get to the website for about the same reason. There needs to be something to immediately engage these casual visitors and draw them in. In my opinion what the casual visitor needs to see is emphasis on a top notch map rendering (and I'm not saying that Mapnik is not), along with a usable navigator. That is the bare minimum that the competition has to offer. This is necessary to engage the user at all, otherwise the impression will be, Oh, this is an interesting project, I hope they make something useful out of it some day. Now that you have engaged them you make it clear that while they are using the products of the underlying data that are included on the website, if they happen to see something missing, incorrect, or just plane crazy, they have several options for getting it fixed, a) a bug report which some volunteer may some day act on, b) a very simplified editor for simple fixes so that they can fix it immediately themselves, c) a set of more robust editors that, if they are interested they can learn about in order to create and correct some of the more complex objects. In my opinion, the map, the navigation function, the simple editor, a simple tutorial, and possibly a couple of pushbuttons that would show different styles, etc., for a little flare, are all that should be emphasized on the home page. This is what is needed for initial enticement. Of course, links to other pages, such as What is OSM really all about, how to do more complex editing, etc. should be clearly available. In my opinion, this is the way to engage new users, some, if not many of whom will become casual contributors, some of whom will be hooked into becoming major contributors, some of whom will become major flame war contributors :-]. It needs to be a graduated process so that the transition from visitor, to user, to contributor, to major contibutor can be made in comfortable steps, none of which will leave the person feeling totally lost with the process, and each of which will entice one step further. Granted there are realities along the way, tagging ambiguities, for example, that prevent this ideal. But if the user is able to enter the process in an orderly manner, the snags along the way won't be offputting to the point that they say This is not for me, but either continue to develop
Re: [OSM-talk] Thoughts on OSM design, and looking forward and back
On Thu, 25 Feb 2010, SteveC wrote: This is starting to get silly that everyone else can have a free for all which I largely ignore, but if I legitimatly call someone out, even in negative tones, thats a crime of the highest order and not only that you don't even go check that i apologised already! I advise, from my professional role, that you learn how to criticise without involving the individual personally, and that you learn to separate your anger from your replies. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Thoughts on OSM design, and looking forward - and back
On -10/01/37 20:59, Randy wrote: Vic Morgan wrote: ... I think Vic has very nearly placed his finger on the issue. Many of the older OSMers are deeply entrenched in the ideology of OSM is not a map, but a database of the world and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. But, this approach is only useful to a second tier of developers, such as the Cloudmades of the world who take the data and create useful products from it. There is a certain class of people, i.e. many of those on this list, for whom collecting the data is in and of itself an intriguing and useful activity. However, I am not really one of those. I came to OSM, because I was tired of the crappy maps, either out of date or in error, that were available for my areas of interest and I was told about this project that would let me actually fix the maps myself. I suspect the casual OSM visitors, hopefully users, hopefully contributors, initially get to the website for about the same reason. There needs to be something to immediately engage these casual visitors and draw them in. I too think that Vic and Randy have some valid points. Perhaps (and without numbers it remains speculation), an even bigger usability problem to the casual newbie than the difficult to use editors and particularly the layout of the main page, is the usability of the data. I.e. what can they actually do with OpenStreetMap data? Why, other than idealistic reasons, should they contribute to OpenStreetMap? Many people will work for free, as in without money. But few people are truly altruistic, i.e work with out expecting some form of reward. So we need to offer them something. If we want to attract Geeks, Cartographers, GIS professionals and programmers as mappers, then vector data is just fine as a reward. If we want to attract Joe the plumber, and I think we do, then most likely we need to offer him something else that he actually finds useful. If there is a good enough reason to contribute, then there are sufficient number of newbies who will get through the main page or editor usability issues. Wikipedia, I think is a good example for that. It is the 6th biggest site on the entire internet and has collected vast amounts of knowledge with a large number of non-techy people contributing to it. Never-the-less their usability sucks, as SteveC would put it so friendly. Think about all those various combinations of double and triple brackets, nested templates, stars, equal signs and what else that has been arbitrarily mapped onto markup meanings. OpenStreetMap's editor usability and tagging system can't be that much worse. Yet loads of people contribute to it. Possibly because end users find it a valuable resource and end users see a reason to put in all this effort to jump and climb over the barrier of entry to get to the party... Given, that I too see OpenStreetMap _primarily_ as a map data provider and not a mapping site, I don't think all of the end user functionality necessarily has to be in house (although probably more than we have at the moment). But it has to be reached very easily and quickly by new people and not strewed arbitrarily and difficult to find on hundreds of different servers. The Openstreetmap.de Schaufenster ( http://www.openstreetmap.de/schaufenster/index.html ) I think is a good starting point for that. In many ways, we do indeed already have a lot of the necessary end user tools. Like the garmin maps, like the various routing providers, like the examples of how to embed OSM into your own website, like navigation tools for many other mobile platforms, useful utilities somewhere in our SVN repository... What we probably are lacking is a good integrated experience so that newbies can find these resources, start using OSM data and eventually they will hopefully become mappers if they notice issues in the data while using it. All that said, I am definitely not saying we don't have a need or shouldn't improve our editing tools to lower the barrier of entry. There is definitely room and need for improvement, but perhaps we shouldn't forget this other side of usability as an additional option. Kai P.S. one thing that has to be kept in mind though if we would push additionally more towards an end user site, is, do we have the technical and financial resources to support that? Running a large end user site requires a lot of resources and we might end up needing a yearly donation drive like Wikipedia. Do we really want to get into that (already)? ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Thoughts on OSM design, and looking forward and back
I have been contributing to OSM for several months, gulping down the Kool Aid. Man, was it sweet and fruity nectar. Lately, this juice is starting to taste really bitter and I am starting to see giant multi-colored spiders in the shadows... I love the idea of OSM, I love mapping my world and worlds that I don't know anything about, but I have to say that the 'OSM community' is not what it first appeared to be. I wouldn't worry about creating newbie editors to bring in new mappers when the banter on the mailing lists is likely to scare them away from making any serious contributions to the map. And, I thought that the OSM TagWankers list was the painful one to read... David. On Thu, Feb 25, 2010 at 2:32 AM, Liz ed...@billiau.net wrote: On Thu, 25 Feb 2010, SteveC wrote: This is starting to get silly that everyone else can have a free for all which I largely ignore, but if I legitimatly call someone out, even in negative tones, thats a crime of the highest order and not only that you don't even go check that i apologised already! I advise, from my professional role, that you learn how to criticise without involving the individual personally, and that you learn to separate your anger from your replies. ___ 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] Thoughts on OSM design, and looking forward - and back
I think I am in the same camp as Kai / Randy / Vic ... I regard myself as not-quite-a-newbie-any-more (i.e. somewhere between Kai's 'Geek' and his 'Joe the Plumber'. I enjoy contributing to OSM as a mapper - both recording the GPX and editing it in JOSM (with not-nearly-so-intuitive-and-often-counter-intuitive Potlatch for quick minor tweaks). I am on a few mailing lists (and sometimes contribute), read bits of the wiki from time to time (and occasionally contribute to it), etc. I mention all this only so that others can judge my comments in context. In (partially) following this thread about OSM design I have in fact discovered several external sites of which I was completely unaware and which are going greatly to add to my fun with / use of OSM e.g. Mapzen and MapOsmatic. Sites like this will also help me 'sell' OSM to friends and colleagues who think I am a bit mad wandering around with a GPS receiver and a digital voice recorder! In fact, all I would suggest - at least as a first (but hugely beneficial) step is putting a bunch of links (and a couple of good maps - one urban and one rural) on the front page. This isn't rocket science but I think it would pay back in spades just as others have argued in this thread. I don't think we need to become more of an end-user site ourselves (and probably should not because of reasons of support etc. and dilution of the primary purpose as a mapping site that accumulates good data). In support of my argument I would cite the recent sterling efforts made by OSM mappers in responding to the Haiti earthquake emergency. Our value was the data we had and could accumulate. But what the end users in the field needed were (mostly) up-to-the-minute maps they could use e.g. on hand-held GPS receivers. We could - and did - provide the data. Other implementations made it available in user-friendly form. This seems about the right model also for less dramatic everyday use. Just my thoughts for what they are worth from a not-quite-a-newbie! mikh43 On 19:59, Kai Krueger wrote: On -10/01/37 20:59, Randy wrote: Vic Morgan wrote: ... I think Vic has very nearly placed his finger on the issue. Many of the older OSMers are deeply entrenched in the ideology of OSM is not a map, but a database of the world and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. But, this approach is only useful to a second tier of developers, such as the Cloudmades of the world who take the data and create useful products from it. There is a certain class of people, i.e. many of those on this list, for whom collecting the data is in and of itself an intriguing and useful activity. However, I am not really one of those. I came to OSM, because I was tired of the crappy maps, either out of date or in error, that were available for my areas of interest and I was told about this project that would let me actually fix the maps myself. I suspect the casual OSM visitors, hopefully users, hopefully contributors, initially get to the website for about the same reason. There needs to be something to immediately engage these casual visitors and draw them in. I too think that Vic and Randy have some valid points. Perhaps (and without numbers it remains speculation), an even bigger usability problem to the casual newbie than the difficult to use editors and particularly the layout of the main page, is the usability of the data. I.e. what can they actually do with OpenStreetMap data? Why, other than idealistic reasons, should they contribute to OpenStreetMap? Many people will work for free, as in without money. But few people are truly altruistic, i.e work with out expecting some form of reward. So we need to offer them something. If we want to attract Geeks, Cartographers, GIS professionals and programmers as mappers, then vector data is just fine as a reward. If we want to attract Joe the plumber, and I think we do, then most likely we need to offer him something else that he actually finds useful. If there is a good enough reason to contribute, then there are sufficient number of newbies who will get through the main page or editor usability issues. Wikipedia, I think is a good example for that. It is the 6th biggest site on the entire internet and has collected vast amounts of knowledge with a large number of non-techy people contributing to it. Never-the-less their usability sucks, as SteveC would put it so friendly. Think about all those various combinations of double and triple brackets, nested templates, stars, equal signs and what else that has been arbitrarily mapped onto markup meanings. OpenStreetMap's editor usability and tagging system can't be that much worse. Yet loads of people contribute to it. Possibly because end users find it a valuable resource and end users see a reason to put in all this effort to jump and climb over the barrier of entry to get to the party... Given, that I too see OpenStreetMap _primarily_ as a map data
Re: [OSM-talk] Thoughts on OSM design, and looking forward - and back
Le 25/02/10 00:31, Vic Morgan a écrit : I just thought that you'd like the opinion of a (not so) newbie in this intense discussion. In order to attract people (potential mappers) to the site it has to offer something back - it has to have functionality. Not functionality to the mapper - Potlatch is quite adequate for my level of expertise - but both a reason and a reward for taking an interest in OSM. I'd suggest that some of this functionality could be provided by links to a couple of recently mentioned sites, and probably others; 1. Openrouteservice.org This is a clear demonstration of how the OSM data can be used to provide a useful service to the user. It's a usable and useful tool, and as an added bonus readily demonstrates any weaknesses in local OSM data. 2. Maposmatic.org Anyone visiting OSM will have an interest in getting a map of some description. Ordinary punters will have no interest whatsoever in rendering - all they want is a map. Maposmatic provides just that, without bogging the user down in technical detail. Between them these two sites offer the rewards that might just tempt people into contributing to the OSM project because they can connect data gathering with an end-product, without inviting the user to undertake an instant course in half-a-dozen arcane IT subjects. So my message is - add functionality and usability to the OSM entry point by linking to usable, useful sites. Why else would they want to visit the site? If the site is genuinely useful, and perhaps inspiring, they'll come again and may start to contribute. Once they are 'hooked' you can expose them to appalling mire of the OSM Wiki and so-called help pages. By then they may have the inspiration to plough through it all to satisfy their own particular needs. UrbanRambler. +1. We have had a similar discussion on the talk-fr : http://openstreetmap.fr/forum#nabble-td4566068|a4566068 starting in the middle of the thread -- Vincent Pottier alias FrViPofm ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Thoughts on OSM design, and looking forward and back
On Wed, Feb 24, 2010 at 1:00 PM, Dermot McNally derm...@gmail.com wrote: On 24 February 2010 17:19, Tom Hughes t...@compton.nu wrote: I completely disagree. We're running a project to map the world, We agree on that - but I claim that to do so effectively we have to harness the power of all those people who don't yet get what we're trying to achieve... Are you sure about that? How many people does it take to map the world? 1,000? 10,000? 100,000? 1,000,000? More than that? The more the merrier. But I'm not sure about the whole we have to part... ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Thoughts on OSM design, and looking forward and back
On 25 February 2010 17:28, Anthony o...@inbox.org wrote: Are you sure about that? How many people does it take to map the world? 1,000? 10,000? 100,000? 1,000,000? More than that? The more the merrier. But I'm not sure about the whole we have to part... Alright - let's settle on we should. In a world where we can't define when a map is complete, have to is going to be similarly subjective. But the answer to your second question is more than that - whatever the suggested figure is. Dermot -- -- Iren sind menschlich ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Thoughts on OSM design, and looking forward and back
On Thu, Feb 25, 2010 at 1:04 PM, Dermot McNally derm...@gmail.com wrote: On 25 February 2010 17:28, Anthony o...@inbox.org wrote: Are you sure about that? How many people does it take to map the world? 1,000? 10,000? 100,000? 1,000,000? More than that? The more the merrier. But I'm not sure about the whole we have to part... Alright - let's settle on we should. In a world where we can't define when a map is complete, have to is going to be similarly subjective. But the answer to your second question is more than that - whatever the suggested figure is. Ha, well, my point failed then, because I was thinking more like 10,000. How many does Google have? ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Thoughts on OSM design, and looking forward and back
On Tue, Feb 23, 2010 at 11:42 PM, SteveC st...@asklater.com wrote: Thanks for your thoughtful comments... And I hope you've taken some of them on board. You don't seem to make any realistic suggestions for moving forward and just, instead, suggest potlatch is fine as is the front page. That doesn't seem to be in touch with the reality of every newbie who encounters the project, does it? That's not what I said, and it's not what I believe either. Please don't misrepresent me. You should know both from the time you employed me to work on these issues, and discussions we've had since, that your accusation here is false. But it's a nice sidestep of the issue I was discussing. Sure, you don't like the way I communicate sometimes Hmm. It sounds to me like you don't think you've done anything wrong? I notice you don't write Sure, I'm grossly offensive without due cause sometimes, but instead infer that the issue isn't the way you behave, instead it's that other people dislike your behaviour. but do you have any ideas at all on improving things other than the status quo and pissing on someone for doing anything? Yes I do. You should know, since I've discussed them with you before. But since you disagree with them, it's probably easier for you to accuse me of suggesting that everything is fine, and then portray me as a malcontent holding the project back. Alternatively: * Steve goes and reads Art of Community * Steve apologies - without caveats - regarding his demeaning of existing developers work * Steve re-reads http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Developer_community , which he originally wrote * We all work constructively on motivating our developers and nurturing new ones. * We acknowledge that the developers actually know what they are talking about. On the user experience: * Work continues on Potlatch2 * We make available the rails_port in a DVCS (e.g. git), to encourage experimentation * We implement the ideas on branches and see what works: ** this redesign, ** the previous redesign from CloudMade ** OSB integration, ** the minor UI improvements list ** Integrating Walking Papers into the main site ** Integration of routing ** More layers on the map ** and other suggestions * Add a javascript click-tracker to see what people actually press * Focus redesigns on making things easier to understand, rather than removing options * Run multiple hack weekends, with the aims of encouraging new rails_port contributors, and existing developers to work on these topics If you want to spend money on achieving the above, then sponsoring existing developers to do the work, or sponsor someone to aid new developers (through documentation and engagement etc) would be my recommendation. Or hire a venue for hack weekends, buy pizza, fund travel and so on. These are all things that have worked great before. If you want to spend time on the above, then engaging with the existing developers and finding out what they want help with would be my recommendation. and everyone of 'our' generation is intensely negative. Not surprising, given that it appears that the more work you've done for the project, the more likely it is to be attacked for their efforts. Cheers, Andy ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Thoughts on OSM design, and looking forward and back
On Wed, Feb 24, 2010 at 12:07 AM, SteveC st...@asklater.com wrote: * Freeze PL1 (TomH enforces no more updated on the server) and work on PL2 Wow. You'd really try to prevent any improvements that have been coded from being deployed? That's a bad idea. Sure, encourage people to work on P2 instead of P1 by all means, but not by getting OSMF sysadmins to prevent the mapping community from using any improved version of P1. As I said but Andy largely ignored, paying people is probably the worst option from a community point of view but at least it might move us forward. Given that the community is the most important thing, by far, then I'd expect you to have dismissed this idea already. One step forward doesn't warrant 40 steps back. Cheers, Andy ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Thoughts on OSM design, and looking forward and back
Andy Allan wrote: ... But I haven't seen any reference to www.openstreetmap.de, where it's strengths are, or what could be improved or learned from. The most interesting bit of www.openstreetmap.de to me is this - Fehler in der Karte? Selbst korrigieren (Anleitung) oder hier melden. - right underneath the map in the middle of the screen. Essentially Is there an error in the map? You can fix it yourself* (instructions**) or click here*** * link to Potlatch edit at current zoom level ** link to simple step-by-step instructions http://www.openstreetmap.de/123/index.html / http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=enie=UTF-8sl=detl=enu=http://www.openstreetmap.de/123/index.htmlprev=_ttwu=1 *** link to Openstreetbugs at current zoom level. Cheers, Another Andy ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Thoughts on OSM design, and looking forward and back
SteveC wrote: [snip] Right up front we have the school of thought that everything is perfect the way it is. That uservoice is some kind of inherently crappy system (see the uservoice ideas page at http://osm.uservoice.com/ ). That we shouldn't allow people to use tools which make fixing the map easier (see @chilly on twitter), that people are inherently stupid and there should be a barrier to entry to editing in OSM because it's complicated. This school of thought is essentially still living in 1991 and I'll call this school the Game Haters: everything is wrong, even talking about it is wrong. [snip] The first time I tried to use UserVoice, it hung. When I tried later in the day I got an HTML error. I call that crappy for a live system. I have NOT said that we shouldn't allow people to use tools which make fixing the map easier. The quote was: Pushing people (newbies) to use KeepRight is a recipe for havoc. You need experience to use KeepRight so you know what to ignore. You clearly agreed with me Steve, you even created a video to try to give people help in using it. Your video still assumes that people are experienced users, but hey, you tried. If you had researched a little before your latest explosion, you would have realised that I'm not against feedback (just against crappy bolt-ons). The suggestion to improve your mock-up, once I'd managed to get it into UserVoice, is currently top of the list. You believe that feedback is a good thing, but, it seems, only if the feedback confirms your own ideas. You have railed against the UI, against hard-working volunteer contributors and against anyone who disagrees with you, who's left? I do think that there are many things to improve in OSM, but upsetting people is not going to achieve any of them. One thing you might like to try to rebuild is your personal Interface with the Community, which looks broken to me, probably crushed under your ego. One more thing, the stuff you write on blogs and published email will remain permanently on the Internet, so before you make disparaging remarks or write untruths about people on a public forum consider the impact you might have on reputations. Chris (twitter:@chillly) ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Thoughts on OSM design, and looking forward and back
On Feb 24, 2010, at 2:27 AM, Andy Allan wrote: On Tue, Feb 23, 2010 at 11:42 PM, SteveC st...@asklater.com wrote: Thanks for your thoughtful comments... And I hope you've taken some of them on board. You don't seem to make any realistic suggestions for moving forward and just, instead, suggest potlatch is fine as is the front page. That doesn't seem to be in touch with the reality of every newbie who encounters the project, does it? That's not what I said, and it's not what I believe either. Please don't misrepresent me. You should know both from the time you employed me to work on these issues, and discussions we've had since, that your accusation here is false. But it's a nice sidestep of the issue I was discussing. Sure, you don't like the way I communicate sometimes Hmm. It sounds to me like you don't think you've done anything wrong? I notice you don't write Sure, I'm grossly offensive without due cause sometimes, but instead infer that the issue isn't the way you behave, instead it's that other people dislike your behaviour. Andy all I'm doing is repeating what I get from newbies all the time, and adding another sentence that you ignore because below you just want to evolve things, and I think it needs a step change. Sentence 1: the UI/UX is crap I think we all know it is Then the Sentence I add is: Let's fix it. but do you have any ideas at all on improving things other than the status quo and pissing on someone for doing anything? Yes I do. You should know, since I've discussed them with you before. But since you disagree with them, it's probably easier for you to accuse me of suggesting that everything is fine, and then portray me as a malcontent holding the project back. Alternatively: * Steve goes and reads Art of Community Andy, building community and moving things on is not just be nice to everyone all the time. Sometimes it's also about being honest and saying, this is wrong, we can fix it. * Steve apologies - without caveats - regarding his demeaning of existing developers work You're not seriously suggesting the PL user experience is non-crap and the codebase is non-crap right? Because I think that's all I said. * Steve re-reads http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Developer_community , which he originally wrote * We all work constructively on motivating our developers and nurturing new ones. Have you tried getting a flash developer to work on PL? It's very, very hard. * We acknowledge that the developers actually know what they are talking about. On the user experience: * Work continues on Potlatch2 * We make available the rails_port in a DVCS (e.g. git), to encourage experimentation * We implement the ideas on branches and see what works: ** this redesign, ** the previous redesign from CloudMade ** OSB integration, ** the minor UI improvements list ** Integrating Walking Papers into the main site ** Integration of routing ** More layers on the map ** and other suggestions * Add a javascript click-tracker to see what people actually press * Focus redesigns on making things easier to understand, rather than removing options * Run multiple hack weekends, with the aims of encouraging new rails_port contributors, and existing developers to work on these topics All of those are slightly evolutionary, will take forever, and won't improve things a whole lot. I think it's much more useful to step change things. Some of them, of course, are super good things like git and continuing PL2.. but 'adding more layers' doesn't do anything for a new user. A better UX, less is more, and a very clear up front help page and a clear feedback tab will help hugely. That's a step change we can just get done very easily. If you want to spend money on achieving the above, then sponsoring I tried and tried with Richard. I tried hiring him, sponsoring him, sponsoring him to learn AS3 and all kinds of other things. existing developers to do the work, or sponsor someone to aid new developers (through documentation and engagement etc) would be my recommendation. Or hire a venue for hack weekends, buy pizza, fund travel and so on. These are all things that have worked great before. If you want to spend time on the above, then engaging with the existing developers and finding out what they want help with would be my recommendation. Andy, the point is the existing developers are holding things up and aren't listening to the thousands of newbies who throw themselves at the site every day, then give up. You can pour cold water over my $70 design all you want, but the fact is it's the only major step in ages and you might not like it, but just go and read from all the newbies who *do*. The point is you're not the intended audience, and the intended audience is coming up with all kinds of cool stuff on uservoice while you're saying here let's take 12 months and fix a few bugs when they want something entirely
Re: [OSM-talk] Thoughts on OSM design, and looking forward and back
On Feb 24, 2010, at 2:37 AM, Andy Allan wrote: On Wed, Feb 24, 2010 at 12:07 AM, SteveC st...@asklater.com wrote: * Freeze PL1 (TomH enforces no more updated on the server) and work on PL2 Wow. You'd really try to prevent any improvements that have been coded from being deployed? That's a bad idea. Sure, encourage people to work on P2 instead of P1 by all means, but not by getting OSMF sysadmins to prevent the mapping community from using any improved version of P1. But that's *exactly* what is holding back PL2! Constant tweaking to PL1, as you know because you said it yourself! Yours c. Steve ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Thoughts on OSM design, and looking forward and back
Chris On Feb 24, 2010, at 6:16 AM, Chris Hill wrote: SteveC wrote: [snip] Right up front we have the school of thought that everything is perfect the way it is. That uservoice is some kind of inherently crappy system (see the uservoice ideas page at http://osm.uservoice.com/ ). That we shouldn't allow people to use tools which make fixing the map easier (see @chilly on twitter), that people are inherently stupid and there should be a barrier to entry to editing in OSM because it's complicated. This school of thought is essentially still living in 1991 and I'll call this school the Game Haters: everything is wrong, even talking about it is wrong. [snip] The first time I tried to use UserVoice, it hung. When I tried later in the day I got an HTML error. I call that crappy for a live system. I have NOT said that we shouldn't allow people to use tools which make fixing the map easier. The quote was: Pushing people (newbies) to use KeepRight is a recipe for havoc. You need experience to use KeepRight so you know what to ignore. You clearly agreed with me Steve, you even created a video to try to give people help in using it. Your video still assumes that people are experienced users, but hey, you tried. I think your comments on user voice and twitter are and were intensely negative, and you were calling for newbies not to be able to edit. I don't really think I actually misrepresented you there did I, as you say it all again here? If you had researched a little before your latest explosion, you would have realised that I'm not against feedback (just against crappy bolt-ons). The suggestion to improve your mock-up, once I'd managed to get it into UserVoice, is currently top of the list. Look, if you can see that uservoice is a 'crappy bolt on' then you can see our UI and editor are 'crappy cobbled together bolt ons' right? You believe that feedback is a good thing, but, it seems, only if the feedback confirms your own ideas. You have railed against the UI, against hard-working volunteer contributors and against anyone who disagrees with you, who's left? Oh that's easy - the vast majority of people out there who use the site every day. And I don't think I particularly railed against the volunteers, it's almost exclusively about the crappy UI. And it is crappy. I don't know why everyone has such a hard time admitting that, the sooner we do, the sooner we can fix it. I do think that there are many things to improve in OSM, but upsetting people is not going to achieve any of them. One thing you might like to try to rebuild is your personal Interface with the Community, which looks broken to me, probably crushed under your ego. Oh get over yourself, if you can't take a sentence like the UI is crappy or Richard is holding up PL2 that's just because you're too tied to the people and not the ideas. Yet again - everyone here is awesome - but that doesn't mean we're all immune from critique and everything we do is perfect. Don't think that because potlatch is crappy and the UI is crappy for the site I don't have any respect for Richard, Mikel or TomC or many others... but come on, it is crappy guys, and the current and previous plans for fixing it were either not happening or very slow. That's the first thing to understand, the second is that the intended audience for any useful update *is not us*. It feels like I really am going to have to do a UI review and get joe publics off the street to show you how powerful things like uservoice are to people out there and not just a 'crappy bolt on'. Yours c. Steve ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Thoughts on OSM design, and looking forward and back
On Wed, Feb 24, 2010 at 2:08 PM, SteveC st...@asklater.com wrote: On Feb 24, 2010, at 2:37 AM, Andy Allan wrote: On Wed, Feb 24, 2010 at 12:07 AM, SteveC st...@asklater.com wrote: * Freeze PL1 (TomH enforces no more updated on the server) and work on PL2 Wow. You'd really try to prevent any improvements that have been coded from being deployed? That's a bad idea. Sure, encourage people to work on P2 instead of P1 by all means, but not by getting OSMF sysadmins to prevent the mapping community from using any improved version of P1. But that's *exactly* what is holding back PL2! Constant tweaking to PL1, as you know because you said it yourself! Yeah, I remember that. I think I said I would spend some time on P2 that Sunday, and I then implemented drag and drop POIs. I think you said you would set up the P2 dev environment. How did you get on with that? Cheers, Andy ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Thoughts on OSM design, and looking forward and back
On Wed, Feb 24, 2010 at 2:06 PM, SteveC st...@asklater.com wrote: On Feb 24, 2010, at 2:27 AM, Andy Allan wrote: On Tue, Feb 23, 2010 at 11:42 PM, SteveC st...@asklater.com wrote: Sure, you don't like the way I communicate sometimes Hmm. It sounds to me like you don't think you've done anything wrong? I notice you don't write Sure, I'm grossly offensive without due cause sometimes, but instead infer that the issue isn't the way you behave, instead it's that other people dislike your behaviour. Andy all I'm doing is repeating what I get from newbies all the time, and adding another sentence that you ignore because below you just want to evolve things, and I think it needs a step change. but he doesn't give a shit and lives on a boat in bliss doesn't sound like all you're doing is repeating what you get from newbies. Andy, building community and moving things on is not just be nice to everyone all the time. Sometimes it's also about being honest and saying, this is wrong, we can fix it. If you can't be nice when you criticise, then don't criticise. And please learn the difference between being honest and being rude. * Steve apologies - without caveats - regarding his demeaning of existing developers work You're not seriously suggesting the PL user experience is non-crap and the codebase is non-crap right? Because I think that's all I said. Nice apology. I like the way you've learned to show respect for other people's work. Cheers, Andy ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Thoughts on OSM design, and looking forward and back
On Feb 24, 2010, at 7:28 AM, Andy Allan wrote: On Wed, Feb 24, 2010 at 2:08 PM, SteveC st...@asklater.com wrote: On Feb 24, 2010, at 2:37 AM, Andy Allan wrote: On Wed, Feb 24, 2010 at 12:07 AM, SteveC st...@asklater.com wrote: * Freeze PL1 (TomH enforces no more updated on the server) and work on PL2 Wow. You'd really try to prevent any improvements that have been coded from being deployed? That's a bad idea. Sure, encourage people to work on P2 instead of P1 by all means, but not by getting OSMF sysadmins to prevent the mapping community from using any improved version of P1. But that's *exactly* what is holding back PL2! Constant tweaking to PL1, as you know because you said it yourself! Yeah, I remember that. So, note everyone, Andy agrees but we just disagree on the implementation. I think we need a step change as PL1 has been sitting around for multiple years, things like a freeze to make sure it happens. Andy believes the softly softly approach. I think I said I would spend some time on P2 that Sunday, and I then implemented drag and drop POIs. I think you said you would set up the P2 dev environment. How did you get on with that? It was nauseating so I decided to figure out other, deeper, changes we can make. Additionally, easy changes which cost much less time/effort but would connect us with the lost newbies, like a feedback tab. Yours c. Steve ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Thoughts on OSM design, and looking forward and back
On Feb 24, 2010, at 7:35 AM, Andy Allan wrote: On Wed, Feb 24, 2010 at 2:06 PM, SteveC st...@asklater.com wrote: On Feb 24, 2010, at 2:27 AM, Andy Allan wrote: On Tue, Feb 23, 2010 at 11:42 PM, SteveC st...@asklater.com wrote: Sure, you don't like the way I communicate sometimes Hmm. It sounds to me like you don't think you've done anything wrong? I notice you don't write Sure, I'm grossly offensive without due cause sometimes, but instead infer that the issue isn't the way you behave, instead it's that other people dislike your behaviour. Andy all I'm doing is repeating what I get from newbies all the time, and adding another sentence that you ignore because below you just want to evolve things, and I think it needs a step change. but he doesn't give a shit and lives on a boat in bliss I also said 'that's fine' doesn't sound like all you're doing is repeating what you get from newbies. yes, I'm going a step further is pointing out the cause. Andy, building community and moving things on is not just be nice to everyone all the time. Sometimes it's also about being honest and saying, this is wrong, we can fix it. If you can't be nice when you criticise, then don't criticise. And please learn the difference between being honest and being rude. * Steve apologies - without caveats - regarding his demeaning of existing developers work You're not seriously suggesting the PL user experience is non-crap and the codebase is non-crap right? Because I think that's all I said. Nice apology. I like the way you've learned to show respect for other people's work. Dude - *my work* was crap! Just go and look at the code! Then people like Matt and Frederik came and Shaun and you added/fixed things. Can't you just get over yourself and admit that a newbie coming to OSM has a crap time? It's not hard! Stop defending it all. Yours c. Steve ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Thoughts on OSM design, and looking forward and back
Something I'd like to see in either PL1 or whatever replaces it is a tutorial mode that then corrects people's mapping efforts or makes suggestions on what they could have done better etc. Getting stuff displayed on a map, but getting instant feedback about mapping by newbies would go a long way, especially with subtle mistakes. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Thoughts on OSM design, and looking forward and back
On Wed, Feb 24, 2010 at 8:44 AM, SteveC st...@asklater.com wrote: Can't you just get over yourself and admit that a newbie coming to OSM has a crap time? It's not hard! Stop defending it all. Steve, I don't think anyone on this list has said No, I don't understand why newbies are having a hard time. Everything on OSM is as simple as it could be and we should stop trying to spend time making it simpler. I think people are (a) upset with the *way* you brought up the point (repeated personal attacks) and then (b) trying to figure out what you're saying in between all the inane and negative banter so that we can work as a community to solve things. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Thoughts on OSM design, and looking forward and back
Chill guys. I still just about remember being a newbie, and I didn't find Potlatch crap. Not knowing what the + button did was crap. The endless contradictory wiki is crap. It's a bit too easy to do something too dramatic in Potlatch by inadvertantly using the wrong keyboard shortcut (merging ways, in particular), and relations are painful. But most of that is invisible to the newbie; it's something you find out later. It's easy enough to create nodes and new ways. I think the biggest reason newbies don't contribute is that when they look where they live, most of them find either a blank canvas or something that looks pretty good enough already, and don't hang around long enough to think I could add x or y is wrong; I'll fix it. Whereas, looking at Google Maps overlaid on aerial photos, I keep finding labelling errors - but I can't fix them. Richard ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Thoughts on OSM design, and looking forward and back
Yours c. Steve On Feb 24, 2010, at 7:56, Ian Dees ian.d...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Feb 24, 2010 at 8:44 AM, SteveC st...@asklater.com wrote: Can't you just get over yourself and admit that a newbie coming to OSM has a crap time? It's not hard! Stop defending it all. Steve, I don't think anyone on this list has said No, I don't understand why newbies are having a hard time. Everything on OSM is as simple as it could be and we should stop trying to spend time making it simpler. Er see frederiks email and Andys decline to agree :-) I think people are (a) upset with the *way* you brought up the point (repeated personal attacks) and then (b) trying to figure out what you're saying in between all the inane and negative banter so that we can work as a community to solve things. Ian I think if you go back and check I've only made one personal attack, against Richard, which you will also find an apololgy for. Whereas most of the name calling has been actually against me. But as you note I've actually been building thins too.___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Thoughts on OSM design, and looking forward and back
On 25 February 2010 01:06, Richard Mann richard.mann.westoxf...@googlemail.com wrote: Chill guys. I still just about remember being a newbie, and I didn't find Potlatch crap. I have a fairly technical background, and it took a 2nd look 6 months later for me to do anything of significance. When I originally signed up I found the whole thing a tad daunting and overwhelming originally, nothing was very clear about what it was I was supposed to be doing, beyond fixing simple mistakes, or how to use GPS traces to enter data that wasn't available from imagery. I over came this, but how many others just don't bother? I've also spent a fair amount of time explaining a lot of the concepts and such surrounding OSM and most people don't get or don't care for higher ideals and when the editor is not intuative to boot they just don't bother doing anything or coming back after a few days. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Thoughts on OSM design, and looking forward and back
On Feb 24, 2010, at 6:21 AM, SteveC wrote: You believe that feedback is a good thing, but, it seems, only if the feedback confirms your own ideas. You have railed against the UI, against hard-working volunteer contributors and against anyone who disagrees with you, who's left? Oh that's easy - the vast majority of people out there who use the site every day. Steve, you keep saying some variation of this, but at some point you're going to need to Show Us The Newbies. These disembodied, confused masses have to be given their own voice, because I don't think that the way you invoke their opinions here is particularly credible. You're summarizing their opinions when I think a much more effective way to make your point might be to come back with specific things about the site they found confusing, and what they were trying to do when they got confused, and *whether people who try to do those things are the audience that OpenStreetMap is built to serve*. If you don't do this, it will continue to seem like you're paraphrasing phantom newbies to support what's basically a turf war here on the list. And I don't think I particularly railed against the volunteers, it's almost exclusively about the crappy UI. And it is crappy. I don't know why everyone has such a hard time admitting that, the sooner we do, the sooner we can fix it. You're definitely railing against volunteers. I don't get involved on this list much, but I read it when I can and I've honestly been shocked at your combative and frankly rude tone. Fix it, get help, whatever, but do it soon. On Feb 24, 2010, at 6:41 AM, SteveC wrote: So, note everyone, Andy agrees but we just disagree on the implementation. I think we need a step change as PL1 has been sitting around for multiple years, things like a freeze to make sure it happens. Andy believes the softly softly approach. PL1 has visibly improved in the years that I've been using it. It's got problems, sure, but the plain dumb fact of the matter is that editing vectors and tending metadata is a *complicated and difficult interface problem*. Adobe Illustrator has a similar basic feature set to what a general purpose OSM editor needs, and it takes designers months if not years to learn how to use it. OSM layers on the additional complication of negotiated key/value metadata that's frequently invisible. Vector editing is hard. Metadata is hard. OSM is both. It seems clear to me that another general purpose editor is not going to solve the newbie editing problem. It also seems clear to me that Potlatch fills an important niche in the project, in that there's nothing else at a comparable level of completeness that I can use in a web browser. It also seems clear to me that segmenting the audience into consumers of the map and producers of the map is worthwhile, so I appreciate your work with the Peruvian designer who simplified the design of the site. The reason people here are questioning that proposal is that it's not exactly clear what specific deficiencies it's addressing - it's just kinda simpler, closer in appearance to maps.google.com, maps.bing.com , and maps.yahoo.com. So, here's a constructive suggestion on how to move forward. You need to expose the newbie voice directly, and you need to communicate which newbie activities are the ones you would like for OSM to support. I think there's a path in OSM, from using the map (e.g. Haiti), to fixing a problem (e.g. bumping into Potlatch for the first time when you see a street name is wrong), to proactive involvement. If you can articulate what it is that all these people get hung up on, then you will engage specific feedback. Right now, all I'm hearing is Potlatch sucks invoking the difficulty of the codebase and problems getting Richard to work on what you want. This is all back office stuff, nobody in the outside world cares and AS3 or version control! Make a case for improvements to the UI of Potlatch. I'll close with this excerpt from a recent conversation I had with Stamen's creative director Eric, about his time working on a mountain climbing project at the late 90's sports website Quokka.com: We had people in for user testing, under two scenarios. The first, the event was just getting started, we brought them in cold, showed them the stuff, asked them what we could do better. They tore it apart: the text was too small, the expectations weren't clear, they didn't know what to click on. To a person all of them said they'd never come back to visit. The second scenario, we paid people $5/day to visit the site, the event was already going on, and asked them to come in after a week. After asking them a few basic questions to verify that they'd actually visited the site, we asked them what we could do better. The suggestions were constructive, delightful, helpful. When asked whether they'd
Re: [OSM-talk] Thoughts on OSM design, and looking forward and back
I'd like to say a few words on the home page and editor. 1. Home Page: while I think Steve's proposal addresses some of the criticisms of the way the home page functions, I don't think it takes a holistic view of the project. What someone coming to it will initially see is essentially a me too for Google maps: it offers a service not a project. I do think it is essential to have _a_ map on the home page, but I don't think it need take up the whole page. It need only be a representative map, and for the first time visitor well zoomed out area, so detail is low and it doesn't need to be that big. Once someone searches, clicks on the map, drags, presses the relevant button or whatever, we could go to a page like Steve's where you can also get search results and other direct services like export. But I think on the home page we would do better to have a smaller map and more information visible without clicking tabs links or buttons - a (brief) introduction to the project and link to more, - how to get involved + link, - especially links to all the services, products, projects and innovative ways people have based things around the project that aren't hosted on the site as well as those that are, - contact info for who can help provide services based around OSM (or at least an indication that there are such people and a link to where you can find out about them), - and space for a prominent Report a problem button. At the moment, Mapnik rendering *is* OpenStreetMap as far as the casual visitor is concerned, and I'd rather see that dominance reduced (not taken away, as it is a really good showcase for the outcome of the project, but it is only one), not emphasised even more. 2. Editor: Potlatch (and JOSM) address a different market from a feedback system, OpenStreetBugs or whatever. The latter only works if there is enough context on the map to make an observation about the content. If you're starting on virgin territory, that's not nearly enough. There's a place for both kinds and both kinds need to be improved. I find it hard to envisage a system for near-virgin territory editing which doesn't need at least some of the kind of graphics manipulation you need in products like Adobe Illustrator; but that's far too hard for someone who just notices an error in a well mapped area, so an alternative point and say type interface is definitely needed for these people. Off the main stage, I think it would be helpful for those who are acting on the information such a system provides to have a means of seeing and tracking it, which can be more complex than the reporting UI. OpenStreetBugs corrections in my area seem to fall into three categories: 1. my street/village is not there which is usually not helpful as it hasn't been surveyed yet, 2. incorrect changes: someone goes down a street every day and thinks the map is wrong. But they haven't actually gone and looked for the purpose, or they don't understand the signs, 3. helpful, valuable corrections. Sometimes 2 and 3 are hard to distinguish and need a visit. If someone new does make a change in my area, I usually make a point of checking it if I'm doubtful about it - and many times it does turn out it was my error, but very often not: the original survey was looking in detail and that often beats someone's casual memory. But then OSB is a rarely used tool as no one really knows it is there. I also think a feedback system needs at least the option of someone providing a contact or for them to receive info back - either a thank you, we've corrected the problem (so they get a nice fuizzy feeling of contribution) and/or a question to clarify their contribution (which I've needed more often than not for OSB contributions but have no way to do for anonymous entries, which is most because that's the default). Formal registration is way OTT though. David ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Thoughts on OSM design, and looking forward and back
On 24 February 2010 16:19, David Earl da...@frankieandshadow.com wrote: I'd like to say a few words on the home page and editor. 1. Home Page: while I think Steve's proposal addresses some of the criticisms of the way the home page functions, I don't think it takes a holistic view of the project. What someone coming to it will initially see is essentially a me too for Google maps: it offers a service not a project. This issue is basically our main holy way. And while I can see why you take this view, I disagree with you. It comes back to the issue of users - who they (mostly) are and whether they are like us. When OSM was mostly a lot of spidery lines and even more empty space, it would probably have been a mistake to have a front door that invited users to see us as a Google Maps wannabe that just happened to have crappy maps. Far better to fess up to the fact that we're trying to build something and that you'd better be prepared to get your hands dirty if you want to be involved. I think, and I know many will disagree, that in a lot of the world we now have a much better story to tell the kind of people that don't want dirty hands. These people measure our offering feature for feature against what they already have from Google. Most of the things they care about aren't that difficult to deliver, we just need to decide as a community that we should be delivering them in the first place. Any web site should optimise its top level for the kinds of people it wants to appeal to. Up until now, we've only catered to people broadly like ourselves that will help us to grow the map _in_the_ways_we've_grown_it_to_date_. And I think we have broad agreement that people of that sort need to have an attention span long enough to linger on the site, read bits of the wiki, register and so on. So the proposition is that we find a way on the home page to funnel the curious geeks into the hardcore area of the site - something quite like what we have now, but even for this target group there is surely plenty we can improve. This I would see in the form of a teaser - constantly evolving map: you can help! or similar. But the home page real-estate should otherwise be utterly devoted to user-level features of the sort that non-expert users enjoy elsewhere. User waypoints. User lines and areas. .kml overlays, tracklog imports - we can argue over what these user applications are and which will serve our purpose best, but our goal is first to hook users on our maps and demonstrate that they can be used to solve their actual problems. Because if we don't establish this value, then these users will never feed us their missing street names or mark their local post box or fast food joint. It will seem a shame to us that we're letting people assume that the map _is_ the Mapnik layer or that routing can only be as good as whatever engine we decide to make default. But the fact is that, if we want the world using our map rather than others, way less than 1% of our users will ever render a custom map or crack open a full-features map editor. Our challenge, summarised into two simple points: All those people who, having visited today's site, become contributors: make sure they quickly find the good stuff we already have. The much larger group of people who spend 2 minutes (if that long) trying to work out why they should use OSM rather than Google: show them why. Dermot -- -- Iren sind menschlich ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Thoughts on OSM design, and looking forward and back
On 24/02/10 16:58, Dermot McNally wrote: But the home page real-estate should otherwise be utterly devoted to user-level features of the sort that non-expert users enjoy elsewhere. User waypoints. User lines and areas. .kml overlays, tracklog imports - we can argue over what these user applications are and which will serve our purpose best, but our goal is first to hook users on our maps and demonstrate that they can be used to solve their actual problems. Because if we don't establish this value, then these users will never feed us their missing street names or mark their local post box or fast food joint. I completely disagree. We're running a project to map the world, not a project to provide an end user site to compete with google maps. Tom -- Tom Hughes (t...@compton.nu) http://compton.nu/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Thoughts on OSM design, and looking forward and back
On 24 February 2010 17:19, Tom Hughes t...@compton.nu wrote: On 24/02/10 16:58, Dermot McNally wrote: I completely disagree. We're running a project to map the world, We agree on that - but I claim that to do so effectively we have to harness the power of all those people who don't yet get what we're trying to achieve... not a project to provide an end user site to compete with google maps. ...whereas they _do_ understand google maps and what it can do for them. They need to get over the misconception that OSM can't do those things, a misconception that is reinforced by our current default slippy map. Furthermore, it's a win-win. We don't have to (indeed, we shouldn't) stop all the good stuff we're doing already. We just need to do some extra things, probably with different people working on them. Voluntary projects are like that, of course - you can't go around telling a highly motivated person to stop the worthy task he cares about and work on one he doesn't. Instead, you find someone else who wants to do it. Dermot -- -- Iren sind menschlich ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Thoughts on OSM design, and looking forward and back
I have been very busy (and very put off) recently, so have not read EVERY posting on this topic but I would like to respond on the specific issue of an entry level editor. I can understand where people are coming from (Steve C included), can understand where they might be going, but really don't like the road that is being travelled - viz language/tone/factions/points scoring etc. And this next bit is directed specifically at Steve C: Have you considered a different approach? Given that it is probably accepted that an entry level editor would be a good thing why not work towards it in a more positive way. It is quite possible that you are hearing from loads of people that Potlatch is a (considerable) barrier to entry to working on the data entry. I am not actually sure anyone has ever claimed that PL WAS the answer to this particular matter. I also would just say that for me and my way of working (and yes I know I have a particular level of knowledge that I already bring to bear so am not a good case study) Potlatch is a very comfortable editor to work with, and am pleased with the way it has been developed, and have confidence that PL2 will build on this. It is evident that you have excellent networking abilities, credibility in the wider community, loads of energy, and (perhaps) an understanding of what is required. Why not ask these people you meet to help formulate a brief for said entry level system (even using the dreaded focus groups to do so). Why not then network with some folk who might be in a position to look at the brief and then approach someone (or more) to actually tackle the task, meanwhile acting as project manager to guide it through all the stages that will happen - concept, UI, testing, tweaking, etc (I am no project manager, so excuse ignorance here). Come up with a good result and it will surely be adopted by the project. You will receive considerable kudos if you can help deliver that result, and we will have a better project for it, with hopefully more people data inputting also. Think on it. Cheers STEVE -Original Message- From: talk-boun...@openstreetmap.org on behalf of Michal Migurski Sent: Wed 24/02/2010 15:47 To: Talk Openstreetmap Cc: Subject: Re: [OSM-talk] Thoughts on OSM design, and looking forward and back On Feb 24, 2010, at 6:21 AM, SteveC wrote: You believe that feedback is a good thing, but, it seems, only if the feedback confirms your own ideas. You have railed against the UI, against hard-working volunteer contributors and against anyone who disagrees with you, who's left? Oh that's easy - the vast majority of people out there who use the site every day. Steve, you keep saying some variation of this, but at some point you're going to need to Show Us The Newbies. These disembodied, confused masses have to be given their own voice, because I don't think that the way you invoke their opinions here is particularly credible. You're summarizing their opinions when I think a much more effective way to make your point might be to come back with specific things about the site they found confusing, and what they were trying to do when they got confused, and *whether people who try to do those things are the audience that OpenStreetMap is built to serve*. If you don't do this, it will continue to seem like you're paraphrasing phantom newbies to support what's basically a turf war here on the list. And I don't think I particularly railed against the volunteers, it's almost exclusively about the crappy UI. And it is crappy. I don't know why everyone has such a hard time admitting that, the sooner we do, the sooner we can fix it. You're definitely railing against volunteers. I don't get involved on this list much, but I read it when I can and I've honestly been shocked at your combative and frankly rude tone. Fix it, get help, whatever, but do it soon. On Feb 24, 2010, at 6:41 AM, SteveC wrote: So, note everyone, Andy agrees but we just disagree on the implementation. I think we need a step change as PL1 has been sitting around for multiple years, things like a freeze to make sure it happens. Andy believes the softly softly approach. PL1 has visibly improved in the years that I've been using it. It's got problems, sure, but the plain dumb fact of the matter is that editing vectors and tending metadata is a *complicated and difficult interface problem*. Adobe Illustrator has a similar basic feature set to what a general purpose OSM editor
Re: [OSM-talk] Thoughts on OSM design, and looking forward and back
Thanks a lot Steve, for underlining the need to improve the experience of new visitors. This is right on spot with what we have been feeling regarding Haiti. Now that OSM is indeed the best map in Haiti, there is a kind of special responsibility that comes with this: let potential users know about OSM, and actually use it, and then maybe for some of them help improve it. (Just as an example (I don't mean that these specific points are especially important), there was a few days ago a little discussion about some Haiti thematic maps (http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/WikiProject_Haiti/Earthquake_map_resources#POI-Maps ) and their coupling with OpenStreetBugs. See e.g.: http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk-ht/2010-February/000244.html ) I am thinking of two concrete ways we could contribute to this effort: - Localization. For instance, help adapting OpenStreetBugs and translating it in Haitian Creole, and maybe also the front page and a few others. (How do we do this ? For OSB, I see http://github.com/emka/openstreetbugs/tree/master/locale/. Is it enough to supply an osb.ht.json file ?) - Get feedback from potential new users. Maybe, without going as far as a formal study like the one you quoted for Wikipedia (http://usability.wikimedia.org/wiki/UX_and_Usability_Study ), by organizing one or several hand-on sessions with a few potential users/contributors, possibly with a video recording of their reactions, questions, etc... Do you think this would be useful ? Cheers, Jean-Guilhem Toulouse, France P.S.: also, thanks a lot for your article OpenStreetMap - The Best Map (http://opengeodata.org/openstreetmap-the-best-map). I really enjoyed reading it, and I think it makes a lot of sense. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Thoughts on OSM design, and looking forward and back
On Thu, Feb 25, 2010 at 12:06 AM, SteveC st...@asklater.com wrote: On of the nicest ideas I saw was splitting openstreetmap.com and .org - what you think of that? Have a nice interface on .com for newbies and then the community hub etc on .org Depends what you mean by community hub. The wiki? If so, I think a link from the main site to the wiki is sufficient. Essentially, have osm.org wiki.osm.org. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Thoughts on OSM design, and looking forward and back
On Thu, 25 Feb 2010, SteveC wrote: Andy, building community and moving things on is not just be nice to everyone all the time. Sometimes it's also about being honest and saying, this is wrong, we can fix it. * Steve apologies - without caveats - regarding his demeaning of existing developers work You're not seriously suggesting the PL user experience is non-crap and the codebase is non-crap right? Because I think that's all I said. Well I read more than that, it was personal attack on the developer. Grow Up SteveC Pull Your Horns Back In because an adult would be prepared to apologise. Liz ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Thoughts on OSM design, and looking forward and back
On 24 February 2010 09:42, SteveC st...@asklater.com st...@asklater.com wrote: You don't seem to make any realistic suggestions for moving forward and just, instead, suggest potlatch is fine as is the front page. That doesn't seem to be in touch with the reality of every newbie who encounters the project, does it? Steve, I'm sure this is just coincidence (I really do), but this sustained attack on the newbie editing experience, whilst the current blog item on your company's site is about their glorious new easy editor, looks just a little bit tacky... There’s been a lot of work going on behind the scenes to make Mapzen http://mapzen.cloudmade.com/, CloudMade’s family of easy to use OpenStreetMap editing tools, even easier, even more useful and even more fun to use. So what’s new? JS ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Thoughts on OSM design, and looking forward and back
On Feb 24, 2010, at 12:16, Jean-Guilhem Cailton j...@arkemie.com wrote: Thanks a lot Steve, for underlining the need to improve the experience of new visitors. And thanks for such a positive response and all your work. This is right on spot with what we have been feeling regarding Haiti. Now that OSM is indeed the best map in Haiti, there is a kind of special responsibility that comes with this: let potential users know about OSM, and actually use it, and then maybe for some of them help improve it. I guess you guys are at the sharp exposed end of usability, in an environment without the time for patiently figuring it all out? It should be said it's amazing we are this far along and evenyone should be proud of that, buy we've been static on usability for far far to long, and we'll fix it. (Just as an example (I don't mean that these specific points are especially important), there was a few days ago a little discussion about some Haiti thematic maps (http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/WikiProject_Haiti/Earthquake_map_resources#POI-Maps ) and their coupling with OpenStreetBugs. See e.g.: http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk-ht/2010-February/000244.html ) I am thinking of two concrete ways we could contribute to this effort: - Localization. For instance, help adapting OpenStreetBugs and translating it in Haitian Creole, and maybe also the front page and a few others. (How do we do this ? For OSB, I see http://github.com/emka/openstreetbugs/tree/master/locale/ . Is it enough to supply an osb.ht.json file ?) Someone should be able to help here. - Get feedback from potential new users. Maybe, without going as far as a formal study like the one you quoted for Wikipedia (http://usability.wikimedia.org/wiki/UX_and_Usability_Study ), by organizing one or several hand-on sessions with a few potential users/contributors, possibly with a video recording of their reactions, questions, etc... Do you think this would be useful ? Yes, let's do it. We need to put some basic tasks and story lines together like add a poi and let people loose. QuickTime X lets you record the screen easily. Lots of ways to do it. Cheers, Jean-Guilhem Toulouse, France P.S.: also, thanks a lot for your article OpenStreetMap - The Best Map (http://opengeodata.org/openstreetmap-the-best-map). I really enjoyed reading it, and I think it makes a lot of sense. Thanks! And thanks for braving the list! ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Thoughts on OSM design, and looking forward and back
On Feb 24, 2010, at 8:47, Michal Migurski m...@stamen.com wrote: On Feb 24, 2010, at 6:21 AM, SteveC wrote: You believe that feedback is a good thing, but, it seems, only if the feedback confirms your own ideas. You have railed against the UI, against hard-working volunteer contributors and against anyone who disagrees with you, who's left? Oh that's easy - the vast majority of people out there who use the site every day. Steve, you keep saying some variation of this, but at some point you're going to need to Show Us The Newbies. These disembodied, confused masses have to be given their own voice, because I don't think that the way you invoke their opinions here is particularly credible. You're summarizing their opinions when I think a much more effective way to make your point might be to come back with specific things about the site they found confusing, and what they were trying to do when they got confused, and *whether people who try to do those things are the audience that OpenStreetMap is built to serve*. If you don't do this, it will continue to seem like you're paraphrasing phantom newbies to support what's basically a turf war here on the list. Mike it seems obvious to me. I've run more mapping parties than anyone and been to more conferences. Through the CM ambassadors it was the same story. It was as I recall your basic and longstandig set of complaints, do you remember? But if it's really not credible then let's do it and get people just to add a big and you can see how hard it is. And I don't think I particularly railed against the volunteers, it's almost exclusively about the crappy UI. And it is crappy. I don't know why everyone has such a hard time admitting that, the sooner we do, the sooner we can fix it. You're definitely railing against volunteers. I don't get involved on this list much, but I read it when I can and I've honestly been shocked at your combative and frankly rude tone. Fix it, get help, whatever, but do it soon. Mike you conveniently concentrated on my responses, did you bother to read all the emails where I'm called a shit and a tosser etc? Are they ok? Or is that all soley my fault too? I'll happily point you at all the times I was flamed when not even doing anything bad, and then we can look at how people like dhh and linus have to communiate too. On Feb 24, 2010, at 6:41 AM, SteveC wrote: So, note everyone, Andy agrees but we just disagree on the implementation. I think we need a step change as PL1 has been sitting around for multiple years, things like a freeze to make sure it happens. Andy believes the softly softly approach. PL1 has visibly improved in the years that I've been using it. It's got problems, sure, but the plain dumb fact of the matter is that editing vectors and tending metadata is a *complicated and difficult interface problem*. Adobe Illustrator has a similar basic feature set to what a general purpose OSM editor needs, and it takes designers months if not years to learn how to use it. OSM layers on the additional complication of negotiated key/value metadata that's frequently invisible. Vector editing is hard. Metadata is hard. OSM is both. It seems clear to me that another general purpose editor is not going to solve the newbie editing problem. It also seems clear to me that Potlatch fills an important niche in the project, in that there's nothing else at a comparable level of completeness that I can use in a web browser. It also seems clear to me that segmenting the audience into consumers of the map and producers of the map is worthwhile, so I appreciate your work with the Peruvian designer who simplified the design of the site. The reason people here are questioning that proposal is that it's not exactly clear what specific deficiencies it's addressing - it's just kinda simpler, closer in appearance to maps.google.com, maps.bing.com , and maps.yahoo.com. So, here's a constructive suggestion on how to move forward. You need to expose the newbie voice directly, and you need to communicate which newbie activities are the ones you would like for OSM to support. I think there's a path in OSM, from using the map (e.g. Haiti), to fixing a problem (e.g. bumping into Potlatch for the first time when you see a street name is wrong), to proactive involvement. If you can articulate what it is that all these people get hung up on, then you will engage specific feedback. Right now, all I'm hearing is Potlatch sucks invoking the difficulty of the codebase and problems getting Richard to work on what you want. This is all back office stuff, nobody in the outside world cares and AS3 or version control! Make a case for improvements to the UI of Potlatch. I think I've gone further in actually building something and sidestepping PL entirely. How you of all people can't see that a simple feedback form is a step forward I don't know. I'll close with
Re: [OSM-talk] Thoughts on OSM design, and looking forward and back
On Feb 24, 2010, at 13:18, Liz ed...@billiau.net wrote: On Thu, 25 Feb 2010, SteveC wrote: Andy, building community and moving things on is not just be nice to everyone all the time. Sometimes it's also about being honest and saying, this is wrong, we can fix it. * Steve apologies - without caveats - regarding his demeaning of existing developers work You're not seriously suggesting the PL user experience is non-crap and the codebase is non-crap right? Because I think that's all I said. Well I read more than that, it was personal attack on the developer. Grow Up SteveC Pull Your Horns Back In It's kind of hard not to though, as it still only really has one developer. How would you critique PL *without* implicating it's author? Because the softly softly approach has been going on for years and you an call the progress at best glacial. It's simply not kept up with all the other progress. So, how would you fix it? I suspect you'd ask nicely, offer to pay, offer to pay other people... And we've exahusted all of those. Hence, I posted a whole lot of options which nobody liked, and in the meantime you have seen some genuine emails from newbies and those working with them on how hard it all is. The best we can offer right now is more evolutionary progress as outlined in Andys email. I say that's just not good enough and it lets down all those people. I hear you that you want proof and I'll go and build that, but it just slows it all down again. because an adult would be prepared to apologise. This is starting to get silly that everyone else can have a free for all which I largely ignore, but if I legitimatly call someone out, even in negative tones, thats a crime of the highest order and not only that you don't even go check that i apologised already! Liz ___ 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] Thoughts on OSM design, and looking forward and back
Ha :-) Believe it or not I only just found out mapzen is GPL And as I pointed out before, it shares problems with PL like not having an open community behind it. Yours c. Steve On Feb 24, 2010, at 13:44, Jamie Smith jamiekrsm...@googlemail.com wrote: On 24 February 2010 09:42, SteveC st...@asklater.com wrote: You don't seem to make any realistic suggestions for moving forward and just, instead, suggest potlatch is fine as is the front page. That doesn't seem to be in touch with the reality of every newbie who encounters the project, does it? Steve, I'm sure this is just coincidence (I really do), but this sustained attack on the newbie editing experience, whilst the current blog item on your company's site is about their glorious new easy editor, looks just a little bit tacky... There’s been a lot of work going on behind the scenes to make Mapze n, CloudMade’s family of easy to use OpenStreetMap editing tools, even easier, even more useful and even more fun to use. So what’s new? JS ___ 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] Thoughts on OSM design, and looking forward and back
On Feb 24, 2010, at 1:36 PM, SteveC wrote: On Feb 24, 2010, at 8:47, Michal Migurski m...@stamen.com wrote: If you don't do this, it will continue to seem like you're paraphrasing phantom newbies to support what's basically a turf war here on the list. Mike it seems obvious to me. I've run more mapping parties than anyone and been to more conferences. Through the CM ambassadors it was the same story. It was as I recall your basic and longstandig set of complaints, do you remember? No, I believe you, and I totally sympathize with the point that the newbie experienced should be improved. But in what direction? Tell us something specific that these newbies said! Actually, re-read the very end of my last mail, where I quote Eric's experience with asking people what they think of something the first time they see it. Negative reactions are a normal first response to surprise, and they may not be the response that teaches us anything. Getting a second or third response, recording it and making it public here or on the wiki are important - it gives people someplace to hang their hat when discussing the many problems of newbies. My two biggest problems with OSM when I first joined have been basically addressed in the intervening years: I didn't like that the Mapnik layer took multiple days to reflect updates, and I thought Potlatch kinda sucked. Both of those things have been improved, the former through mod_tile (or something) and the latter through effort on Richard's end as well as my own growing familiarity with how it works. Turns out that spending a bit of time with the thing is beneficial. But if it's really not credible then let's do it and get people just to add a big and you can see how hard it is. Sorry, add a big what? Mike you conveniently concentrated on my responses, did you bother to read all the emails where I'm called a shit and a tosser etc? Are they ok? Or is that all soley my fault too? I'll happily point you at all the times I was flamed when not even doing anything bad, and then we can look at how people like dhh and linus have to communiate too. I'm sorry you've been called a shit and a tosser. I haven't done so. If you can articulate what it is that all these people get hung up on, then you will engage specific feedback. Right now, all I'm hearing is Potlatch sucks invoking the difficulty of the codebase and problems getting Richard to work on what you want. This is all back office stuff, nobody in the outside world cares and AS3 or version control! Make a case for improvements to the UI of Potlatch. I think I've gone further in actually building something and sidestepping PL entirely. How you of all people can't see that a simple feedback form is a step forward I don't know. There's nothing actually wrong with the feedback form, it's totally fine. It's not where I'd expect to send problems with the map data itself, but people who aren't familiar with the project might have all kinds of ideas about what they can or can't do. It's basically the same kind of thing as Google's report a problem link, another slightly clumsy but totally adequate way to address the issue of bad data. The form is not relevant to the question of the editor, however. Right now, I'm looking at the mockups in your post, and trying to understand why you're mixing in all this talk of problems with Potlatch with the front page design. What else is going to go behind that second tab? I think we're still left with the problem I identified in my mail, which is that vector and metadata editing are two unbelievably difficult UI problems and I'm thankful that the people behind Potlatch and JOSM have dealt with them in a their own ways. I've taken MapZen for a test drive, and it's actually pretty damn good. It's a full-on general editor, which I think makes it ineligible for the newbie conversation, but it doesn't suck and I see that you've just pointed out the GPL license. Good for Cloudmade! The second scenario, we paid people $5/day to visit the site, the event was already going on, and asked them to come in after a week. After asking them a few basic questions to verify that they'd actually visited the site, we asked them what we could do better. The suggestions were constructive, delightful, helpful. When asked whether they'd come back, basically all of them said yes that they'd be back every day to check in until the summit had been reached. I guess I'm genuinely surprised we really need to go to such lengths, but hey. It seems sane to me. I'm willing to put up my own money to fund something like this. I think it could be done via Craigslist in a few communities to get real human beings to respond. I think it will also handle the Show Us The Newbies concern that I brought up, because it will create a pool of new users who might not otherwise come to a
Re: [OSM-talk] Thoughts on OSM design, and looking forward - and back
I just thought that you'd like the opinion of a (not so) newbie in this intense discussion. In order to attract people (potential mappers) to the site it has to offer something back - it has to have functionality. Not functionality to the mapper - Potlatch is quite adequate for my level of expertise - but both a reason and a reward for taking an interest in OSM. I'd suggest that some of this functionality could be provided by links to a couple of recently mentioned sites, and probably others; 1. Openrouteservice.org This is a clear demonstration of how the OSM data can be used to provide a useful service to the user. It's a usable and useful tool, and as an added bonus readily demonstrates any weaknesses in local OSM data. 2. Maposmatic.org Anyone visiting OSM will have an interest in getting a map of some description. Ordinary punters will have no interest whatsoever in rendering - all they want is a map. Maposmatic provides just that, without bogging the user down in technical detail. Between them these two sites offer the rewards that might just tempt people into contributing to the OSM project because they can connect data gathering with an end-product, without inviting the user to undertake an instant course in half-a-dozen arcane IT subjects. So my message is - add functionality and usability to the OSM entry point by linking to usable, useful sites. Why else would they want to visit the site? If the site is genuinely useful, and perhaps inspiring, they'll come again and may start to contribute. Once they are 'hooked' you can expose them to appalling mire of the OSM Wiki and so-called help pages. By then they may have the inspiration to plough through it all to satisfy their own particular needs. UrbanRambler. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Thoughts on OSM design, and looking forward and back
Hi everybody, right now Schuyler Troubleseeker Erle and Tom Buckley are down here in the Caribbean. I hope some day I will be able as well to give some OSM workshops, I live just around the corner of the quake. Could we prepare something like a methodology of usability evaluation, to give something like a checklist to the OSM folks who will give these workshops? I hope this does not sound like a thesis title ;-) Perhaps you, Steve? Perhaps as you have so much experience with newbie parties, perhaps you could define the focal points and defects in usability, just a list of issues you noticed with the people, for the trainers to be prepared. Potlatch discussion: My personal point of view regarding Potlatch is, that I personally don't want to edit maps in the browser. I know, the hype says the browser is/ can everything, but for other than basic editing, I want an external program. Today we have platform independent toolkits like QT and Wx or Java, for me the usability is much better like this. One link to the statically linked exe and we are ready to go. OSM web site: I agree that the website could polish its chrome a bit, in other words, we should look for a talented designer who knows CSS. I agree as well that the logo has nearly a sympathic 80s oldschool retro style if you know what I mean, Amiga demo scene ;-) . No no, not really that much. :-) The website environment looks right now as gray and cold like a website for a polar bear lever cancer laboratory, with an awesome map. I understand this, I am as well a technician who is an aestethic ignorant. Cheers, I'm already late, having right now a date with a good-looking female haitian voodoo priest in Santo Domingo ;-) Jochen ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Thoughts on OSM design, and looking forward - and back
Am 25.02.2010 00:31, schrieb Vic Morgan: I just thought that you'd like the opinion of a (not so) newbie in this intense discussion. 1. Openrouteservice.org 2. Maposmatic.org I guess you have made a *very* valid point here. Promoting an easier to use bug tracking system doesn't make any sense for an area where there's no one to take care about it (experience even from german high coverage mapper areas). Here in germany we already have lot's of useful data, but the current openstreetmap.org makes it damned hard to find the usefulness. For Garmin users (which is currently by far the easiest way to use OSM data IMHO), you have to find: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/OSM_Map_On_Garmin/Download buried deep down in the wiki. Regards, ULFL ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Thoughts on OSM design, and looking forward and back
SteveC writes: Or some combination. Whatever happens my best outcome would be something that 1) Has a big open source community behind it 2) Is easy(ier) to use PL1, PL2, MapZen don't do (1) JOSM does do (1) but for a newbie, does not do (2). Part of the problem with Potlatch is: o It tries to be easy and approachable, and o It succeeds at that and has lots of users, and o Those users want to do more sophisticated editing, and o They want features that aren't easy and approachable, and o RichardF, being a nice person and liking his users, puts them in. IMHO, we need RichardF to be more of a bastard, and say No, this isn't going into Potlatch. Go away and learn JOSM or Merkaartor; they're not THAT hard. Reiterate with $POTLATCH_REPLACEMENT and $AUTHOR; this problem isn't intrinsic to Potlatch or RichardF. It's not about RichardF being a volunteer; for-profit software companies do the same thing. It's not about software or people, it's about systems. -- --my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com Crynwr supports open source software 521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815 Potsdam, NY 13676-3213 | Sheepdog ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [Talk-ht] [OSM-talk] Thoughts on OSM design, and looking forward and back
Thanks a lot Steve, for underlining the need to improve the experience of new visitors. This is right on spot with what we have been feeling regarding Haiti. Now that OSM is indeed the best map in Haiti, there is a kind of special responsibility that comes with this: let potential users know about OSM, and actually use it, and then maybe for some of them help improve it. (Just as an example (I don't mean that these specific points are especially important), there was a few days ago a little discussion about some Haiti thematic maps (http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/WikiProject_Haiti/Earthquake_map_resources#POI-Maps ) and their coupling with OpenStreetBugs. See e.g.: http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk-ht/2010-February/000244.html ) I am thinking of two concrete ways we could contribute to this effort: - Localization. For instance, help adapting OpenStreetBugs and translating it in Haitian Creole, and maybe also the front page and a few others. (How do we do this ? For OSB, I see http://github.com/emka/openstreetbugs/tree/master/locale/. Is it enough to supply an osb.ht.json file ?) - Get feedback from potential new users. Maybe, without going as far as a formal study like the one you quoted for Wikipedia (http://usability.wikimedia.org/wiki/UX_and_Usability_Study ), by organizing one or several hand-on sessions with a few potential users/contributors, possibly with a video recording of their reactions, questions, etc... Do you think this would be useful ? Cheers, Jean-Guilhem Toulouse, France P.S.: also, thanks a lot for your article OpenStreetMap - The Best Map (http://opengeodata.org/openstreetmap-the-best-map). I really enjoyed reading it, and I think it makes a lot of sense. ___ Talk-ht mailing list Talk-ht@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-ht
[OSM-talk] Thoughts on OSM design, and looking forward and back
I really liked something I read in The New New thing ( http://www.amazon.com/New-Thing-Silicon-Valley-Story/dp/0140296468/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpi_7 ) about Jim Clark ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_H._Clark ) when the author Michael Lewis would ask about the past of his companies and stuff he'd say that's boring and That's the past. I really don't give a shit about the past. ( http://books.google.com/books?id=UJw3i9_ZqQkClpg=PP1dq=the%20new%20new%20thingpg=PA44#v=onepageq=shit%20about%20the%20pastf=false ) I think we're locked in between three groups of thought on the OSM right now. Right up front we have the school of thought that everything is perfect the way it is. That uservoice is some kind of inherently crappy system (see the uservoice ideas page at http://osm.uservoice.com/ ). That we shouldn't allow people to use tools which make fixing the map easier (see @chilly on twitter), that people are inherently stupid and there should be a barrier to entry to editing in OSM because it's complicated. This school of thought is essentially still living in 1991 and I'll call this school the Game Haters: everything is wrong, even talking about it is wrong. In the middle we have a bunch of thought on how the site should or shouldn't be. Legitimate questions about putting the map or help up front, or using OSB or uservoice, or some new system, or something. But nobody can agree with anyone else, and anyone who actually does anything comes under attack because they'd never encompass everyone's idea of what the design or UI should be. Let's call this school the Player Haters: the game is there, we can play by the rules but don't like it when someone plays better Lastly we have a school which is looking forward and willing to throw out ideas and try them. They don't instantly hate everything or dismiss it because they don't personally like it. There is room in this school to understand that there are other schools out there, that what works for them might not work for someone else. At points like these, I think we have to decide though some debate where the project is going to go. If we want to just keep the tools hard to use and subject people to PL1 and trac, then that's a legitimate point of view. If we can stand some innovation like group 2, then that's cool too, or if we're able to just move on and keep innovating. If we look back, we've actually mostly not given a shit about the past. We threw out segments, threw out entire codebases (like 0.1 0.2 and so on) in the search for something better. We in OpenStreetMap tend to innovate. That's not to say it's not messy, it's a horribly messy process from a 'consensus' and community point of view, because often their isn't any consensus on anything, ever. It's that central freedom to not conform that is the most important, beautiful and gratifying thing in the project but sometimes like now with the design, it holds us back. I don't want the entire design debate to be about uservoice, but it's a great example that exposes the extremes of thought. Going through the extremes: * Some people *literally* don't want any feedback. * Some want feedback, but in trac or hidden in some other horrible system * Some want feedback that's easy, but just not on the front page * Some want feedback that's easy and upfront but not too exposed * Some want feedback that's easy and exposed to the most people (like having maplint or keepright or OSM switched on the front page by default) Will we ever get a consensus through debate? I highly doubt it. For the record - yet again - I'm not proposing uservoice as the final solution. I'm not proposing we use it for map bugs. But, it is a brilliant tool for many sites and it's provocative and brings up cool ideas of what we can do in the future with something similar. It's worth also thinking about where the schools of thought communicate. Mostly the negative ones are on the lists, and the positive ones have been in uservoice and on opengeodatas comments on the blog posts. Why is this? That's hard to answer. I think it might be simply that there are a lot of barriers to entry on the list, flames and baggage that a newbie doesn't want to deal with - because *they're a different group of people*. The project can exist with these different schools of thought. When I think back to most of the beginning years of OSM I'm struck remembering how much time I spent fucking around with SQL doing the big horrible jobs that nobody wants to do. Our sysadmins today mostly do all this awesome work and probably enjoy it like I did even, we need that skill set and school of thought to make the project run. In other words - we have people who contribute in all sorts of ways. At the same time, we growing in to the realm of a new school of thought. We're increasingly hitting people who can contribute enormously but just not in the way we're used to. Basically it's a question of time and how much
Re: [OSM-talk] Thoughts on OSM design, and looking forward and back
On 23 February 2010 20:17, SteveC st...@asklater.com wrote: An excellent and though-provoking post. It's rare to read something of that length on such touchy subjects and agree with so much of the content. If I had to pick a single most important theme as the central one, it's the whole area of turning people away from the project before they even begin and how that's a really bad thing. For a long time OSM was so far away from being ready for mass appeal that it didn't really matter if normal people stayed away. We don't have that luxury any more. Our public face has to show us up at our best against the competition, because the public doesn't know or care how clever it is under the hood. But they do know what they can do with Google Maps and similar, and we need to make those features an obvious and easy part of our own front page, starting with mashable maps for the ordinary user. And yes, I'm prepared to work on it. Dermot -- -- Iren sind menschlich ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Thoughts on OSM design, and looking forward and back
On Tue, Feb 23, 2010 at 2:17 PM, SteveC st...@asklater.com wrote: I know matt takes it personally that the logo is anything other than perfect, and richard takes it personally that potlatch is crap for newbies... but that's just fact of the matter as I constantly hear from designers, newbies and so many others. I don't care about personal feelings on those particular topics nearly as much as it physically pains me to think about all the people we turn away every single day because of it. Steve, I *really* don't want to start a flame war on the list (and I greatly appreciate your hard work on OSM), but I want to make sure and shine the mirror back at you a little bit. Lately your posts to this mailing list and others have been very confrontational on a personal level with some people. I imagine the discourse about new ideas for OSM would be much more civil if we didn't have to worry about personal attacks from you. I'm not saying your objections are *wrong*, but keep in mind that there are human beings subscribed to this list. When they read your troll-ey responses to criticism, I imagine it douses interest in continuing the on-topic conversation very quickly. Also, I did not know OSM had a UserVoice page -- perhaps you could continue sharing with this list the ideas you've heard for making OSM better, but this time don't slit people's throats when they make a constructive response to your idea. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Thoughts on OSM design, and looking forward and back
On 24 February 2010 06:17, SteveC st...@asklater.com wrote: In the middle we have a bunch of thought on how the site should or shouldn't be. Legitimate questions about putting the map or help up front, or using OSB or uservoice, or some new system, or something. But nobody can agree with anyone else, and anyone who actually does anything comes under attack because they'd never encompass everyone's idea of what the design or UI should be. Let's call this school the Player Haters: the game is there, we can play by the rules but don't like it when someone plays better The thing about OSB is there is already hooks into JOSM, how much effort would it be to do the same thing for uservoice? You don't need to use the OSB website, just their API. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Thoughts on OSM design, and looking forward and back
On Feb 23, 2010, at 2:27 PM, John Smith wrote: On 24 February 2010 06:17, SteveC st...@asklater.com wrote: In the middle we have a bunch of thought on how the site should or shouldn't be. Legitimate questions about putting the map or help up front, or using OSB or uservoice, or some new system, or something. But nobody can agree with anyone else, and anyone who actually does anything comes under attack because they'd never encompass everyone's idea of what the design or UI should be. Let's call this school the Player Haters: the game is there, we can play by the rules but don't like it when someone plays better The thing about OSB is there is already hooks into JOSM, how much effort would it be to do the same thing for uservoice? For the 3 millionth time, I'm not proposing uservoice for map bugs! :-) Just that the basic interface, a big feedback tab on the right/left etc is a good idea :-) You don't need to use the OSB website, just their API. Yours c. Steve ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Thoughts on OSM design, and looking forward and back
On 24 February 2010 07:30, SteveC st...@asklater.com wrote: For the 3 millionth time, I'm not proposing uservoice for map bugs! :-) Well the same question goes for any proposal, but you keep mentioning them, but the question is still valid when you do start looking at solutions: how hard would it be to integrate a bug solution into JOSM etc? ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Thoughts on OSM design, and looking forward and back
On Feb 23, 2010, at 2:07 PM, Ian Dees wrote: On Tue, Feb 23, 2010 at 2:17 PM, SteveC st...@asklater.com wrote: I know matt takes it personally that the logo is anything other than perfect, and richard takes it personally that potlatch is crap for newbies... but that's just fact of the matter as I constantly hear from designers, newbies and so many others. I don't care about personal feelings on those particular topics nearly as much as it physically pains me to think about all the people we turn away every single day because of it. Steve, I *really* don't want to start a flame war on the list (and I greatly appreciate your hard work on OSM), but I want to make sure and shine the mirror back at you a little bit. Lately your posts to this mailing list and others have been very confrontational on a personal level with some people. I imagine the discourse about new ideas for OSM would be much more civil if we didn't have to worry about personal attacks from you. I'm not saying your objections are *wrong*, but keep in mind that there are human beings subscribed to this list. When they read your troll-ey responses to criticism, I imagine it douses interest in continuing the on-topic conversation very quickly. oh sure - if you have any specific ones that annoy you I can try and explain why I was short. I think mainly it was just very annoying how TomH pissed all over it straight away which is actually pretty unlike him. Also, I did not know OSM had a UserVoice page -- perhaps you could continue sharing with this list the ideas you've heard for making OSM better, but this time don't slit people's throats when they make a constructive response to your idea. er... can you point to any example where I slit people's throats when they make a constructive response ? Yours c. Steve ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Thoughts on OSM design, and looking forward and back
On 23/02/10 21:35, SteveC wrote: oh sure - if you have any specific ones that annoy you I can try and explain why I was short. I think mainly it was just very annoying how TomH pissed all over it straight away which is actually pretty unlike him. Did you read the long blog post I wrote the next morning where I attempted to be more constructive? Tom -- Tom Hughes (t...@compton.nu) http://compton.nu/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Thoughts on OSM design, and looking forward and back
On Feb 23, 2010, at 2:46 PM, Tom Hughes wrote: On 23/02/10 21:35, SteveC wrote: oh sure - if you have any specific ones that annoy you I can try and explain why I was short. I think mainly it was just very annoying how TomH pissed all over it straight away which is actually pretty unlike him. Did you read the long blog post I wrote the next morning where I attempted to be more constructive? No, sorry Tom, where was that? Yours c. Steve ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Thoughts on OSM design, and looking forward and back
On 23/02/10 21:46, SteveC wrote: On Feb 23, 2010, at 2:46 PM, Tom Hughes wrote: Did you read the long blog post I wrote the next morning where I attempted to be more constructive? No, sorry Tom, where was that? http://compton.nu/2010/02/redesigning-the-openstreetmap-web-site/ Tom -- Tom Hughes (t...@compton.nu) http://compton.nu/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Thoughts on OSM design, and looking forward and back
On Feb 23, 2010, at 2:33 PM, John Smith wrote: On 24 February 2010 07:30, SteveC st...@asklater.com wrote: For the 3 millionth time, I'm not proposing uservoice for map bugs! :-) Well the same question goes for any proposal, but you keep mentioning them, but the question is still valid when you do start looking at solutions: how hard would it be to integrate a bug solution into JOSM etc? should be relatively easy with OSB or similar? Yours c. Steve ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Thoughts on OSM design, and looking forward and back
On Feb 23, 2010, at 2:50 PM, Tom Hughes wrote: On 23/02/10 21:46, SteveC wrote: On Feb 23, 2010, at 2:46 PM, Tom Hughes wrote: Did you read the long blog post I wrote the next morning where I attempted to be more constructive? No, sorry Tom, where was that? http://compton.nu/2010/02/redesigning-the-openstreetmap-web-site/ Cool makes a lot of sense, Tom. As you can see from uservoice, things you highlight like routing are very important to people out there. You might also have seen the misconception in blog posts back and forth last week with GIS guys that they thought OSM was simply unroutable because we don't expose it. Properly explaining why that is (bringing the service in house) and then doing it is I guess the right way forward. As for the approach... I'm really not sure a hack weekend would work. Say we got a designer in for a weekend. They'd actually want to sit in photoshop for some period of time and then iterate the design, then code that the HTML, then bolt all the functionality and so on. Could we really do any of the first bits in a hack weekend? So I'd say it'd be more efficient and get wider input, to iterate it out here on the interwebs and then code in the functionality over a hack weekend maybe, or refine and tweak etc. I know a bunch of people don't like uservoice, but it's actually got some good stuff in there now and it's what I was planning to use to iterate the design feedback. A bunch of people are using it, I posit because 1) it's so easy and 2) you can vote nicely on things... Here's my proposal for next steps: * put the html etc in svn or git or whatever * use uservoice for consensus on features to fix first (have a look, lots of good stuff) * pay the html guy to go do it * iterate like this 5-10 times at least if you think there's a better and more inclusive system than uservoice, or anyone wants to do the actual work, please of course let me know but right now I'm just trying to actually move it forward bit by bit... and again, I'm positing uservoice just for the feedback here, whatever actual feedback and bug system to use is as up in the air as anything else. It would be helpful to get deep and broad thoughts from the sysadmins on what the different bug system technical requirements are fo ryou guys too? Yours c. Steve ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Thoughts on OSM design, and looking forward and back
Tom one other thing.. you mention things like the three-pane front page and other totally new concepts... I said to Andy that my personaly goal wasn't to try and answer such 'big' existential questions because it'd be too hard and could take forever. I figured just iterating the current design with some cleanups and maybe a feature or two would at least accomplish something and fix 90% of the annoyances I hear from people, like it's so hard to get started (youtube screencast right up front in the help tab) and the front page is so noisy (reducing the front page content and putting it all in that tab too)... I dunno how we'd realistically answer the question of a total new start over design - pretty hard. On Feb 23, 2010, at 3:12 PM, SteveC wrote: On Feb 23, 2010, at 2:50 PM, Tom Hughes wrote: On 23/02/10 21:46, SteveC wrote: On Feb 23, 2010, at 2:46 PM, Tom Hughes wrote: Did you read the long blog post I wrote the next morning where I attempted to be more constructive? No, sorry Tom, where was that? http://compton.nu/2010/02/redesigning-the-openstreetmap-web-site/ Cool makes a lot of sense, Tom. As you can see from uservoice, things you highlight like routing are very important to people out there. You might also have seen the misconception in blog posts back and forth last week with GIS guys that they thought OSM was simply unroutable because we don't expose it. Properly explaining why that is (bringing the service in house) and then doing it is I guess the right way forward. As for the approach... I'm really not sure a hack weekend would work. Say we got a designer in for a weekend. They'd actually want to sit in photoshop for some period of time and then iterate the design, then code that the HTML, then bolt all the functionality and so on. Could we really do any of the first bits in a hack weekend? So I'd say it'd be more efficient and get wider input, to iterate it out here on the interwebs and then code in the functionality over a hack weekend maybe, or refine and tweak etc. I know a bunch of people don't like uservoice, but it's actually got some good stuff in there now and it's what I was planning to use to iterate the design feedback. A bunch of people are using it, I posit because 1) it's so easy and 2) you can vote nicely on things... Here's my proposal for next steps: * put the html etc in svn or git or whatever * use uservoice for consensus on features to fix first (have a look, lots of good stuff) * pay the html guy to go do it * iterate like this 5-10 times at least if you think there's a better and more inclusive system than uservoice, or anyone wants to do the actual work, please of course let me know but right now I'm just trying to actually move it forward bit by bit... and again, I'm positing uservoice just for the feedback here, whatever actual feedback and bug system to use is as up in the air as anything else. It would be helpful to get deep and broad thoughts from the sysadmins on what the different bug system technical requirements are fo ryou guys too? Yours c. Steve ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk Yours c. Steve ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Thoughts on OSM design, and looking forward and back
Thanks Dermot, you put it better than I did. On Feb 23, 2010, at 2:05 PM, Dermot McNally wrote: On 23 February 2010 20:17, SteveC st...@asklater.com wrote: An excellent and though-provoking post. It's rare to read something of that length on such touchy subjects and agree with so much of the content. If I had to pick a single most important theme as the central one, it's the whole area of turning people away from the project before they even begin and how that's a really bad thing. For a long time OSM was so far away from being ready for mass appeal that it didn't really matter if normal people stayed away. We don't have that luxury any more. Our public face has to show us up at our best against the competition, because the public doesn't know or care how clever it is under the hood. But they do know what they can do with Google Maps and similar, and we need to make those features an obvious and easy part of our own front page, starting with mashable maps for the ordinary user. And yes, I'm prepared to work on it. Dermot -- -- Iren sind menschlich ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Thoughts on OSM design, and looking forward and back
On Feb 23, 2010, at 2:07 PM, Ian Dees wrote: On Tue, Feb 23, 2010 at 2:17 PM, SteveC st...@asklater.com wrote: I know matt takes it personally that the logo is anything other than perfect, and richard takes it personally that potlatch is crap for newbies... but that's just fact of the matter as I constantly hear from designers, newbies and so many others. I don't care about personal feelings on those particular topics nearly as much as it physically pains me to think about all the people we turn away every single day because of it. Steve, I *really* don't want to start a flame war on the list (and I greatly appreciate your hard work on OSM), but I want to make sure and shine the mirror back at you a little bit. Lately your posts to this mailing list and others have been very confrontational on a personal level with some people. I imagine the discourse about new ideas for OSM would be much more civil if we didn't have to worry about personal attacks from you. I'm not saying your objections are *wrong*, but keep in mind that there are human beings subscribed to this list. When they read your troll-ey responses to criticism, I imagine it douses interest in continuing the on-topic conversation very quickly. So I talked to matt... I'm happy to retract that he's so personal about it, but has clarified to say i'd be happy if you went to a designer, or ran a competition to address the flaws in the logo. it would make me happy if the emphasis were on evolving and improving the logo, rather than replacing it. Yours c. Steve ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Thoughts on OSM design, and looking forward and back
On 23/02/10 22:12, SteveC wrote: As you can see from uservoice, things you highlight like routing are very important to people out there. You might also have seen the misconception in blog posts back and forth last week with GIS guys that they thought OSM was simply unroutable because we don't expose it. Properly explaining why that is (bringing the service in house) and then doing it is I guess the right way forward. As for the approach... I'm really not sure a hack weekend would work. Say we got a designer in for a weekend. They'd actually want to sit in photoshop for some period of time and then iterate the design, then code that the HTML, then bolt all the functionality and so on. Could we really do any of the first bits in a hack weekend? Well as I said I started to think that it probably wasn't very practical either which is why I suggested trying to draw up some sort of brief that could be given to designer(s) So I'd say it'd be more efficient and get wider input, to iterate it out here on the interwebs and then code in the functionality over a hack weekend maybe, or refine and tweak etc. It's difficult - people can design and propose and say wouldn't be cool if as much as they like but at the end of the day what gets implemented will be driven by the people that front up to do the work. The risk is that our usual crowd of architecture astronauts will design some fantastic all conquering web site with thousands of really cool features but then there will be nobody to implement it. I know a bunch of people don't like uservoice, but it's actually got some good stuff in there now and it's what I was planning to use to iterate the design feedback. A bunch of people are using it, I posit because 1) it's so easy and 2) you can vote nicely on things... I actually unsubscribed from the uservoice feed this morning I'm afraid because I wasn't finding it at all helpful. I'm just not sure you can design things by popular vote - part designing is knowing that sometimes you have to say no to something. Not everything that can be done should be done. Uservoice, as far as I've been able to see, doesn't really seem to have a concept of rejecting an idea. Here's my proposal for next steps: * put the html etc in svn or git or whatever * use uservoice for consensus on features to fix first (have a look, lots of good stuff) * pay the html guy to go do it * iterate like this 5-10 times at least if you think there's a better and more inclusive system than uservoice, or anyone wants to do the actual work, please of course let me know but right now I'm just trying to actually move it forward bit by bit... You see my concern, and yes it's probably an elitist attitude, is that uservoice is too inclusive. Certainly implementing whatever rises to the top on uservoice is not a reasonable way to design anything in my opinion. Just as an example, the top thing on uservoice right now is something that we probably can't do on any large scale. I mean I'm not quite sure exactly what it's suggesting but it seems to be that we should either add lots more layers to our map, or that we should have some sort of system to provide links to lots of other maps drawn using our data. The problem is that either of those things would probably kill all those other sites. My best suggestion for an implementation of it would be to have a wiki page listing uses of our data and then include a link to that page on the main site - that probably strikes a balance between publicising what can be done an not driving too big a tsunami of traffic to a third party site. It would be helpful to get deep and broad thoughts from the sysadmins on what the different bug system technical requirements are fo ryou guys too? You see to my mind uservoice isn't a bug tracking system at all - it's some kind of crazy popularity contest. Maybe it will work for this design problem but I don't think it will work for us in general. A bug tracking system needs basic concepts of responsibility for a bug and the ability to close it out, whether because it has been completed or because a decision has been taken not to do it. Tom -- Tom Hughes (t...@compton.nu) http://compton.nu/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Thoughts on OSM design, and looking forward and back
Oh I totally agree. I wouldn't suggest we just do whatever is at the top of uservoice, not at all. If for no other reason that I'm the one paying for the work so I'm going to pick the stuff that coincides with a) being good ideas b) having support and c) I like... mostly there is an overlap there. In terms of having a bazillion features - I hear you. I'm sticking to only things that the designer/html guy can do plus, maybe, the bug system. I can't of course have anything to do with routing as it's all kinds of stuff that you guys would have to implement. I really don't see the role of uservoice and the clones of it to be just do what the people say at the top... if anything most of the uses (and it lets you do this) mark ideas as 'under consideration' or 'rejected' pretty much like any bug system. The flip side of that though is what if the votes are right, in the end, and we're just ignoring the ideas because we don't like them? That's a hard one to call. Yours c. Steve On Feb 23, 2010, at 3:40 PM, Tom Hughes wrote: On 23/02/10 22:12, SteveC wrote: As you can see from uservoice, things you highlight like routing are very important to people out there. You might also have seen the misconception in blog posts back and forth last week with GIS guys that they thought OSM was simply unroutable because we don't expose it. Properly explaining why that is (bringing the service in house) and then doing it is I guess the right way forward. As for the approach... I'm really not sure a hack weekend would work. Say we got a designer in for a weekend. They'd actually want to sit in photoshop for some period of time and then iterate the design, then code that the HTML, then bolt all the functionality and so on. Could we really do any of the first bits in a hack weekend? Well as I said I started to think that it probably wasn't very practical either which is why I suggested trying to draw up some sort of brief that could be given to designer(s) So I'd say it'd be more efficient and get wider input, to iterate it out here on the interwebs and then code in the functionality over a hack weekend maybe, or refine and tweak etc. It's difficult - people can design and propose and say wouldn't be cool if as much as they like but at the end of the day what gets implemented will be driven by the people that front up to do the work. The risk is that our usual crowd of architecture astronauts will design some fantastic all conquering web site with thousands of really cool features but then there will be nobody to implement it. I know a bunch of people don't like uservoice, but it's actually got some good stuff in there now and it's what I was planning to use to iterate the design feedback. A bunch of people are using it, I posit because 1) it's so easy and 2) you can vote nicely on things... I actually unsubscribed from the uservoice feed this morning I'm afraid because I wasn't finding it at all helpful. I'm just not sure you can design things by popular vote - part designing is knowing that sometimes you have to say no to something. Not everything that can be done should be done. Uservoice, as far as I've been able to see, doesn't really seem to have a concept of rejecting an idea. Here's my proposal for next steps: * put the html etc in svn or git or whatever * use uservoice for consensus on features to fix first (have a look, lots of good stuff) * pay the html guy to go do it * iterate like this 5-10 times at least if you think there's a better and more inclusive system than uservoice, or anyone wants to do the actual work, please of course let me know but right now I'm just trying to actually move it forward bit by bit... You see my concern, and yes it's probably an elitist attitude, is that uservoice is too inclusive. Certainly implementing whatever rises to the top on uservoice is not a reasonable way to design anything in my opinion. Just as an example, the top thing on uservoice right now is something that we probably can't do on any large scale. I mean I'm not quite sure exactly what it's suggesting but it seems to be that we should either add lots more layers to our map, or that we should have some sort of system to provide links to lots of other maps drawn using our data. The problem is that either of those things would probably kill all those other sites. My best suggestion for an implementation of it would be to have a wiki page listing uses of our data and then include a link to that page on the main site - that probably strikes a balance between publicising what can be done an not driving too big a tsunami of traffic to a third party site. It would be helpful to get deep and broad thoughts from the sysadmins on what the different bug system technical requirements are fo ryou guys too? You see to my mind uservoice isn't a bug tracking system at all - it's some kind
Re: [OSM-talk] Thoughts on OSM design, and looking forward and back
On 24 February 2010 08:00, SteveC st...@asklater.com wrote: should be relatively easy with OSB or similar? That's my point, OSB is already integrated into JOSM and I realise uservoice has a few other things going for it, but integration into existing editors will make fixing bugs a lot simplier than something like the dupe node site which you have to go to and zoom in on an area and then load that area into the editor etc. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Thoughts on OSM design, and looking forward and back
Steve, it would be easier for me if you could fragment your ideas more and then propose them in digestible 20-line blocks or so. And then distribute this over a few weeks instead of creating a flurry every half year. Do you have an uservoice page where I could submit that idea and let others vote on it? If we want to just keep the tools hard to use and subject people to PL1 and trac, then that's a legitimate point of view. Good, because that's about my view. But it should be PL/I for best effect. No honestly. In spite of our non-usability we are growing so fast that all our power for innovation is already tied up trying to keep things going. You may not notice that from whatever lofty place you are in but behind the doors there is a lot going on. We literally cannot go any faster, and it beats my why you seem hell-bent to glue an afterburner to a ship which is already challenged to stay afloat. You make it sound like we're stagnating but where the hell did you get that idea from? Maybe I'm suffering from the German viewpoint here but there's not a day where people do not call for (and get) some new editor feature or introduce new (and quite complex) tagging ideas or specialist maps and all that. I think everything is going all right; we're very busy accommodating all those people who come aboard and their new ideas and stuff, and I am pretty sure there will be a time of consolidation when things become a bit quieter and we can then devote more of our resources to dealing with people who until then found OSM too complicated or whatever. But really, whatever issues I might have with OSM - lack of participants is not one of them at this time. 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] Thoughts on OSM design, and looking forward and back
On Tue, Feb 23, 2010 at 8:17 PM, SteveC st...@asklater.com wrote: I know matt takes it personally that the logo is anything other than perfect, and richard takes it personally that potlatch is crap for newbies... but that's just fact of the matter as I constantly hear from designers, newbies and so many others. I don't care about personal feelings on those particular topics [...] Then maybe you should. Over the years I've listened to you telling everyone how OSM isn't a technical project; it's all about community. But if you were within reach I'd bludgeon you with Matt's copy of The Art of Community ( http://bit.ly/cWU58j ) until you stopped being so bloody offensive on the mailing lists. Or maybe you should watch this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSFDm3UYkeE - Build a Strong Community Based On Politeness Respect Trust Humility etc etc. Seriously Steve, if you want to solve *any* of the problems you are discussing you would do much better by trying to build a community of people to help - instead of alienating, yet again, all the people who have done most to drive this project to the point that it's at. I know you love it that you founded this whole thing, and I know that unless you're involved you think that nothing actually gets done, and that if start a mail telling us all you read books and sprinkle in some quotations that it makes up for the fact you haven't a clue what's actually going on in the project any more. But you're wrong on every count. I'm trying to think if there's anyone left who you haven't had a go at? Frederik, TomH, Grant, Matt, Richard ... , everyone who disagrees with you on licensing, and all the people who ask you to stop having a go at all the other people in the project who do a hell of a lot more than you can be arsed giving them credit for. It's clear after years of chatter that the community is the wrong place to innovate on design and probably editing too. The model of 'wait for someone to do it' works well on a bunch of things, but not everything. How did I get the design done? I paid $70 to a really great designer and html coder in peru who I worked with over skype to come up with the straw design. For $70 (at $7/hour) I got more done than the last 1-2 years of design in OSM. And you got a design that looks like it cost $70. We've discussed this before, and it's not graphical design that's the problem, it's user experience. Yet this new design solves everything by simply removing all the functionality from the front page, and just have a more... button. Utter rubbish. Anything can become more intuitive by simply removing functionality. I can't believe you seriously think this design is any improvement beyond the rounded corners. But that's not surprising, since you haven't thought through what the website needs - what's it's purpose? Here's a hint: it's building the OSM community. When we have a community, the map will follow. Where is the best community? Germany. But I haven't seen any reference to www.openstreetmap.de, where it's strengths are, or what could be improved or learned from. Or any of the other OSM regional websites. But that's because you don't give a shit what anyone else has done, and you think that a crappy mockup is the only thing that anyone has come up with in the last 1-2 years. You're wrong. There are plenty of people out there doing great things - but again, you have such an ego that you can't contemplate it's happening without you knowing about it. There are talented flash coders, designers and more who will even work for free to help us too but just can't put up with people pissing all over their work, which is what usually happens on these lists There's much less pissing all over each other's work when you're off doing other things. Sure, there's plenty of discussions about vaporous ideas, but when it comes to someone saying the most popular editor is shit and written by someone who doesn't give a shit there's only one person around here that does that. It's gobsmackingly offensive. And it's gobsmackingly destructive behaviour from the founder of OSM and chairman of the foundation. Politeness? Respect? Humility? And that involves putting a buffer between the old timers in the community and people who want to move it forward. That is a dreadful concept, and you should be ashamed of what you've written here. Case in point, PL2. We have no idea when it's coming, if it will work or what. What I personally want to see is a community of people behind building the thing like there is behind the rails codebase or even JOSM. But everyone's so afraid of pissing off richard, or doesn't have the time to work it all out, we're not moving forward like we should be. Speak for yourself - we had a great time working with Richard at the P2 hack weekend. It's the first time I've had someone invite me round to their house for the weekend to do OSM coding, and he repeatedly helps me with the P2 coding. I
Re: [OSM-talk] Thoughts on OSM design, and looking forward and back
On 23/02/2010 20:17, SteveC wrote: [snip] What's uservoice? What's trac? What's PL1? -- Steve (novice OSM mapper) ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Thoughts on OSM design, and looking forward and back
Hi Andy Thanks for your thoughtful comments... You don't seem to make any realistic suggestions for moving forward and just, instead, suggest potlatch is fine as is the front page. That doesn't seem to be in touch with the reality of every newbie who encounters the project, does it? Sure, you don't like the way I communicate sometimes but do you have any ideas at all on improving things other than the status quo and pissing on someone for doing anything? On that point, I suppose I could write a big flowery essay on how awesome everyone is, and mostly we all are, but the hard fact is that the site and experience need improving and nothing's been done in quite a while. It's most interesting that all the (private, usually) comments from people who joined in the last year or so are very positive about the changes and everyone of 'our' generation is intensely negative. Yours c. Steve On Feb 23, 2010, at 4:29 PM, Andy Allan wrote: On Tue, Feb 23, 2010 at 8:17 PM, SteveC st...@asklater.com wrote: I know matt takes it personally that the logo is anything other than perfect, and richard takes it personally that potlatch is crap for newbies... but that's just fact of the matter as I constantly hear from designers, newbies and so many others. I don't care about personal feelings on those particular topics [...] Then maybe you should. Over the years I've listened to you telling everyone how OSM isn't a technical project; it's all about community. But if you were within reach I'd bludgeon you with Matt's copy of The Art of Community ( http://bit.ly/cWU58j ) until you stopped being so bloody offensive on the mailing lists. Or maybe you should watch this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSFDm3UYkeE - Build a Strong Community Based On Politeness Respect Trust Humility etc etc. Seriously Steve, if you want to solve *any* of the problems you are discussing you would do much better by trying to build a community of people to help - instead of alienating, yet again, all the people who have done most to drive this project to the point that it's at. I know you love it that you founded this whole thing, and I know that unless you're involved you think that nothing actually gets done, and that if start a mail telling us all you read books and sprinkle in some quotations that it makes up for the fact you haven't a clue what's actually going on in the project any more. But you're wrong on every count. I'm trying to think if there's anyone left who you haven't had a go at? Frederik, TomH, Grant, Matt, Richard ... , everyone who disagrees with you on licensing, and all the people who ask you to stop having a go at all the other people in the project who do a hell of a lot more than you can be arsed giving them credit for. It's clear after years of chatter that the community is the wrong place to innovate on design and probably editing too. The model of 'wait for someone to do it' works well on a bunch of things, but not everything. How did I get the design done? I paid $70 to a really great designer and html coder in peru who I worked with over skype to come up with the straw design. For $70 (at $7/hour) I got more done than the last 1-2 years of design in OSM. And you got a design that looks like it cost $70. We've discussed this before, and it's not graphical design that's the problem, it's user experience. Yet this new design solves everything by simply removing all the functionality from the front page, and just have a more... button. Utter rubbish. Anything can become more intuitive by simply removing functionality. I can't believe you seriously think this design is any improvement beyond the rounded corners. But that's not surprising, since you haven't thought through what the website needs - what's it's purpose? Here's a hint: it's building the OSM community. When we have a community, the map will follow. Where is the best community? Germany. But I haven't seen any reference to www.openstreetmap.de, where it's strengths are, or what could be improved or learned from. Or any of the other OSM regional websites. But that's because you don't give a shit what anyone else has done, and you think that a crappy mockup is the only thing that anyone has come up with in the last 1-2 years. You're wrong. There are plenty of people out there doing great things - but again, you have such an ego that you can't contemplate it's happening without you knowing about it. There are talented flash coders, designers and more who will even work for free to help us too but just can't put up with people pissing all over their work, which is what usually happens on these lists There's much less pissing all over each other's work when you're off doing other things. Sure, there's plenty of discussions about vaporous ideas, but when it comes to someone saying the most popular editor is shit and written by someone who doesn't give a shit there's
Re: [OSM-talk] Thoughts on OSM design, and looking forward and back
On Feb 23, 2010, at 4:27 PM, Frederik Ramm wrote: Steve, it would be easier for me if you could fragment your ideas more and then propose them in digestible 20-line blocks or so. And then distribute this over a few weeks instead of creating a flurry every half year. Do you have an uservoice page where I could submit that idea and let others vote on it? haha :-) It can be bursty, sorry :-) But really, whatever issues I might have with OSM - lack of participants is not one of them at this time. You're central point Frederik seems to be keep the status quo because we're overloaded already and also that lack of people is not a problem, perhaps another way of saying the same thing. Let me try and reason why that's wrong: * We will hopefully always have the problem that we are growing too quickly, therefore when we actually try to improve something won't matter * An increase in certain types of new users doesn't necessarily mean an increase in (editing, say) resources to match. For example a forum might lead to a lot more discussion than editing. Or perhaps the same editing - but better quality * Lack of participants outside of Germany is a very big problem. In Germany you have amazing maps - like the one someone just posted about mapping areas as roads etc. Amazing. Here in Colorado it is hard to build participatory community for a number of reasons, having better tools vastly helps. * A new class of users able to contribute map bugs easily may not in fact require much resources at all, compared to the existing resources in the existing disparate bug systems * We should be seen as responsive. The number one complaint I hear is that it's hard to use, site design is bad and so on. We should at least be seen to be trying to fix those problems, even if they are hard. * Having too many users is a good problem. You never know that waze, map maker or something may take those users away because they are responsive and more easy and that would give us a bad problem - too few users. Taking a step back for a second like I tried to in my long post - it's fundamentally a question of whether we look backward, stay static or move forward. Andy in his post just now was making a big case for not doing anything, as are you, I think. I know that a lot of people would love me to either stay out of it or act as the 'great leader' and say little. But I prefer to try and drive that change and it will be messy however I do it. Even when I think I'm doing the most benign positive thing in OSM I get flamed like whoever it was that went bonkers about the logo competition. So I may as well try and push forward. You're right about your point about all the backend scaling that's happened and that everyone is busy. I agree, it's awesome. But from the view of outsiders we have remained very static and it's time we changed that. Or lets put it another way - it's worked well for a while but we really should update it. Matt just mentioned to me that we need facts - maybe we really should pull in people off the street to find out how hard it is to get things done. We could shortcut that by interviewing the ex-CloudMade ambassadors about their experiences trying to teach people though. Yours c. Steve ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Thoughts on OSM design, and looking forward and back
On 24 February 2010 09:42, SteveC st...@asklater.com wrote: You don't seem to make any realistic suggestions for moving forward and just, instead, suggest potlatch is fine as is the front page. That doesn't seem to be in touch with the reality of every newbie who encounters the project, does it? Have you asked for any estimates on getting a replacement for potlatch coded? I already saw how you'd rather not go down this path, but I'm curious because I agree 100% that we need something similar after having spend considerable time explaining potlatch to non-tech relatives... ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Thoughts on OSM design, and looking forward and back
On Feb 23, 2010, at 4:37 PM, Steve Doerr wrote: On 23/02/2010 20:17, SteveC wrote: [snip] What's uservoice? What's trac? What's PL1? :-) UserVoice is a neat feedback-as-a-service website which lets anyone put a feedback tab on their site and collect user views on what should be fixed/added. trac, at trac.openstreetmap.org is a bug managent system which has some nice integration with svn, which hosts all our code. It's not usable for a novice really. PL1 is Potlatch 1, the flash editor on openstreetmap.org when you click 'edit' Yours c. Steve ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Thoughts on OSM design, and looking forward and back
On Feb 23, 2010, at 5:01 PM, John Smith wrote: On 24 February 2010 09:42, SteveC st...@asklater.com wrote: You don't seem to make any realistic suggestions for moving forward and just, instead, suggest potlatch is fine as is the front page. That doesn't seem to be in touch with the reality of every newbie who encounters the project, does it? Have you asked for any estimates on getting a replacement for potlatch coded? I already saw how you'd rather not go down this path, but I'm curious because I agree 100% that we need something similar after having spend considerable time explaining potlatch to non-tech relatives... yay! We basically have a few options: * Continue with PL1 * Freeze PL1 (TomH enforces no more updated on the server) and work on PL2 * Pull in MapZen as the editor * Pull in the JOSM applet version * Write something new Or some combination. Whatever happens my best outcome would be something that 1) Has a big open source community behind it 2) Is easy(ier) to use PL1, PL2, MapZen don't do (1) JOSM does do (1) but for a newbie, does not do (2). Getting back to your question, no I've not asked anyone yet for estimates but it shouldn't be too long with either mapzen or PL2 AFAICS but we really need the structural problems fixed, like freezing PL1 or figuring out how to attract more flash coders. As I said but Andy largely ignored, paying people is probably the worst option from a community point of view but at least it might move us forward. Yours c. Steve ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Thoughts on OSM design, and looking forward and back
On Tue, Feb 23, 2010 at 5:27 PM, Frederik Ramm frede...@remote.org wrote: I think everything is going all right; we're very busy accommodating all those people who come aboard and their new ideas and stuff, and I am pretty sure there will be a time of consolidation when things become a bit quieter and we can then devote more of our resources to dealing with people who until then found OSM too complicated or whatever. But really, whatever issues I might have with OSM - lack of participants is not one of them at this time. As I understood it, Steve was pointing out that it is difficult for someone that doesn't want to spend a month understanding the OSM ecosystem to make a simple edit (add a POI, fix the name of a road, etc.) to the map. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
