Re: [OSM-talk] Wikipedia article
I think you are jumping to conclusions (just as the TR piece does in a big way). Sure in the Web 2.0 (isn't that really dated by now btw?) world any project that doesn't show exponential growth and the potential to have participant numbers in the billions is not really interesting and the fact that you can single out a number in Wikipedia that is actually declining with time, guarantees damnation. In reality Wikipedia is and continues to be a huge success, and there are aspects of that success that we would be happy if we could emulate them. Sure they have challenges and the TR article does touch on some of them a bit. Attracting contributors with knowledge outside of the mainstream is clearly one and that their barrier to entry is now rather high (editor, complexity of the expected article structure) is not really a secret. But then on the other hand it is a fairly mature project and the easy stuff simply has been done, we probably can show similar trends in extremely well mapped areas. I would question if Wikipedia really has a general issue with being nice to new editors (outside of turf wars that we have had in OSM too), a lot of the complaints seem to originate from fringe groups (creationists etc.) that thrive in the US of A, but are of little or no consequence outside. Luckily for us, our idealogical fights tend to be about cycleway tagging and tend not to get as much media coverage :-). Our main challenge is simply covering area and detail, there is no difference between a street name entered by somebody with a PhD in social sciences and one added by a 1st grader. We don't need anything outside of knowledge of your surroundings to contribute in the first place, and to become a regular contributor, it is really only necessary to have a certain love to detail and enough interest to dedicate a significant amount of time to OSM. The later is clearly the largest barrier to contributing to OSM (http://www.slideshare.net/manuelaschmidt1/poster-dresden-icc) and while we may be able to motivate more and more diverse groups to contribute, we shouldn't expect that limiter to go away. Simon Am 26.10.2013 06:11, schrieb Jason Remillard: Hi Tom Your blog post is very interesting. Just in case anybody thinks that the rapid growth of OSM is inevitable at this point, this study shows how Wikipedia turned off its growth like a switch when they starting clamping down on first time editors. Since 2007 the number of active editors has actually decreased. http://www-users.cs.umn.edu/~halfak/publications/The_Rise_and_Decline/ Unless the map in your area is 100% perfect and complete, be extra nice to those new editors! Jason On Fri, Oct 25, 2013 at 5:21 PM, Tom MacWright t...@macwright.org wrote: I wrote an article somewhat in the same vein: http://macwright.org/2013/10/15/point-and-shoot.html Perhaps something to note is that, beyond technical and policy issues, one of the more common complaints about Wikipedia is that there's an unfriendly, elitist attitude amongst the established editors. My article asks for some relatively deep changes to infrastructure and user experience, but the more actionable and immediately useful thing that everyone can do is to be friendly. On Fri, Oct 25, 2013 at 5:06 PM, Jason Remillard remillard.ja...@gmail.com wrote: Hi, The MIT technology review just published this article on Wikipedia. http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/520446/the-decline-of-wikipedia/ It is sport criticizing Wikipedia, but two things stuck out. Wikipedia is trying to get more editors. However, they seem to have some additional problems that OSM does not have. Wikipedia failed to roll out the new GUI article editor. If you read the discussion on hacker news, and Slashdot. http://news.slashdot.org/story/13/10/23/1643228/wikipedias-participation-problem https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6612638 It seems like Wikipedia has revert first policy on questionable edits. It makes it unpleasant to start with the project, since probably every bodies first edits are questionable. OSM policy/culture of discussing a change *before* reverting is really good thing. Jason ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Wikipedia article
iD is a leap forward for getting more people to contribute. Technical people I try to get involved do ask so anyone can delete anything with some incredulity but as Scroobius Pip says some people are just nice and so far the ratio I've seen in OSM is that 99,999% are. A troll passes by now and then but that is usually easily corrected and quickly due to obvious deletions or changes. What also hurt the English Wikipedia (which is by far the biggest and what people usually refer to when saying Wikipedia) was the notability clamp-down. Deletionists had a field day in deeming locally important or well known things as non-notable and promptly deleted. This included football clubs in lower divisions who had played for decades or a century and even some villages or other localities fell foul of the global notibility that the deletionist movement, who must be thinking digital space is limited, demanded. I myself was an active contributor on the Icelandic and English Wikipedias. I am an admin on the Icelandic one (tiny but focuses more on local matters, has a niche and thrives in it, no sense in trying to emulate the scientific coverage the English one has) but have long since stopped trying to do anything beyond mere obvious corrections on the English one, the red tape there driving not only new editors but also experienced editors away. A couple of weeks ago I deleted boilerplates (another red-tape excess the English wikipedia has indulged in, slapping on the front-page comments that should belong on talk pages) from several Botswanan villages where they were under the threat of deletion due to being non-notable. Something that the notability guidelines themselves frown upon (a village being notable in it self is the rule) but nothing that has stopped the deletionism movement. Personally I try and keep an eye on mappers working in my areas which are Iceland and Botswana, and add them as friend on OSM and send them messages if they have done something superb or try to inform them of appropriate OSM-wiki pages if I notice something odd being done. Here I am fortunate, so to speak, as in the number of active editors in these regions is so far not very high. I dream of the day when the number grows though! --Jóhannes Þann 26.10.2013 04:11, skrifaði Jason Remillard: Hi Tom Your blog post is very interesting. Just in case anybody thinks that the rapid growth of OSM is inevitable at this point, this study shows how Wikipedia turned off its growth like a switch when they starting clamping down on first time editors. Since 2007 the number of active editors has actually decreased. http://www-users.cs.umn.edu/~halfak/publications/The_Rise_and_Decline/ Unless the map in your area is 100% perfect and complete, be extra nice to those new editors! Jason On Fri, Oct 25, 2013 at 5:21 PM, Tom MacWright t...@macwright.org wrote: I wrote an article somewhat in the same vein: http://macwright.org/2013/10/15/point-and-shoot.html Perhaps something to note is that, beyond technical and policy issues, one of the more common complaints about Wikipedia is that there's an unfriendly, elitist attitude amongst the established editors. My article asks for some relatively deep changes to infrastructure and user experience, but the more actionable and immediately useful thing that everyone can do is to be friendly. On Fri, Oct 25, 2013 at 5:06 PM, Jason Remillard remillard.ja...@gmail.com wrote: Hi, The MIT technology review just published this article on Wikipedia. http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/520446/the-decline-of-wikipedia/ It is sport criticizing Wikipedia, but two things stuck out. Wikipedia is trying to get more editors. However, they seem to have some additional problems that OSM does not have. Wikipedia failed to roll out the new GUI article editor. If you read the discussion on hacker news, and Slashdot. http://news.slashdot.org/story/13/10/23/1643228/wikipedias-participation-problem https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6612638 It seems like Wikipedia has revert first policy on questionable edits. It makes it unpleasant to start with the project, since probably every bodies first edits are questionable. OSM policy/culture of discussing a change *before* reverting is really good thing. Jason ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Wikipedia article
On Saturday 26 October 2013, Simon Poole wrote:
But then on the other hand it is a
fairly mature project and the easy stuff simply has been done, we
probably can show similar trends in extremely well mapped areas.
I think this is an important point - OSM does and will for the
forseeable future contain both extremely well and extremely sparsely
mapped areas ('areas' being meant here both spatially and
thematically). One of the major tasks will be to keep both the well
mapped parts up-to-date and improve the sparsely mapped parts.
Although this is difficult to back up with numbers i have the impression
the gap between well mapped and badly mapped areas in Openstreetmap is
widening even though you would think it is much easier to improve a
badly mapped area than a well mapped one. When during use of
Openstreetmap i look at some area (because i read about it in a news
report or whatever reason) i am frequently amazed by the detailed
information i find there but i am equally often appalled by the lack of
data. One of the motivations in Wikipedia for having notability rules
certainly is to address exactly this kind of problem and to focus
efforts on those parts considered important. Openstreetmap obviously
should not follow a similar path, especially considering how it proved
damaging in Wikipedia but just attracting additional contributors is
not enough. In my opinion there is need for a more active discourse on
gaps and uniform quality of the data.
Another important difference between Wikipedia and Openstreetmap is that
OSM does not have a no-original-research-rule. In fact original
research both in-the-field and from the armchair are preferred in
comparison to second hand information (a.k.a. imports). This makes OSM
potentially much more suited for professional contributors who in
Wikipedia always risk being accused of lacking neutrality. There are
however other barriers that discourage such people to become active
contributors.
--
Christoph Hormann
http://www.imagico.de/
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Re: [OSM-talk] Wikipedia article
On Sat, Oct 26, 2013 at 5:06 AM, Jason Remillard remillard.ja...@gmail.comwrote: It seems like Wikipedia has revert first policy on questionable edits. It makes it unpleasant to start with the project, since probably every bodies first edits are questionable. OSM policy/culture of discussing a change *before* reverting is really good thing. Two good things about Wikipedia that I hope OSM would emulate are (1) how easy it is to see what an edit has changed in an article, and (2) how easy it is to revert an edit—especially good for obvious vandalism. In OSM, trying to figure out what exactly happened in all but the most simple changesets is quite hard. Changesets pages only show what objects were added/modified/deleted but we have no good diff tool unlike in Wikipedia. (Granted, diff-ing text is a well-known problem with lots of solutions; diff-ing geodata is relatively new.) The OSM History Viewer is, I think, the best tool we have for analyzing changesets, but it still lacks important features (for example, it can show you objects that have been deleted on a map but it doesn't tell you what those objects are and what tags they had). While we have tools for reverting changesets, they are not as easy to use as with Wikipedia and complex changes sometimes need to be referred to the DWG. In addition, it's hard to partially revert a changeset—reverting only the problematic objects and leaving the rest untouched (or improved). ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Wikipedia article
Hi, Simon - If you look at the slashdot and hackernews links, I think you will see that many of the people that are upset probably don't have an ideological ax to grind. Eugene - Obviously, I think it is OK right now that it is hard to diff and revert changes. We are not under assault by spammers. One last thought. It is interesting to study Wikipedia because the project is so successful. It is a top 10 web site, everybody knows and uses it, they have a well funded foundation, etc, etc. Hardly anybody knows about OSM, and our registered user count is quite small compared to Wikipedia. However, check this link out. It shows that Wikipedia has about 36,000+ active editors (90 day average) http://www-users.cs.umn.edu/~halfak/publications/The_Rise_and_Decline/images/decline.png OSM, currently have about 18,000 active editors (30 day average) http://osmstats.altogetherlost.com/ We know that 80% of the edits are done by the active editors. Using this important metric, we are about half the size of Wikipedia, which is amazing. Jason On Sat, Oct 26, 2013 at 12:11 AM, Jason Remillard remillard.ja...@gmail.com wrote: Hi Tom Your blog post is very interesting. Just in case anybody thinks that the rapid growth of OSM is inevitable at this point, this study shows how Wikipedia turned off its growth like a switch when they starting clamping down on first time editors. Since 2007 the number of active editors has actually decreased. http://www-users.cs.umn.edu/~halfak/publications/The_Rise_and_Decline/ Unless the map in your area is 100% perfect and complete, be extra nice to those new editors! Jason On Fri, Oct 25, 2013 at 5:21 PM, Tom MacWright t...@macwright.org wrote: I wrote an article somewhat in the same vein: http://macwright.org/2013/10/15/point-and-shoot.html Perhaps something to note is that, beyond technical and policy issues, one of the more common complaints about Wikipedia is that there's an unfriendly, elitist attitude amongst the established editors. My article asks for some relatively deep changes to infrastructure and user experience, but the more actionable and immediately useful thing that everyone can do is to be friendly. On Fri, Oct 25, 2013 at 5:06 PM, Jason Remillard remillard.ja...@gmail.com wrote: Hi, The MIT technology review just published this article on Wikipedia. http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/520446/the-decline-of-wikipedia/ It is sport criticizing Wikipedia, but two things stuck out. Wikipedia is trying to get more editors. However, they seem to have some additional problems that OSM does not have. Wikipedia failed to roll out the new GUI article editor. If you read the discussion on hacker news, and Slashdot. http://news.slashdot.org/story/13/10/23/1643228/wikipedias-participation-problem https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6612638 It seems like Wikipedia has revert first policy on questionable edits. It makes it unpleasant to start with the project, since probably every bodies first edits are questionable. OSM policy/culture of discussing a change *before* reverting is really good thing. Jason ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Wikipedia article
On Sat, Oct 26, 2013 at 10:53 PM, Jason Remillard remillard.ja...@gmail.com wrote: Eugene - Obviously, I think it is OK right now that it is hard to diff and revert changes. We are not under assault by spammers. But you do agree that it's something that needs to be improved eventually? It's not spammers alone that are the problem. For example, I think the criticism about iD showing a prominent trash icon for deleting objects would be lessened if people have an easy way of reverting such mistakes. However, check this link out. It shows that Wikipedia has about 36,000+ active editors (90 day average) http://www-users.cs.umn.edu/~halfak/publications/The_Rise_and_Decline/images/decline.png OSM, currently have about 18,000 active editors (30 day average) http://osmstats.altogetherlost.com/ We know that 80% of the edits are done by the active editors. Using this important metric, we are about half the size of Wikipedia, which is amazing. The 36,000 number is only for the English Wikipedia. If you get the edits for all Wikipedia languages, which makes the number more comparable to OSM, the number of active Wikipedians is around 71,000: http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediansEditsGt5.htm In addition, in Wikipedia, an active editor is defined as one who has edited at least 5 times in a calendar month. The OSMstats page you linked seems to count a user as active when he or she has contributed at least once (which seems correct when looking at the stats for my country). So, if we were to use the same definition of active user, I'm sure the difference in counts would be even larger than the 71,000 vs. 18,000. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Wikipedia article
On Fri, Oct 25, 2013 at 05:21:36PM -0400, Tom MacWright wrote: Perhaps something to note is that, beyond technical and policy issues, one of the more common complaints about Wikipedia is that there's an unfriendly, elitist attitude amongst the established editors. My article asks for some relatively deep changes to infrastructure and user experience, but the more actionable and immediately useful thing that everyone can do is to be friendly. I have experienced the same elitist attitude with OSM especially with notes i opened lately in my non primary areas. Questions or even remarks have been responded to in a way that as a newbie that would have been my very last note. So i think OSM goes the same path as wikipedia but i think the revert first simply doesnt work for OSM as we dont have a single click button to revert changes. So before somebody asks on a list to let somebodys changes be reverted the revert gets discussed. So i think the ability to discuss changes in OSM is its technical inability to ease the revert. Flo -- Florian Lohoff f...@zz.de signature.asc Description: Digital signature ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Wikipedia article
On Sat, Oct 26, 2013 at 10:10:19PM +0800, Eugene Alvin Villar wrote: Two good things about Wikipedia that I hope OSM would emulate are (1) how easy it is to see what an edit has changed in an article, and (2) how easy it is to revert an edit—especially good for obvious vandalism. IMHO Easy tools for reverting will promote local warlords who will simply revert every single change somebody else does as we have right now with Wikipedia. Flo -- Florian Lohoff f...@zz.de signature.asc Description: Digital signature ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Wikipedia article
I wrote an article somewhat in the same vein: http://macwright.org/2013/10/15/point-and-shoot.html Perhaps something to note is that, beyond technical and policy issues, one of the more common complaints about Wikipedia is that there's an unfriendly, elitist attitude amongst the established editors. My article asks for some relatively deep changes to infrastructure and user experience, but the more actionable and immediately useful thing that everyone can do is to be friendly. On Fri, Oct 25, 2013 at 5:06 PM, Jason Remillard remillard.ja...@gmail.comwrote: Hi, The MIT technology review just published this article on Wikipedia. http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/520446/the-decline-of-wikipedia/ It is sport criticizing Wikipedia, but two things stuck out. Wikipedia is trying to get more editors. However, they seem to have some additional problems that OSM does not have. Wikipedia failed to roll out the new GUI article editor. If you read the discussion on hacker news, and Slashdot. http://news.slashdot.org/story/13/10/23/1643228/wikipedias-participation-problem https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6612638 It seems like Wikipedia has revert first policy on questionable edits. It makes it unpleasant to start with the project, since probably every bodies first edits are questionable. OSM policy/culture of discussing a change *before* reverting is really good thing. Jason ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Wikipedia article
Hi Tom Your blog post is very interesting. Just in case anybody thinks that the rapid growth of OSM is inevitable at this point, this study shows how Wikipedia turned off its growth like a switch when they starting clamping down on first time editors. Since 2007 the number of active editors has actually decreased. http://www-users.cs.umn.edu/~halfak/publications/The_Rise_and_Decline/ Unless the map in your area is 100% perfect and complete, be extra nice to those new editors! Jason On Fri, Oct 25, 2013 at 5:21 PM, Tom MacWright t...@macwright.org wrote: I wrote an article somewhat in the same vein: http://macwright.org/2013/10/15/point-and-shoot.html Perhaps something to note is that, beyond technical and policy issues, one of the more common complaints about Wikipedia is that there's an unfriendly, elitist attitude amongst the established editors. My article asks for some relatively deep changes to infrastructure and user experience, but the more actionable and immediately useful thing that everyone can do is to be friendly. On Fri, Oct 25, 2013 at 5:06 PM, Jason Remillard remillard.ja...@gmail.com wrote: Hi, The MIT technology review just published this article on Wikipedia. http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/520446/the-decline-of-wikipedia/ It is sport criticizing Wikipedia, but two things stuck out. Wikipedia is trying to get more editors. However, they seem to have some additional problems that OSM does not have. Wikipedia failed to roll out the new GUI article editor. If you read the discussion on hacker news, and Slashdot. http://news.slashdot.org/story/13/10/23/1643228/wikipedias-participation-problem https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6612638 It seems like Wikipedia has revert first policy on questionable edits. It makes it unpleasant to start with the project, since probably every bodies first edits are questionable. OSM policy/culture of discussing a change *before* reverting is really good thing. Jason ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
