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
