As I am rather new to OSM, I find it very interesting how the process of getting to know how to do things really differs from other projects.

Two years ago I was new to a Java application. I only had little experience with Java, even less with how to make use of Java-specific editor features and how to structure a Java application. So other people showed me how to use Eclipse, I started to read the source code of the project part by part and searched for more detailed information on Google. Once I found information about one topic, I knew how to do it. After one week, I was totally familiar with the structure of the project, knew where to find the information I needed and could change anything I wanted to.

With OpenStreetMap, the process of getting to know it is completely different. As a beginner, you can do things without noticing that you actually don’t know how to do them. You beginn to cycle around in your area and take a photo of everything you think is important. Then, when you want to get your changes into the map, you suddenly notice that you missed some information without even knowing that you needed it. OSM does not tell you what to map, you can map whatever you want, and suddenly you read somewhere on the Wiki that someone has mapped something you’ve seen during your trip, and you have to go there again because you hadn’t thought of mapping something like that.

It happens to me very often that I wanted to map something and did that some way that I thought was that right way to do it. Then suddenly, I read someone’s comment on the Wiki, who describes a problem with the way I mapped it, so I see that I have to change hundreds of things I mapped. Often, there is no “right” way to do something, and in that case, there is usually no page on OSM that lists all different ways to do it, instead you stumble upon a new way to do something occasionally that you didn’t know before. This seems to be the main difference of OSM compared to other projects. Often, there is no “right” and “official” way to do something, and most of the time, “unofficial” things get official by many people using them (and not because they are the best way to do it). Sometimes though, unofficial things you have to use and that seem to be used by everyone else are changed suddenly and you have to update everything you’ve mapped.

In other projects, people sometimes discover a problem with the current concept that is being used. They post the problem on a mailing-list or a forum, then a huge discussion is started and finally a solution is decided and used. In OSM however, you don’t have to be an expert knowing every detail of the project structure to find problems with the current concept. In fact, every beginner discovers things that he simply can’t map with the current tagging behaviour.
In OSM, the first hard thing to do is to find out that this problem has already been discovered. Often, there are many threads on the mailing-list or in the forum that talk about the problem you face, but you have only used the Wiki until now and haven’t found anything there. Hundreds of people give proposals to the same problem in different places, but no one collects all suggestions and lists them on the Wiki. So people keep “discovering” a problem again and again, and either some of the old arguments are mentioned again, or older discussions that aren’t active anymore are linked, so the user “discovering” the problem has no way to contribute his opinion to the discussion. If he comes up with some new argument considering an old proposal, people don’t want to discuss the same topic again.
The second hard thing to do is to decide how to map the information you can’t tag at the moment. In OSM, it literally takes years until a proposal gets official, people discuss about a topic again and again, but somehow, no discussion comes to a conclusion.

The main problem I see about OSM is that different people discuss about the same topic in different places at different times, and no one and nothing connects them and collects all their arguments and opinions in one place to finally find an official solution. Beginners that want to contribute to the discussion have hundreds of places where solutions are discussed, different discussions come to different conclusions as different people are participating on them and no one knows what to do. I hope that the Wiki gets more structured in the future and that the process of finding a solution will occur by listing arguments on a clearly arranged page. I think by this, the proposals can get accepted much more faster than it is the case now. I find it very discouraging not to be able to map something you want, just because there is no official way to do it yet and thus no support in the editors and renderers.