OpenStreetMap
Yesterday I created a filter in OSMCha to get all edits made by new users in Brazil, as we are having a new wave of Pokemon motivated edits. Today I spent some time reviewing some of those edits. I sorted the changesets by the number of features created and started by the big ones.
I reviewed 11 edits, six of them had between 132 and 400 elements created, and 5 with 400 to 510. It was a surprise to me that only ONE of those edits was bad (the user created a river that doesn’t exist). Some edits had some small errors of course, but nothing very dangerous to the map quality.
So, believe in new users, they also can do amazing things and congratulate them by their good edits!
Discussion
Comment from Glassman on 2 December 2017 at 21:56
Wille, Congratulations on checking new users edits. The same influx of new Pokemon mappers is appearing near me. So far their edits look very good. Only one questionable edit. If I spot a problem I will leave a changeset comment explaining the problem and often fix the error.
I would also like to encourage you to send a welcome message to the new users. Mine is modeled after the Brussels community. Studies have shown that welcoming new users improve retention.
Good luck, Clifford
Comment from SomeoneElse on 3 December 2017 at 01:14
Re “Studies have shown that welcoming new users improve retention” - “studies” also haven’t shown that (for example a few years ago I looked at the Italian data where recipients were randomly selected to receive welcome emails or not, and there wasn’t any obvious correlation). The transcript at https://2017.stateofthemap.us/transcripts/quasi-experimental-research.html is actually too poor to understand what point is being made there, but it seems to be comparing different countries data with each other - it’s essentially comparing “apples with oranges”.
That doesn’t mean that contacting new mappers isn’t a good idea of course - I’m just not convinced it’ll make a huge difference to retention. What I think it does do (and unfortunately this too is just anecdotal) is improve quality. I suspect that messages are very culturally sensitive too - for example I suspect that the Dutch community’s version wouldn’t go down at all well in the UK, and anything dreamt up by a UK mapper would likely just be ignored in the US :)
FWIW I wrote https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/User:SomeoneElse/new_mapper_messages about 5 years ago, and the key idea there is to “give people the chance to make mistakes and learn from them” rather than jumping down their throat at the first “error”.
Comment from Martiniano_2 on 3 December 2017 at 01:21
sou novo usuario e venho utilizando informações do IBGE e do Plano diretor do municipio sou funcionario da secretaria municipal de saude um abraço
Comment from wille on 4 December 2017 at 11:11
Hi Clifford,
Thanks for the idea! Another user has already set up a bot to send messages welcoming new contributors in Brazil.