Hello everyone,
with the osm gadget working nicely in a number of Wikipedias, I was
wondering if it would make sense to add an "edit" link to it? A link
that would get you directly to the OpenStreetMap edit functionality for
the displayed area.
I would guess that quite a number of wikipedia users / editors will not
have heard of OpenStreetMap before and are thus not aware that you can
edit and improve the maps just like one can improve the articles.
Adding an edit link to the osm gadget would potentially increase this
awareness and therefore might help improve the quality of the maps
included in Wikipedia. Especially if wikipedia editors would use the
functionality, the maps would be improved in a way relevant to the
articles. For example add missing footpaths leading up to the monument
described in an article, or add the names in different languages.
Therefore this would hopefully be a win both for Wikipedia and for
OpenStreetMap.
There are however possibly a couple of down sides as well. For one, it
might be confusing to wikipedians that you need a separate OpenStreetMap
user account in order to edit the maps, as the Wikipedia account will
obviously not do. Secondly, a lot of the embedded maps are by default
zoomed out so far (e.g. city level) that it is not feasible to edit at
that zoom level. The edit link would therefore have to be restricted to
higher zoom levels. Thirdly, one would have to make sure people are
aware that they are not only editing the map for this one article, but
editing a world wide map database used for many purposes. I.e. make sure
people don't for example delete some points of interest, because they
think it makes the rendering in this article cluttered or
in-appropriate, or add labels for non existent objects to make them show
up on the map for the article.
So the question is, what do others think? Would this be a good idea
overall? How would an edit link best be presented in the osm gadget? Any
other thoughts on this topic?
Kai
