Talk:Beginners' guide

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Discuss Beginners' guide here:

Contents

Direct links to videos

The ShowMeDo site doesn't work for me. I don't think we can assume that the reader has a working Flash player, sufficient bandwidth, and is currently connected. Please provide direct links to the Ogg Theora file (or whatever video format). Thanks. Ciaran 11:46, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Merge Starter Tutorial with Beginners' guide

As discussed at Talk:Beginners' guide there's too many pages knocking around which claim to offer a one-stop introduction to the OSM project. This Starter Tutorial is one of them. "Starter Tutorial" should redirect to Beginners' guide, merging any useful snippets of info here, which might be go well in that guide. ...or given that this is a very JOSM oriented tutorial, the JOSM help wiki could receive some of this content

-- Harry Wood 14:15, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Solved — Verdy_p (talk) 23:04, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

Still many redundancies

I am currently merging all the information on how to record GPS tracks. I created for that a dedicated page, where I copied all the info from various other pages, that I replaced by links.

Now I came upon Beginners_Guide_1.1.1, that should basically get merged too (I took most of the information over already). What's your opinion about that ? Ben, you look like of of the the maintainers of the whole guide, would you agree me to do so ?

The instructions on Recording_GPS_tracks are very important, also for a beginner. For example, the fact that the "Lock on road" function shall be disabled is critical. It makes no sense to duplicate it into the beginner's guide though.

I have also noticed other major redundancies that need to be addressed :

  1. Beginners_Guide_1.1 vs. Mapping_techniques
  2. Beginners_Guide_1.1.2 vs. Yahoo!_Aerial_Imagery
  3. Beginners_Guide_1.2.1 vs. Making_GPX_Tracks
  4. ...

There aren't even links from the beginner's guide sections to the more complete pages.

While I agree it makes completely sense to take a beginner by the hand with the corresponding guide, I see 2 major problems with the current "implementation" :

  1. Wiki maintenance : much information is duplicated
  2. The beginner's guide simplifies too much. A very good example is the "Lock on road" problem. A beginner MUST read that on the dedicated page before recording tracks !

I would be glad to provide support in this direction, while keeping the beginner's guide clear and concise. Let me know what you think !

Ocroquette 18:20, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

It's important to note that a beginners guide isn't the same as a complete guide to xyz. There is a large amount of information on all the 'vs' pages which you've linked to. I think all this information is valuable, but not the first things people need to know. A huge page of text tends to see a lot of people off. It is better to inform them of the key points and at least have them reading it, than having them give up or go ahead with no reading at all. All further reading should be linked to I think.
The 'Recording_GPS_tracks' page should be linked to from the GPS page on the beginners guide for further reading I think also. But.. your example of the "lock on road" function being disabled is critical, I defiantly agree on that.
Duplicated data isn't that bigger issue I think, so long as the reason for duplication is 1 page being a simplified (starters) form of another, rather than the 2 (or more) pages just being slight variations of exactly the same thing.
I don't agree that the beginner's guide simplifies too much, but again I agree to the 'lock on road' problem which is the example for that point. Personally I didn't deliberately exclude this from any page at any point, but I don't know if others have consciously avoided adding it..?
"would you agree me to do so ?" I don't need to, it's not my page, although having a discussion is productive. Ben 23:04, 17 January 2009 (UTC)
OK, I have added links to the main pages that I know of. Thanks for the "Lock on road" addition. I guess it's ok this way. -- Ocroquette 15:00, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

Wiki organisation

This is following on from the above points about redundancies, but also consolidating / updating an older discussion.

We have too many pages aiming to provide an introduction to the project. Some examples which look like they are stale and unloved anyway:

"Portal:Users" is quite stale and unloved, and furthermore is named badly, because the content is giving an introduction to the project (not a portal). As an introduction, it is an unnecessary duplication of this Beginners' guide ...and yet it has been translated into five different languages, so that's awkward!

Now initially when this "Beginners' guide" was created, we already had Help:Contents linking to About, Browsing and Editing, also pages like the Map Making Overview (as it is now called). These pages, and many others, provide mostly help information of a not-too-technical-aimed-at-newbies form. So my initial thought was that the "Beginners' guide" was an unnecessary addition to the mess, creating lots of duplication (as User:Ocroquette is pointing out again above)

...but I've come round to Ben's way of thinking. It could be useful for new users to have a limited self-contained set of pages to read through, guiding them through some aspects of the project at an introductory level. That's in addition to the various other help wiki pages which adopt a more free-form wiki interlinked approach. I think there's more work we need to do on the Beginners' guide pages to achieve these goals, but as a justification for its existence, that makes some sense.

I know that many people feel that the Beginners' guide is one of the worst areas of the wiki, or the area most in need of clean-up. I've heard suggestions we "slash and burn" the whole thing. So I think we need to be clear what the justification is, and what the goal of these pages is, and maybe seek to differentiate with other wiki pages.

-- Harry Wood 01:53, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Somebody recently added a link on this page, to a new page "How it works". This is yet another I'm going to describe the project my way wiki mess. I'll be removing that link from here very shortly.
But it did prompt me to put forward a new plan for dealing with this kind of thing. And I think it also points the way to a fresh approach to creating distilled Beginners' guide type documents without too much wiki mess. See Talk:How it works
-- Harry Wood
I've removed a link to User:Detectist/OSM Mapping (Using Potlatch) for Dummies, for essentially the same reasons. This seems like a better attempt at an intro, but it's still messy to link it from here. -- Harry Wood 04:24, 15 September 2011 (BST)

Improvements to the Beginners' guide

The Beginners' guide has been flagged as one of the key WikiProject Cleanup issues right now (a key area where the wiki is failing to deliver important information effectively to new users). I'm going to paste in a couple of comments I've found from elsewhere (hope the authors don't mind) -- Harry Wood 10:40, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

"it's a mostly unhelpful link farm detailing a particular mapping method in infinitely too many pages" -- User:Randomjunk 09:46, 23 January 2009 ([1])
I think it just needs to be four single pages:
1. what OSM is and how it works (including brief explanation of copyright and GPSs);
2. how and when to use Potlatch;
3. how and when to use JOSM;
4. an introduction to the OSM community, and ideas for where to go next.
All the core stuff, but nothing more, should be on these pages. Trouble-shooting stuff (e.g. how to download tracks from your GPS, which GPS to buy, etc.) should be on separate pages - ideally those which are already on the wiki.
We don't need a comprehensive manual, just a getting-started guide. Something like http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Beginners_Guide_1.5 is way too much detail (I mean, does a newbie really need to know how Osmarender works?), and I think we can be fairly light on the "why do it", too - if you've gone to the Beginners' guide, you already want to do it.
-- User:Richard Tue Jan 06 23:28:27 (comment to me)

Now it should be noted that the above comments are taken out of context. I'm sure people appreciate the efforts gone in to the Beginners Guide so far, but nonetheless when people are prompted to whinge about problems on the wiki, Beginners' guide is near the top of the list. I'm sure I could find other examples on the mailing list.

So how can we improve it? I'd be inclined to agree with Richard that we should aim to limit the guide to just a handful of separate pages. I created the content template on the right hand side. This is useful for newbies reading the guide, but I also found it necessary just as a way of getting a grip on just how many pages the guide consists of, and how it is being structured (and I'm still not 100% sure I found all the pages!) Perhaps we should limit ourselves to just five or six pages. I notice the Germans (DE:Beginners' guide) have a set of six tabs, which seems to work well, and I was thinking my Template:Beginners Guide Header could be converted to show tabs at the top.

I also wonder whether the "5 steps" identified in the image, are the best breakdown of chapters to have in a guide. I suppose that's something people will always have their own personal take on. There's several different ways to explain the OSM project (different order to cover the topics) I'm thinking the distinction between "3 Edit maps" and "4 Edit data" is unclear, and also steps 1 and 2 are very GPS focussed. Pondering alternatives

-- Harry Wood 10:40, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Proposal by User:Kempelen

Reading this whole page and seeing how old the comments are, and how outdated some parts of the documentation was (I've updated some already), and after talking to the original author, I propose:

If other editors agree, I'll do these changes. Opinions? Kempelen 22:52, 15 May 2011 (BST)

Hi. Thanks for taking the time to look at this. It needs somebody to take a step back, think about structure and focus, and then figure out a way of transitioning to something better. I agree with lots of what you're proposing.
You say "Remove notes that are not related to drawing map" so make it more of a beginner editing guide. Tricky thing here is that we have some beginner editing guides for specific editors already. Potlatch 2/Primer and the older Potlatch 1/Primer are one-page guides to Potlatch, although actually they're more like cheat-sheets than guides. JOSM/Guide is a a more wordy description, but still beginner oriented, split across three pages. Both of these avoid describing some of the more generic map making principles, and things like tags, so there is a need for a Beginners' guide in addition to them, but we should avoid too much duplication. Perhaps we should try to find a way of describing map editing without mentioning specific UI elements and keyboard presses, but rather just refer (very prominently) to those other guides. It's the duplication which results in sections of this guide not being maintained. Describing editing without describing a specific editor could be challenging, but I don't think it's impossible. There's lots of concepts such as ways, nodes, tags, and using GPS and imagery, which we can introduce equally for potlatch, JOSM, and Merkaartor. To be clear, I'm suggesting we get rid of separate pages for JOSM and Potlatch from here.
'"avoid links to advanced pages and avoid lists of links", would be good. I'm thinking we should go for a more distinct look and feel for the Beginners' guide (box around it or something) and then try to link to other wiki pages only within special side-boxes (a bit like the way wikimedia projects cross-link e.g. wikibooks cookbook:beer has a very separate looking box linking to wikipedia 'beer' article) This gives a clear visual cue that the link is taking you out of the Beginners' guide and onto the rest of the wiki. In doing so, we'll leave behind fewer links in the main body of text, and these would be "internal" links between pages of the Beginners' guide. It becomes more self-contained and less heavily meshed with the rest of the wiki.
-- Harry Wood 12:28, 16 May 2011 (BST)
Hi Harry, thanks for reply. The mentioned guides are "cheat sheets", that include very good additional information once you tried and succeeded working with OSM editing. I think that initial success is missing and leading users to leave too early. Users are sent to Map_Features and such huge pages too early. (From Potlatch2 Primer too) We could allow beginners to live with a simple residential road and then classify further later, after the initial success inspire them to continue.
My idea is to get users' hands dirty - and feel satisfied with it. Giving users theoretical information of what are nodes, ways, how to edit a way in general, how to tag it, but give no chance to try is not good. What you recommend would require users to read a LOT MORE before they can actually succeed to draw anything. I think the Beginners' guide currently allows to do a very basic editing and publishing, and this could be pushed further.
I try to list current sections to try to help planning structural changes

Leaving:

However still focuses on "practical introduction to editing OSM", so you may not agree. :-) I find it most important that users can "draw their neighbor" without going to Map_Features and such pages on the first day. A few days later they will go there anyway, but that stage they feel the fun of editing, so they will accept it. :-) If that neighbor won't be perfect, users will learn and repair later. Kempelen 22:16, 18 May 2011 (BST)

Integration of openstreetbugs

hi guys. just got this link from the mailing list. i think it should be integrated into the newbie quicksteps. but i dont know how to do it best ... proposals anyone? http://openstreetbugs.appspot.com/ - description: http://gpsrevolution.blogspot.com/2008/06/openstreetbugs-eng.html

... since there was no reaction i just tried

User:Blubbi 12:03, 17 June 2008

How to display Points of Interest from KML

I have a KMl file, at: http://www.westmidlandbirdclub.com/west-midland-bird-club.kml I can paste that URL into G**gle M*ps, and this: http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=http:%2F%2Fwww.westmidlandbirdclub.com%2Fwest-midland-bird-club.kml is retuned. Can I do anything like that with my KML file, and OSM? Easily? A search on this wiki for KML was not enlightening. Pigsonthewing 16:17, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

The KML wiki page originally had a dubious redirect which I guess was screwing up your search. See KML now -- Harry Wood 16:32, 26 June 2009 (UTC)
Thank you, but the examples via there seem to require scripting. I simply want to drop the URL of a KML file into a box and then see the KML PoIs on a map, in my browser. Pigsonthewing 19:20, 26 June 2009 (UTC)
OK I've just knocked up a quick script especially for you: http://www.funmap.co.uk/cloudmade-examples/kml-displayer.php Bit basic though. I've not added the other features you might expect of a map display website (zoom bar, 'permalink' etc) There's probably some better OSM map displaying websites supporting KML overlays, but I'm not aware of them. -- Harry Wood 18:56, 27 June 2009 (UTC)
That's very kind, thank you, and works well. But my point was that people can do this with GM, including zooming and the like, and so OSM needs to provide the same sort of functionality, if it wishes to gain market share. I'd far rather use OSM for this, both to support it and its open-source ethos; and to do so by raising awareness of OSM among my site's visitors, but in the meantime, I'll have to remain with GM. That's not a criticism, though, and I'm very mindful that OSM is a volunteer effort - I just think it's something worth talking about. Pigsonthewing 09:28, 28 June 2009 (UTC)
So you're suggesting adding features to the Front Page Design. That discussion is ongoing (see that page and join in)
This discussion is in the wrong place. Think I'll move it to KML talk page.
-- Harry Wood 16:33, 5 October 2010 (BST)

Moving 1.2.2 under 1.3.1?

I'm thinking about moving the section 1.2.3 Downloading into JOSM to 1.3.1.1 (and shifting the other sections there down) since that section is only relevant for JOSM users. Good idea/bad idea? Thanks, AxelBoldt 05:22, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

Seems to be moved to Beginners Guide 1.3.3.1 now.
Incidentally it's a problem with this wiki page naming scheme, that pages need to be moved around a lot to do a renumbering. reminds me of programming in BBC BASIC. Ultimately though, there should probably be fewer pages anyway (commented above)
-- Harry Wood 16:36, 5 October 2010 (BST)

Suggest a bit overhaul here

Hi guys, I'm brand new, and this Beginner's guide (and most of this wiki) confused the hell out of me. It assumes that the person arriving here has already decided they're going to get a GPS, drive around the city, collect data, and upload it. Probably unrealistic for a newbie. In fact, the sequence of operations (collect data, upload, edit, use) is probably almost exactly backwards. Newbies need this sequence of information:

  1. How to view OSM data online. (and maybe download it)
  2. How to edit OSM data online (using Potlatch - for god's sake, stop scaring us poor newbies with all the unix techo talk. you have a GOOD online editor, why hide it??)
  3. How to edit OSM data offline. (maybe)
  4. How to upload a GPS trace, and use that to edit with.
  5. How to go out and get new GPS traces. (maybe)

There's a lot you can do these days without getting out the GPS, especially with all the Yahoo and Nearmap imagery. Suggest you focus on helping newbies get their feet wet with Potlatch before scaring them away. Oh, and don't tell them it's called Potlatch - just tell 'em it's the online editor.

Stevage 18:05, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

I agree that sequence of chapters is maybe not the best, although it's actually not obvious what the best order is to explain concepts in. But yes the balance of opinion in the community has shifted over the years, towards being more accepting of "armchair mapping" (mapping without surveying first) and paper based mapping without GPS. The guide could be re-ordered to reflect that, and to introduce these easier techniques first. Another idea I was pondering on with User:Gravitystorm, was some sort of decision tree to figure out what kind of mapping a new user is likely to be interested in. e.g. users in the U.S. will have a very different first experience due to the presence of TIGER data.
Anyway, right now it's worth noting that the new Potlatch will include a Beginners guide, presumably not wiki-editable. Might be best to wait and see what this comes out like, or chat to the Potlatch developers about ideas for that.
- Harry Wood 15:42, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
Personally I think the first page should be be a set of stub articles describing how to do very common very simple things to improve the OSM data each linking to an short article with pictures that shows how it is done. For example 'To correct (or add) a road name', 'to add a street or stream','To add a point of interest', 'To align some mapping better to Bing imagery, 'To use Walking Papers to go and do a manual survey', 'To add detail to the Waterways', 'To add detail to a railway station'. The aim of the first page will be to allow people to ideally immediately identify the thing that they want to do first and then take them carefully through the process. The articles for each activity will need to either stand alone, or alternatively the user will be expected to do each activity in turn learning something new each time and never being assumed to know something they have not been told. This is classic tutorial writing stuff - I will take a look at this a try some ideas out in a non destructive way.PeterIto 19:46, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

Contributors' guide?

See also Contributors' guide

I believe that the scope of this guide is to describe how people can contribute data to OSM, rather than to describe how people can use OSM data within 3rd party products, applications or services? As such I suggest that we consider renaming it as the 'Contributors' guide'. I am going to have a concerted go at this subject now and see what I can make of it. PeterIto 19:37, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

OK, I have started working on this and based on the discussions above and in the WikiProject Cleanup article I am going to be pretty ruthless with the current content. In particular I am going to leave JOSM, GPS and relations until a later guide. What the Beginners' guide will be very gently, simple, carefully and show people how to add nodes and ways and tag them to do a bunch of basic things and that it pretty much all it will do. First off, I am going to 'move' the current article to names that reflect their purpose without the numbering which get in the way of reorganising the content and dropping pages. PeterIto 10:26, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

This help guide seems to have lost everything that made it what it was. It now has relatively sizey wods of text. It was aimed to be short concise pointers with attached diagrams and pictures. Half of the information is really not needed initially. This is teaching about the gears, before learning to ride a bike. "keep it simple stupid". Can we aim for vast simplification and reversion. We need to remember that not everyone thinks and learns alike; these large blocks of text are highly off putting to many, deterring them, ironically, from such a visual project. I disagree with the point of not seeing GPS input as the standard work flow, made by some. There are other sources, but not equal to on-the-ground research methods. I strongly agree with PeterIto's points before also. Ben 07:00, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
Thank you for the feedback and encouragement. I am developing a much more straightforward Contributors' guide separately from this one with a view to replacing this guide with it when it is complete. Can I suggest we discuss what to include in this new guide on Talk:Contributors' guide? At a later date we when it is complete we will raise a proposal here to replace this guide when the new one is ready. PeterIto 08:30, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Hi Peter. I don't like the idea of making a new "contributors guide" instead updating the current "beginners guide". One year ago I tried to rework the beginners guide, please see Talk:Beginners'_guide#Proposal_by_User:Kempelen above. Maybe you and me could work together to make "Beginners guide" a good guide where new editor can learn the basics. And we would merge "Contributors guide" idea. It would be cool if new users just need to learn one document to be able to make their first basic changes to OSM map.

If you want we can try to develop it in a "sandbox" area of the Wiki, to disturb the online links as little as possible, and then overwrite the current "Beginngers guide", however this gives less publicty and options for other feedback, so after a basic planning, the editing should be done on the online Guide probably. We need to rename the unmaintainable section-numbered pages, but we can make redirects to the related sections, so no problem.

-- Kempelen 12:05, 20 April 2012 (BST)

Thanks Kempelen. What I would say is that one needs to be very clear about what a guide is aiming to achieve before working on it. What is the scope of the beginners guide? Is it a guide for newbie contributors to OSM, or for people wishing to use osm data, or even to contribute code? Is it covering Potlatch only, or JOSM or both? What about GPS trails etc. It seemed to me that the beginners' guide has tried to cover everything and was probably created at a time that the only meaningful way to contribute was using GPS. With the contributors guide I was aiming to narrow down the options. I choose to limit the guide to someone using Potlatch, aerial photography and local knowledge for the first tutorial; nothing about JOSM and nothing about GPS to keep it simple. Unfortunately I became clear that the job needed more time that I had, and also that I was not getting a lot of encouragement from others. As such it has fallen by the wayside. I am not sure that I will be able to contribute much time to this at present but I would be interested in discussing the scope of what you have in mind. PeterIto 14:10, 20 April 2012 (BST)
Hi Peter! GPS is fun. JOSM is a very good editor, also for beginners. What you describe is near to the Potlatch 2/Primer article. A beginner, coming to OSM will want to have an overview of options, and this guide should give it to them.
- Can I upload a way from my phone-GPS?
- Can I update my local area walking without GPS?
- Can I just sit in front of computer and do mapping?
All these are possible, and current Guide mentions them. This gives a place for everyone in the project. More (should be added):
- How do I fix a wrong street name or position or direction of oneway?
- How do I add my favorite restaurant? etc
I agree with Ben, that huge walls of words are totally bad for Beginner's Guide. I've changed several pages of the Hungarian translation to use images, bulleted lists, easy step-by-step guides and no alternative ways or options.
People will not come here to trace towns or buildings from satellite day and night. Your assumption (in contributor's guide) that someone will want to search for a place to map is wrong. Someone will know where and what they want to change or add, but need to learn how. Please read my Talk:Beginners'_guide#Proposal_by_User:Kempelen
Retrieved from "http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Talk:Beginners%27_guide"
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