1ec5 left a comment (openstreetmap/openstreetmap-website#6605)
> So in summary, I think we should have a list of ways in which people want to
> contribute, and make sure the UX is appropriate.
I appreciate this framing. It takes effort to avoid [shipping our org
chart](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway's_law). I’d say there’s lots of
ways to contribute, but the three that are most relevant to this site would be:
editing the map, spreading the word, and financially supporting the OSMF.
(Maybe throw in local chapters while we’re at it.)
> The most obvious one being any explanation as to why we would like a visitor
> to sign up for an account, and the lack of any CTA to encourage them to do so.
Are you thinking of a callout of some sort, like the tooltip on the Edit button
when you’re zoomed out too far to edit the map? That button goes straight to
the login page, which is convenient for existing registered users. Maybe the
/login page could have a banner at the top to the effect of, “Log in to edit
the map. Create an account to help us map the world!”
> The "about" page explains what the project is about, but is dominated by
> almost more than 50% of the paragraphs being about legal issues - mostly
> repeating what's available on the copyright page, at that. There's nothing
> there that explain how or why to sign up.
Agreed. [OpenHistoricalMap’s About
page](https://www.openhistoricalmap.org/about) (necessarily) devotes a bit more
space to explaining the project’s scope and the various ways to help out. The
last time I customized the page, I was annoyed that legalities were arbitrarily
split between this page and Copyright. I think this happened because the
Copyright page serves a specific function, allowing third parties to meet their
obligations under the ODbL, whereas direct users of the website need to see
other legalities besides. But the Copyright page doesn’t really maintain this
distinction either.
What if we move the About page’s “Legal” section to a dedicated Legal page that
summarizes other dedicated pages about:
* Copyright and trademark for reusers (“Where you use OpenStreetMap data…”, “We
also include openly-licensed data…”)
* Copyright for contributors (“OSM contributors are reminded…”)
* Other policies (terms of use, API usage policy, privacy policy, etc.)
Legal could replace Copyright in the navigation bar. If any of these things
needs to be one hop away from the map on the homepage, a link to /copyright
would remain in the map’s attribution. The Copyright page would be more focused
on what reusers need to know.
> The copyright page actually has a link to the signup page, but with no
> explanation as to why you would do so (and it's not clear to me why this
> features so prominently on the copyright page either - presumably aimed at
> people clicking attribution links on external maps).
Yes, the Copyright page was originally just about legalities, but the CWG
realized that this is effectively the face of OSM, so #5989 added some
introductory material. I think this was the right move, given the difficulty of
changing the licensing guidelines and an untold number of third-party sites at
this point. But maybe it wouldn’t look so off-topic if we style the
introduction a little differently, as a callout box or sidebar. And I think
that part of the Copyright page should link to the About page for more
information, not [the wiki’s
introduction](https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/About_OpenStreetMap). Then it
wouldn’t need to send the user in all sorts of directions by duplicating the
navigation bar.
> /communities and /help both are pages with lots of "outlinks", viewers who
> click on a link to leave the site. A user who doesn't click a link is not
> getting anything out of the page. 41% of /help views and 19% of /communities
> views got some use of the page.
I’ve read that the Communities page is a stub in anticipation of something more
full-featured like Microcosms or OSMCal. It holds promise, but in the meantime,
I’m afraid it’s overselling itself. Normally, even local chapter leaders
wouldn’t equate “community” with the local chapters, but that’s largely the
page’s message. So you get [people looking for the
forum](https://community.openstreetmap.org/t/this-forum-is-really-hard-to-find-actually/138968)
and getting lost on the wiki instead. (The wiki needs better navigation too,
of course.)
The Help and User Diaries pages are also about community. In a perfect world,
maybe we’d mash them all into a Community page that features snippets of the
latest diary posts alongside previews of the latest forum topics and upcoming
events. Maybe extra distance between a diary post and site navigation could
disincentivize spammers.
I realize I’m spouting a lot of nonsense about making new pages. Maybe it’s a
sign we’ve outgrown a short, flat list of links. Should we give in and add
dropdown menus to the navigation bar? It could provide more direct access to
miscellaneous pages like /welcome and second-party sites like the wiki.
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