Where are the new OpenStreetMap Contributors?
by Pascal Neis - Published: April 29th, 2012
Since past Friday the OpenStreetMap project has more than 600 000 registered members. As many of you may know, not every new registered member starts contributing to the project right away. Based on my “How did you contribute to OSM?” database I created a small (but neat) webpage which shows where the newest registered OpenStreetMap (OSM) members made one of their first edits. The following image shows a screenshot of the new webpage:
The visualized data will be updated on a daily basis. At the moment there are two layers available: one layer displays the latest members of the past two days, while the other layer does the same for the past seven days. At lower zoom-levels the icons are clustered and only show the number of new members. However, on higher zoom-levels you can click on the individual icons to get further information about the new project member. Thanks to Stamen for their really nice looking watercolor map. Would you like to see more statistics about the number of new contributors for each individual country?
The new webpage is online here: http://resultmaps.neis-one.org/newestosm.php
thx @ maɪˈæmɪ Dennis
Is this based on where they edited their first node, and non-editing-users not displayed on the map?
What about those who edit their
Do many new users set their ‘home location’ in their profile? I suspect not, otherwise it could be an alternative location to use.
Gregory, as I mentioned in the post, it is based on one of their first node edits. Sure, if they did not make any edits yet, I am not able to display them on the map. Regarding your second question, as far as I know, it is not possible to access the users’ profiles to get their “home-location” information. Otherwise this would be an alternative for sure.
It has been theorized on IRC that a user’s home location can be found in the following way:
* there need to be three users cooperating, with distant home locations,
* all three need to friend the user who’s home location is sought,
* their user pages will then show the distance between the user’s home and their own.
* using simple triangulation the user’s home location can be calculated from the distances
Anyway, that’s a very cool page, but I’m having a problem opening it in Safari. The browser reports the class OpenLayers.Layer.OSM.StamenWatercolor is undefined and I can’t find its definition anywhere looking at the code.
I had a similar idea but so far I’m only displaying new mappers as a list at http://osm.trail.pl/users?world
Hi Andrew, should now work again in Safari. I had some trouble with double quotes in the name of an user. thx! btw. your site is cool too
There is an error in the script that prevents the page from loading in my browser. You don’t escape quotes, so there’s lines like “Taxi “Mirage”” in the code.
Hi Zverik, thx for reporting. Is fixed …
Hello Pascal,
as I very much enjoyed your outstanding tools already in the past, it’s now the right time to finally say THANKS for this gorgeous new tool! Look forward to seeing your next ideas to have even more fun in OSM …
Thank you very much! You’re welcome
[…] The OSM project has more than 600 000 registered members now. Pascal created a new webpage which shows the latest active members. You will find the blog post here. […]
[…] El proyecto OSM ya tiene más de 600.000 miembros registrados. Pascal creo una nueva página web que muestra a los últimos miembros activos. Encontraras el artículo de blog aquí. […]
[…] The OSM project has more than 600 000 registered members now. Pascal created a new webpage which shows the latest active members. You will find the blog post here. […]
Hi Pascal,
thanks, it is great to monitor large areas for new mappers. One question please: How often do you update the map?
Kind regards
Thomas
Hi Thomas,
thank you very much for your comment. The Map is updated daily. You can find the date in the bottom right corner.
Cheers,
Pascal
Pascal
The new contributors RSS feed is awesome.
Have you given any thought to how this could be integrated directly into OSM.org? I think it could be done in a lightweight way, that doesn’t impact the main OSM site significantly.
* Add an edit page on OSM.org that allows user to select X number of areas to monitor. Store in DB.
* Add some kind of geoJSON output for the contributors feed.
* Develop a page on OSM.org that takes users stored monitor areas, makes series of json requests to neis-one (or perhaps another server hosted by osmf somehow), and returns listings of new users rendered as a list and as a map.
What do you think?
Mikel
Mikel, thank you very much!
So far I did not think about integrating into osm.org. But you are right, overall it should not be much work. Overview maps are already avialable [1][2] and a table/list is online here [3].
[1] http://resultmaps.neis-one.org/newestosm.php
[2] http://resultmaps.neis-one.org/newestosmcreatefeed.php?zoom=5&lat=49.85522&lon=10.22817&layers=B0TTFF
[3] http://resultmaps.neis-one.org/newestosmlist.php
Hi, Pascal. This is a wonderful tool/site, especially to track user activity, and it is precise!!
Can “How did you contribute to OpenStreetMap” also show gps traces uploaded by the user on that same page?
Thanks..
Hi Douglas,
thank you very much for your comment. So far as I know, it isn’t possible to get/count all GPS points of an OSM user
All the best,
Pascal
the map disappeared
Hi Thomas,
sorry, new link: http://resultmaps.neis-one.org/newestosm.php
[…] The OSM project has more than 600 000 registered members now. Pascal created a new webpage which shows the latest active members. You will find the blog post here. […]