The Notes (Comments) subsystem is a key OSM component however it can appear ""maligned"". Initially released in April 2013, OSM now has over 1.5 million notes of varying quality and I will use Australasian data from August, 2018 in an attempt to show this is a vital component that requires a little TLC.
Notes are basic and can be easily abused through advertorials, temporary road restrictions or lack of knowledge of what can be mapped however there are significant high value comments to assist arm-chair mappers.
The ease of use should be harnessed in two areas. The first is simple knowledge transfer, secondly and more importantly is to introduce new mappers to become editors and to shape OSM however we need existing mappers to be responsive to new notes.
Currently Australasia has 3000 active notes with an average age of just over a year old (379 days to be pedantic). I will be asking for and opening the floor to how we can improve note responsiveness via an interactive sticker vote (location dependent) on a number of potential improvements.
Resources: I will be using include a number of maps (some temporal), charts and tables/top ten locations to demonstrate which will require web connectivity and display screen if at all possible as the data tells the story.