<html><body bgcolor="#FFFFFF"><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); ">On Jun 9, 2011, at 7:42, Jerry Clough : SK53 on OSM <<a href="mailto:SK53_osm@yahoo.co.uk">SK53_osm@yahoo.co.uk</a>> wrote:</span><br></div><div><br></div><div></div><blockquote type="cite"><div>
Generally, I am still opposed to a bot. There is a substantial body
of evidence that automated imports damage the ability to recruit and
nuture new mappers. </div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Could you cite the evidence? Is it just hand waving about AND or something more specific?</div><div><br></div><br><blockquote type="cite"><div>Recent posts about Latvia, Austria and The
Netherlands on talk all substantiate this: in many cases the people
recognising the issue were those who either carried out the import
or agreed to it.<br>
<br>
I think a completion bot is a distraction from a much more important
issue.<br>
<br>
In order to get a better level of completeness in the UK what we
need are more mappers. There are several ways to recruit mappers:
they require a decent amount of hard work, and probably a broader
range of skills than writing a bot. We need a more organised way of
generating publicity on a regular basis both for national and local
media. We need a better press kit. We need to move the emphasis of
mapping from getting GPS tracks: dont get me wrong this is still
valuable, but a local mapper without a GPS can do a fine job with
Bing, OS OpenData, Walking Papers, a camera, and ground surveys. We
need more outreach techniques: not just mapping parties, or pub
meets or mini-mapping, but workshops for people interested in
consuming data, workshops to review the data from particular usage
perspectives (cyclists, walkers, sustainable living, wheelchair
users, etc.). We could do with more supporting materials for such
things: slideshows, posters, how to organise .... I'm finding this
ain't that easy, but at least I'm trying.<br>
<br>
We also need to recognise that the more detailed each area becomes
the harder it becomes for a new mapper to feel that they can
contribute, not forgetting the "I might break something". If we are
to devote effort to code its better directed at tools which can make
the life of new mappers easier: this obviously includes contributing
to existing editors, but it may mean creating new ones. It almost
certainly means working to get a much more sophisticated
OpenStreetBugs integrated into the rails port: many new mappers will
initially be happy to point out bugs (see recent examples on OSM
Help where the first thing someone wants to fix is a turn
restriction). <br>
<br>
I strongly dislike the meme "OS data is always more accurate than
OSM", because it implies there's no point in doing surveys anyway.
Yes, errors occur, although mainly in transcription rather than in
surveying as can be seen by errors in using OSSV & OSL, but
tools like ITO OSM Analysis and OSL Musical Chairs really help to
pick up these errors: I've been able to go back to pictures and
audio recordings and indeed verify that I'd not changed Street to
Road when I copied the tag over from another way. There is also the
spurious accuracy problem: people filling in a road name from OS
Locator when there is <b>NO </b>evidence on the ground that the
road has that name (pace RichardF in W Oxon): see my blog post on <a href="http://sk53-osm.blogspot.com/2011/02/mysterious-case-of-kenyon-road.html">Kenyon
Road</a>. Many of the unnamed roads in the immediate vicinity of
where I'm writing this are of that type: sometimes dogged
persistence can nail down that the road is still called that, for
instance from address information.<br>
<br>
Take a look at <a href="http://osm.org/go/eu7EEN9">Corby</a>: its
OSL road complete: a small part on the N edge was surveyed, the rest
is largely from OSSV. There is a huge amount of information missing:
footways, paths in parks, information about Places of Worship, other
POIs. Corby is the classic sort of place which is less likely to
receive attention from OSMers according to Muki's studies: its out
of the way, it lacks a strong middle-class demographic. There are
plenty of people living in places like this who are using Skobbler's
apps, but we're never going to reach out to them if we do the easy
bits from our armchairs and leave the harder less rewarding mapping
activities for others.<br>
<br>
Why not build a separate database & render which merges the
missing names (& roads) from OSSV/OSL and OSM data, but is
external to the OSM planet database. This could use many of the same
techniques as a bot.<br>
<br>
A bot is putting short-term gain ahead of our long-term interests.<br>
<br>
Regards,<br>
<br>
Jerry<br>
<br>
</div></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><div><span>_______________________________________________</span><br><span>Talk-GB mailing list</span><br><span><a href="mailto:Talk-GB@openstreetmap.org">Talk-GB@openstreetmap.org</a></span><br><span><a href="http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-gb">http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-gb</a></span><br></div></blockquote></body></html>