[HOT] Task manager description/instructions #591

[Blake Girardot]

On 1/2/2015 3:41 PM, john whelan wrote:

> How can we make the best use of what we have?  I wonder if some sort of
> work flow might be better.  Pass 1, do the major roads and towns /
> larger villages, Pass 2 rivers, pass 3 tracks, pass 4 forests etc.
> Perhaps rivers should come first?

Yes, this is for sure a good idea. Difficult to do in practice, but a 
good idea.

>Certify the mappers, self
> certification would be fine but a small training course this is how to
> map a road, this is how to map a village, this is how to map a river,
> this is how to map a building (JOSM building tool?).

Again, a very good idea, and the Training WG is considering something 
like this.

None of the typical mapping tasks are difficult to do, but a little bit 
of specific training, like 30 mins worth, can make a huge difference 
between something that is mapped and something that is well mapped.

It would really be great if we had a small training programing of some 
sort, I think it could all be done on line with text and images. Again, 
the Training WG is working on this idea so if anyone is interested in 
helping with it please let us (training wg) know.

Or we could run online workshops for an hour or so to do mapping 
training. At this point I have done 8 or 9 online training sessions and 
they work out pretty well (I think :). I have also been very lucky and 
received online training from Andrew Buck and Pierre Béland which was 
immensely helpful.

> At the moment we seem to have a number of different people going over
> the same ground mapping the same things which to me is a waste of
> resources and no real agreement as to when a tile is complete, ie no
> service level agreement.  I've even seen a building mapped over a building.

Yes and no about the waste of resources. The system is designed so that 
multiple eyes will look at the mapping. The obvious version of that is 
the validation process, but even that needs multiple passes to make sure 
things are validated correctly.

Project managers can "validate the validations" and experienced mappers, 
currently self-selected, can also "validate validations".

But multiple projects over the same area for either updates to imagery 
or different mapping focuses (roads, waterways, etc) will lead to 
validation of previous validations as well so there is a real benefit to 
what seems like a waste of resources.

Just 2 passes over an area (initial mapping + validation) is not enough 
to generate the highest quality data possible. In my experience so far a 
minimum of 3 passes is needed to be sure you are getting high quality 
data and the 2nd and 3rd passes are almost as much work as the first pass.

Project managers or local OSM groups often give the mapping 3rd and 4th 
passes to correct and refine the initial mapping data as well.

With a simple and short training program for different types of mapping 
things would improve some.

Thanks for the thoughts John.


cheers
blake