[HOT] Issue with Harare project - 1649

Martin Noblecourt m_noblecourt at cartong.org
Thu Mar 10 14:50:57 UTC 2016


Dear OSM community,

I'd like to get your feedback about what happened on the following 
project: http://tasks.hotosm.org/project/1649

This project have been marked as completely done by one single mapper 
without tracing, under the argument new mappers would damage existing 
data. The area is indeed already well mapped but also a lot of data is 
still missing (including rivers, roads and buildings) and it is pretty 
easy to trace so I doubt the project will damage the area (unless 
contribution to OSM is now reserved to "experts").
Another argument we received was that some of our previous Missing maps 
projects (such as 1465/1466) were a "complete quality disaster"... 
Although still unfinished and requiring an important work of validation 
(like all TM projects...), we strongly disagree that these projects were 
a disaster: they allowed mapping large areas that weren't mapped 
previously at all - which is in fact the goal of Missing Maps...
The road network in particular still requires work of 
standardization/clean up, but this is quite common on TM activities too 
(getting mappers, whether they are new ones or experienced but not used 
to the African context, to properly tag roads, is a long-term 
challenge). Starting from scratch mapping of an area is as everyone know 
a work that often requires several steps.

We intend to recreate the same project on the TM as it will be a waste 
of time to invalidate all the tiles again, please let us know if you 
don't think it is the appropriate way.
Feedback are of course most welcome on the tasks created by Missing 
maps, we have in fact already had very interesting conversation with 
great validators and will be happy to hear from more people as long as 
it is respectful of everyone :-)
(I someone thinks this message should to be forwarded to the Activation 
working group too, please do so since I'm not on it)

Thanks for your feedback,

Martin & Violaine for the CartONG team





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