[Imports] How good can an import be?

[Mike N]

On 4/5/2011 10:04 AM, Richard Weait wrote:
> And also possibly this.  If somebody learns of OSM and is curious
> enough to look at their home (we all check that first; you know it.)
> and that part of Anytown, USA looks superficially complete based on
> TIGER.  They might just decide, "Enh.  They don't need my help."  And
> so TIGER may have discouraged an OSM contributor from starting.

   If so, this reaction will happen with a mature map - the community 
will shrink due to lack of work.

> It seems to me, from memory, that starting around August 2007 was a
> boom-time of new OSM contributors in Toronto.  We had some of the city
> grid on the map, and a few detailed neighbourhoods.  A new user faced
> with that might say, "I'll come back when your done" but a new mapper
> might just say, "Oh, look, I can add my neighbourhood and make it look
> better, like $nearby-neighbourhood."  That obviously-incomplete map
> may well have inspired dedicated mappers to start to participate.

   As a counterpoint to that, thousands of new subdivisions have sprung 
up since the last TIGER import.   I see quite a number of Skobbler 
reports, noting in great detail that their subdivision is missing, and 
listing the missing streets.  So why didn't they just go ahead and add 
their streets if they knew them?   Similarly, I have never seen some new 
user just pop in and add their new subdivision in my watch areas, which 
include many hundreds of square miles and probably 500 uncompleted 
subdivisions.   A new user probably has never heard of TIGER, and has no 
idea that their blank street might exist in some import, and that fact 
wouldn't discourage them from jumping in.   Whatever the US situation 
that hasn't produced a vibrant community, it is not the absence of the 
"lure of the open/blank road".