[Imports] How good can an import be?

[Nic Roets]

On Tue, Apr 5, 2011 at 4:04 PM, Richard Weait <richard at weait.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 5, 2011 at 7:55 AM, Mike N <niceman at att.net> wrote:
>> On 4/5/2011 4:58 AM, Andy Allan wrote:
>
>>> Sometimes I wonder if one of the problems OSM
>>> is facing in the US is the relative paucity of examples where OSM
>>> volunteers have mapped to higher standards
>>
>>   Are you claiming that nearly everything people have surveyed in the US is
>> crap?
>
> The combined result of our work in North America suffers by comparison
> to our European overlo^W cousins.  Individual mappers are, of course,
> brilliant, dedicated citizen cartographers and "smarter than the
> average bear".  That's what draws us to OSM.
>
> But the North American community has not grown like the European
> community did.  Is this because North Americans find OSM less
> appealing?  You suggest one possible reason this might be true.
>
>> The biggest issue in the US is that people's reaction is that we already have "Free Google, Bing, Yahoo and Mapquest" maps.   Why is there even another map?
>
> Possibly.  That is sometimes the reaction when I introduce people to OSM.
>
> 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.
>
> By comparison, consider Toronto, pre-imports.  See the Geofabrik
> animation, around August 2007.
>
> http://www.geofabrik.de/gallery/history/index.html#toronto
>
> 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.
> Imports didn't arrive in Canada until later in the animation.
>
> This is not a scientific study, obviously.
>
> As another, single point of comparison of communities, consider local
> OSM groups.
> http://usergroups.openstreetmap.de/
>
> There appears to be a local OSM user group for each
> 100 Million USA-ians.
> And one for each 10 Million Canadians.
> And one for each 2 Million Germans.
>
> The USA got imports early.
> Canada got imports a bit later.
> Imports seem much less popular in Germany.
>
> Correlation? Causation?  I don't know.

Let's compare the USA with the Netherlands:
Both had imports of the complete road network. Yet the ratio of users
registered on the wiki to population is one in 2 million and one in
one hundred thousand respectively.
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Category:Users_in_United_States
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Category:Users_in_the_Netherlands