[Osmf-talk] Paid Mapping / WikiPR like issues in OSM?

[Harry Wood]

> paid editing. Someone who adds data not because they're passionate
> but because they're paid.

Paid mapping has happened on a few occasions, not just for HOT mapping in the developing world. Arguably I did a bit of this myself. While working for CloudMade we spent a bit of time doing TIGER Fixup work. In this case it was a demonstrator project to encourage the US community to follow our lead, and I like to think I have remained a passionate mapper since then :-)  More recently Mapbox, at around about the time they got Foursquare on board, undertook a bunch of armchair mapping to boost coverage in some cities. I think this was in response to foursquare user complaints (See "Tracing satellite imagery" section here: http://blog.foursquare.com/2012/07/10/making-a-better-map-four-months-of-openstreetmap-with-mapbox-foursquare/ )

But a better example, involving paying non-OSMers, was more recently. Peter of ITOworld presented a keynote at State Of The Map in which he announced that they had hired a bunch of students to copy in road names from OS Locator to finish off the road naming in the UK.

I think you're right to compare it to importing. I see it as a sliding scale of evil for any kind of "short cut" activity which involves blatting in data quickly. Imports can blatt in data very quickly and in some cases very badly. Armchair mapping can blatt in data pretty quickly compared to survey-based mapping. *Paid* armchair mapping? well I guess this is somewhere between those two, and far down the scale from the best kind of mapping: careful survey-based mapping by passionate local people.

But whether these things are bad also depends on things like, is there a local mapping community already, and have they been consulted, and has the process been discussed properly, and upon the extent of the edits and the quality of the data. (At least this is the way I see it)

Whether ITOworld did a bad thing with their recent paid mapping of UK road names... I'm not sure. I'm in two minds about it. It feels like they've really just cheated to side-step the anti-import sentiment which the UK community expressed about the same dataset back in 2011. Interesting discussion:
http://gis.19327.n5.nabble.com/OSM-Analysis-New-Data-and-bot-tt5373562.html#a5373595  Instead of importing, they paid students to add data manually. ITOworld stands to benefit commercially from a better UK map, but only alongside every other UK OpenStreetMap user. I'm sure the work (and the money they spent on paying people) was largely a philanthropic act to see OpenStreetMap's UK map complete. Good pro-active donation of paid effort, or evil almost-import? Not sure.

> 
> We're giving mappers a huge amount of freedom in tagging and in
> deciding what they map. We might shrug if we see that someone
> meticuously draws every single tree in their garden, or every patch of
> grass, but we'll not usually do something about it and leave the quirky
> individual their fun. After all, we want to support "unexpected uses".
> If the same were to be done by an organisation with lots of resources,
> and we would have to fear that they would neatly "paint" every single
> garden of the properties they manage or so, would we still say "ah, give
> the individual some leeway in how they contribute to OSM"? Or would we,
> when faced with an organisation making cold business decisions rather
> than quirky hobbyist decisions, request that they adhere to other standards?

Yes I've postulated that the freedom to do mega-detailed mapping is creating a problem for us in my talk here: http://www.harrywood.co.uk/blog/2011/10/10/sotm-talk/#slide45   Definitely a tricky problem before you even consider commercial imperatives. The only solution I've suggested there is to talk more about a community guideline that says something like:

"consider the levels of detail around you. Don't go crazy with the levels of detail within your blossom of map coverage. Keep a cap on this and map further afield instead. Go to a level of detail which is realistically attainable by you, or with the help of other mappers, across a wider area"

So an estate agent company mapping the details of the gardens of just the properties that they manage, they would be in breach of that.  But would we ever go as far as *deleting* mega-detail on the grounds that it's not balanced with the surrounding map? Not sure. Luckily this is a hypothetical so far I believe.

Harry