[Osmf-talk] Idea for improved mapping system

Mon Oct 19 22:38:26 UTC 2020

Yes, many armchair Mappers around the world who edit elsewhere. There's
this German guy whose username I forget, who has done amazing work adding
power lines from satellite in China, Yemen, other places. It's totally
acceptable and impressive. But other situations differ. I was checking out
POIs visible on Mapillary in Mogadishu and realized I could add a lot, but
it would be multiplied if I had a local contact to collaborate with, who
would also appreciate the assistance.

We have tools for seeing who maps around you, but I wonder if there could
be a sort of penpal/sister cities type of effort to let remote mappers link
up with locals, especially those who are often the only persona mapping
locally.

In Montana, USA where I am from there are few Mappers, and many who edit
there are armchair mappers who maybe once visited. I love when others help
fill in buildings and roads or other things which I can then build upon as
a solo mapper there. I tried to start a community and found some others but
they lived hours away from me and weren't very active, never met. This is a
place the size of Germany with a population of maybe 1 million people. In
fact some of the edits I see are german mappers who make quality edits, one
I chatted with who visited Montana before and enjoyed it and has been
editing it from afar ever since, in little bits.

I cannot map it alone on any scale, but if others want to have a webinar
with me where I talk about some local mapping nuances, highlight what I
think should be the focus, talk about where I captured on Mapillary that
others can reference from the armchair, and therefore feel I have
supporters, it's great.

I can see the same being helpful somewhere like Somalia or Kyrgyzstan, much
less Wyoming or rural parts of any country or continent.

On Mon, Oct 19, 2020, 17:29 John Whelan <jwhelan0112 at gmail.com> wrote:

> But then you get the armchair mappers who are mapping in Africa. There are
> some who are not mapping with HOT by the way.  No local association but
> talk to the locals and they know without them the map wouldn't be as good
> as it is.
>
> I think the one who springs to mind one happens to be Norwegian.
>
> Cheerio John
>
> Christopher Beddow wrote on 2020-10-19 18:20:
>
> 1. Yes, I understand the problems around incentive. So I would say a good
> way of thought is to look at how to really take the stats like Pascal has
> visualized and make them into a more fun categorization, but careful to
> avoid steering users toward wanting to map for the stats.
>
> 2. Aside from that, I wonder if we can agree that we should have a goal as
> an international community of growing the contributor base. In my opinion
> this is a great goal, but carrying out any actions toward this goal should
> be in the hands of local communities, such as chapters or affiliated groups
> on either a city level (like let's say Polimappers in Milan area) or a
> regional level (such as OSM LATAM who may be best to engage more users in a
> country in that region where there are few who are active, or who don't
> have a country chapter even informally).
>
> 3. What is suggested as an actually responsible, effective, and at least
> theoretically proven way to recruit serious and dedicated users? Can we
> know ahead of time who will develop a real care and passion for OSM?
>
> 4. What are, inversely, the most risky things we can do or have done,
> which are rather proven to result in vandalism, poor edits, extremely short
> user-lifespans, and therefore detract from the community despite any short
> term contribution? Gamification was mentioned here but it would be good to
> re examine specific cases for people like me that don't remember or weren't
> involved at that time.
>
>
>
> On Mon, Oct 19, 2020, 15:05 Rory McCann <rory at technomancy.org> wrote:
>
>> Yes, remember that not everything that counts is counted, and not
>> everything that's counted counts.
>>
>> It's OK IMO to have something fun & silly. A UK site showing politican's
>> record in Parliament alongside the number of words the politican spoke,
>> also showed how often they used alliteration, or rhymes. They did that to
>> remind people that these stats shouldn't be taken as gospel.
>>
>> If you do something like this, be careful. If you incentivise people to
>> do something and it backfires, people will rightly hold *you* responsible.
>>
>> The recent problems with Hacktoberfest has shown how rewarding people for
>> metrics  *can* backfire.
>>
>> On Sun, 18 Oct 2020, at 5:13 PM, Frederik Ramm wrote:
>> > Hi,
>> >
>> > On 10/18/20 01:49, TheAdventurer64 wrote:
>> > > A user and I were talking about implementing a system for better
>> > > mapping, as described here:
>> > > https://osmus.slack.com/archives/C029HV951/p1602968516431900
>> >
>> > Please, in the future be so kind and summarize the idea in your e-mail
>> > rather than pointing to a proprietary web page that requires
>> registration.
>> >
>> > I have not read it but I can guess from the responses here what your
>> > idea entails, and I would like to offer a word of caution:
>> >
>> > Gamification is a powerful tool, and with wielding it comes great
>> > responsibility. Most attempts at gamification in the OSM sphere have
>> > either had lasting negative effects or at the very least massive
>> > teething issues. People *will* game the system. If you count how many
>> > changesets they make, then they will split their edits in smaller
>> > chunks. If you count how many objects they change, they will be more
>> > likely to move a complete road with all its nodes by 10 centimetres or
>> > write a script to drop the "created_by" tag on thousands of objects. If
>> > you count how long their changeset comments are, they will write and
>> > repeat novels when uploading changesets. If you count how many new
>> > objects someone creates, then they will be more likely to delete and
>> > recreate something than to just improve its geometry.
>> >
>> > The direction that gamification drives people in will never be exactly
>> > what we want and need in OSM, it will always be off by something. You
>> > will not be recruiting new mappers, but new players.
>> >
>> > It can still be beneficial to OSM, but the above needs to be kept in
>> > mind if you want to build something that succeeds.
>> >
>> > On another ("diversity") note, you should be careful not to focus too
>> > much on competitive elements and players who want to climb some ladder;
>> > you might end up motivating people from some regions and genders much
>> > more than others.
>> >
>> > Bye
>> > Frederik
>> >
>> > --
>> > Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frederik at remote.org  ##  N49°00'09"
>> E008°23'33"
>> >
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>> >
>>
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