[Talk-GB] OSM Analysis New Data and bot

[Brian Prangle]

The Warwick additions are all  names in  the defunct Stoneleigh Agricultural
Show site. Must get over there and do a survey to see what's happening to
any redevelopment there - unless anyone else wants to volunteer!

I'm firmly of the opinion that this is not work for a bot unless a tag is
added such as verified=no so we humans can search for what hasn't been
surveyed. In Birmingham and Solihull I've personally surveyed every
OS-Locator error  before editing it and we have a pretty impressive list of
OS errors (210 not-names from 8966 road names)and they're not all
apostrophes either! ( Going out to survey far-flung street name errors also
has the added bonus of an incentive to do some other basic surveying and
improvement to the map) That's why we're stuck at 99.5% - the ones left are
just too far away and scattered to motivate me or the Local Authority hasn't
replied to my requests to inspect the definitive record.

 A bot will just replicate the OS errors and then we'll never find them! I'm
also dubious that a lot of the progress to date has just been armchair stuff
and we've just replicated any errors  that the OS might have. That might be
OK with most people but I've always seen OSM as proving that by local
crowdsourcing, given enough mappers, we can produce more accurate data. Our
problem in the UK is we don't have enough people on the ground and there's
no consistent planned promotional effort to attract more people or -
 even easier just re-attract some of the early pioneers back to active
mapping - at least they've shown they're willing and able and some of them
would be pretty impressed both with progress and the capability of the tools
at our disposal now. How about some analysis of inactive users who have a
significant number of edits (> 50?) and doing an email shot? I'm willing to
draft a text for discussion

Regards

Brian

On 8 June 2011 07:58, Peter Miller <peter.miller at itoworld.com> wrote:

> Following on swiftly from Musical Chairs OSM Analaysis is now also
> running with the new OS Locator data.
>
> Warwickshire is the biggest gainer/looser with 33 new names; over half
> of the districts have got at least one new road and there are now only
> 8 places still at 100%. We do  have 51 at over 99% and only 32 at
> under 50%. There is serious work in Wales, parts of Scotland, the West
> Midlands and Norfolk at present and in other places as well.
>
> Progress is however slowing down. We were at 20K roads per month and
> are now down to some 11K which is pushing completion back to Autumn
> 2013.
>
> Any more takers for the OS Bot? I still think we are using a lot of
> expert time to do very mundane work less well than a computer would
> manage. Anyone who says that bulk imports will damage the community
> should take a look at the Netherlands where they did a bulk road
> import some years ago and have a hugely strong community now. For the
> avoidance of doubt I will not bulldoze this proposal through against
> the majority wishes, but there are people asking why we are doing all
> this manually and I think they have a point and don't want the
> proposal to be forgotten. The bot will still make is clear that a
> manual survey has not been completed of the area and invite people to
> take a look. It will free up human effort to do work that can't be
> done by a computer.
> http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/OS_bot
>
> Regards,
>
>
> Peter Miller
> (user:PeterIto)
>
> _______________________________________________
> Talk-GB mailing list
> Talk-GB at openstreetmap.org
> http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-gb
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk-gb/attachments/20110608/f0592879/attachment.html>