[Talk-us] Choptank River

[Christoph Hormann]

On Sunday 15 January 2017, Simon Poole wrote:
>
> Given that Washington is supposedly the global centre of mapping
> goodness, I hope we might be able to find somebody there that perhaps
> is interested in fixing the, I must say with 120km really far away,
> area a bit.

Note the phenomenon that we have well mapped urban centres immediately 
next to extremely poorly mapped areas is something not specific to the 
US at all.

My favorite example for this is usually Singapore where you can find 
some extremely badly mapped areas less than 50km to the south:

http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=12/0.9099/103.8064

Often this has a lot to do with the fact that attraction of new mappers 
usually is most efficient in urban centres and less so in rural areas.  
And best mapping always comes from local mappers so for well mapped 
rural areas you need rural mappers.

The difference in central Europe is not only that we have a much larger 
number of active mappers compared to the population in total, we also 
have much less contrast between urban and rural areas overall.

So I am not so sure if the advise to DC mappers to drive out to the 
country to map is really a sustainable approach.  The better way might 
be to think about making OSM more welcoming and more attractive to 
rural communities.

-- 
Christoph Hormann
http://www.imagico.de/