[OSM-talk] OSM needs a measure for completeness

[grungelborz at arcor.de]

Some comments regarding the completeness thread: 

For Munich we currently use wiki pages to track the completeness: 
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/index.php/Landkreis_M%C3%BCnchen (in German 
but Google translates it quite ok). Wiki pages were used because
they are simpler to set up than anything else.

It uses just a very rough scale as IMO a finer scale is not useful if 
the completeness is to estimated. The percentage values that are estimated usually
do not tell much about the remaining effort. On the other hand the 
map can be devided in small areas (< 1/2 d effort) that can be easily evaluated. 
The tables just focuses on the most important things like street names, car 
navigation and bike navigation). I believe this is enough so that people will start 
using the map. 

It seems that not all mappers want to take the effort to enter 
areas into the tables. Most likely reason is that its not that simple 
to find the name for the area that has been mapped. Still its better than 
nothing. 

A good technical solution to assign completion-states might be similar to 
solution for the render-requests at tiles-at-home: When the user clicks a 
tile with some modifier keys a dialog appears that allows to select a completion 
level and to add some comments. This would also allow people without osm 
account to report errors. 

Grungelborz