[OSM-talk] Quality of OSM Notes

[Paul Johnson]

On Fri, Feb 20, 2015 at 12:33 AM, Bryce Nesbitt <bryce2 at obviously.com>
wrote:

> Many open notes were not actionable:
>
> 1) Pure junk (empty, scribbles)
>
>
This is probably a UI situation.  I know the old Skobbler app was
*notorious* for this, and probably a huge reason behind the massive flop
that was Mapdust <http://www.mapdust.com/>.  Apologies to Telenav for
panning their first attempt harshly, even though I was probably pretty
close to the most prolific user of Mapdust.  I'd be curious to know if
anybody watches it now.


> 2) Unsolvable wishes
>
> 3) Incomplete information (with no way to contact the poster).
>
>
These make me wish we had a good way to quickly and easily invite a user to
sign in via OpenID and Google+ authentication right on the spot so we can
try to get back to the original reporter and let 'em know that we hear
them, but we don't have enough to work with or what they're asking might
not be possible the way they asked it.  Or it's plain an application issue
(again, one of the huge shortfalls of Mapdust, which was compounded by the
fact that since basically only one tool ever implemented it on the reporter
end, it would have been trivial to ensure a mapper could reach the
reporter.)

Along both these lines, it'd be epic if programs implementing OSM also
implemented notes, and required a sign-in to file a note so there's some
hope that we can have a two way dialogue.  Communication with the people in
the field who actually use our stuff and aren't nerds is key.


> 4) Requests to add a particular business, which did not interest me.
>
>
That doesn't make it invalid if it's actually in the right spot.


> 5) Private notes made by note author for themselves.
>
>
This isn't unsolvable and shouldn't be closed if it's not solved; you can
reach the original mapper for an explanation.  If it went into notes, odds
are that the person who did it is under the belief that anyone familiar
with the area should be able to work it out by context.  Yes, I'm notorious
for this.  However, I do try to document my idiomatic field note taking in
the wiki since my notes tend to be brief (I'm in the field, I don't have
time for a novel).


> 6) Lazy Requests to do cleanup that the note writer did not want to do
> themselves.
>
>
I'm not sure it's lazy so much as might not be easily resolved without a
team effort or someone actually local (sorry, I'm notorious for this in
areas I come across that if I can't see it on the available aerials, it
might as well be on another planet).


> 8) Stuff that had already been done.
>
>
Notes, particularly older ones, slipped through the cracks due to the way
the Notes plugin worked.  Now that you can pull an essentially arbitrarily
huge and old number of notes, I'm finding some antiques of my own.  This
situation should improve now that you can pull out the antiques with the
new Notes system in JOSM.  Do we have a graph of how many notes are open?
It wouldn't be surprising to see a downward trend in the last few weeks
from this change.
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