[OSM-talk] Change: How mature is OpenStreetMap?

[john whelan]

Interesting thoughts, I note that HOT is interested in how the data is
consumed and in setting some sort of standards.  I find the HOT approach
gives some hope for the future.  Locally much of the information in OSM is
not readily useable, different spellings in the tags, different tags for
the same thing, and heaven save us if one even thinks about touching what
looks like a spelling mistake in a tag.

Locally we have people saying roads should be tagged this way in the wiki
but less than 1% were tagged according to the wiki.  When I inspect the
data locally I find every single French road name in the city was tagged
incorrectly.

In the wiki itself there are often different ways to tag the same
information.  There is little consistency.

There are some good bits, the tool sets are very good but many years ago I
was taught that computer programmers were more interested in how fast
something ran, end users were much more interested in reliability.

To me OSM is a collection of enthusiastic mappers, and if we sample say
500,000 of them we'll get 500,000 different answers to what we should be
doing very few seem interested in what the end users would like or even who
they are and what about our drop out rate?  Could we do better maps with
fewer mapathons but better training and perhaps help our retention rate?

>From an end user point of view its difficult to know how reliable the data
is.  For example are all the bus stops in the city with their phone numbers
there are just the ones that one or two people have mapped?  If the bus
stop I want to get to isn't in the map for some reason then is OSM of any
use to me?

But as I say the HOT approach gives me some hope for the future.

Cheerio John



On 5 January 2015 at 20:25, Michał Brzozowski <www.haxor at gmail.com> wrote:

> OSM is not mature IMO:
>
> * People are making discussions that come to no conclusion, this is so
> notorious.
> * OSMF does very little work to actually promote OSM and improve its
> ecosystem (the only things they do that matter are providing servers
> and the SOTM)
> * There is very little collaboration between OSM-related software
> developers who aren't exactly aware how their actions shape OSM (on
> the top of "this would need much coding" attitude of some - so why did
> you choose to maintain it?)
> * The enforcement of editing standards is very hard. There is always
> that user who doesn't bother to ever come by the community forum.
> (compare with Wikipedia)
> * Software for monitoring OSM changes is still very rudimentary. I
> wanna be the f**king NSA. It's incredibly hard to check newbies' work
> quickly (eg. you have to load every changeset separately into OSMHV).
> * Why do these newbies make so many mistakes? The documentation is a
> mess, editor presets are incomplete (whereas they should include all
> approved and other widely used features)
> * Many "important" people are so defensive there is stagnation instead
> of doing. You can only fully evaluate a concept by implementing it.
> * Data consumers not exactly make OSM appear professional. It's hard
> to come by apps that are nearly as professional as Google Maps or Here
> Maps. They also almost never bother to consider country-specific stuff
> (like how is an address written, proper handling of abbreviations).
>
> Michał
>
> On Mon, Jan 5, 2015 at 10:05 PM, Rob Nickerson
> <rob.j.nickerson at gmail.com> wrote:
> > There have been a couple of threads on OpenStreetMap’s mailing list this
> > month to do with change. The first, entitled “Request for feedback: new
> > building colours in openstreetmap-carto”, is all to do with a change to
> the
> > way the default map style *looks* on openstreetmap.org. The second,
> “MEP –
> > pipelines”, refers to a mechanical edit of the OpenStreetMap *data*. Both
> > have been met with some level of resistance – but is this proportionate?
> >
> > Head over to
> >
> http://www.mappa-mercia.org/2015/01/change-how-mature-is-openstreetmap.html
> > and find out what I think :-)
> >
> > Your thoughts?
> >
> > I’d love to hear your thoughts on this – where is OpenStreetMap in its
> > maturity and what level of change is appropriate? Is there anything you
> > would like to see changed? And is there anything that must stay the same?
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > talk mailing list
> > talk at openstreetmap.org
> > https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
> >
>
> _______________________________________________
> talk mailing list
> talk at openstreetmap.org
> https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
>
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