[OSM-talk] Help with way forward with Grab

[Christoph Hormann]

On Monday 07 January 2019, Mishari Muqbil wrote:
>
> 1. What's a fair expectation from such a mapping team? 

You can and should expect at least the same level of diligence and 
cooperation as you can expect from an individual hobby mapper.

If an individual mapper maps things incorrectly in a systematic way and 
does not change this even after being urged to do so by fellow mappers 
they will get blocked and their edits reverted.  Same should apply for 
organizations.

What you can expect from an organization doing routine organized mapping 
in addition is in particular that (a) there are no beginners without 
training involved making beginners' mistakes but that they make sure 
all mappers involved have the qualification to perform the mapping 
tasks in good quality and (b) that the results of communication with 
the community propagate within the organization so you don't have to 
deal with every mapper involved separately when it comes to overall 
problems.

> 2. Thailand's mapping community is small and it would be impossible
> for us to go through all 7,000 edits made and set it right. I've
> identified at least one of the issues (1-3) in roughly 1 out of 4
> changesets made by Grab/Global Logic in my neighborhood in Central
> Bangkok and I would be unable to give feedback on any issues outside
> of this zone, likely the same with other mappers.

I think when you deal with large volume organized activities it is fair 
if mappers use sample tests to assess the quality of mapping and 
extrapolate to the whole.  The burden of proof that other parts of the 
mapping are better quality than the samples evaluated lies with the 
organization.

> 2.2 What would even constitute as a fix by Grab? Should we ask them
> to do something like fixme=verify_on_ground on the new entries so
> that it can be ignored by the routing until verified? 

No - if you see a significant fraction of what they map is verifiably 
incorrect they need to change their approach - either fixing the 
errors, if necessary by going out there and checking things locally or 
by removing the data that is faulty.

> 3. It's been difficult to agree with the mapping team on a standard.

It is important for you to keep in mind that you as the local hobby 
mappers are the guardians of the data quality in your area.  Ultimately 
the only real pressure you can put on organizations to ensure that is 
of course reverting their edits.  So if you find they are not able or 
willing to make sure what they map satisfies the standards of quality 
of the local community you only have two options:  Make clear that 
their edits will be reverted in bulk if they don't meet your quality 
standards (and if necessary revert them) or adjust your quality 
standards to theirs.  I know this might be a difficult choice if they 
also make a lot of useful edits.  You need to decide if that is worth 
more than the damage from the mapping errors.  But if you make clear 
the local community will revert their edits if they don't substantially 
improve their quality that will likely at least bring some movement 
into things.

Apart from that what i in general like to suggest to local communities 
dealing with organized remote activities is to put pressure on them to 
hire locals instead of people in some distant country to perform 
mapping tasks.  First this is good for your local economy and second 
people mapping their local environment have a higher inherent incentive 
and ability to map in good quality than remote mappers mapping in a 
country they don't know first hand.

What i also would suggest is asking your forum moderator to block 
collective accounts from organizations.  The OSM communication channels 
are for individual humans to communicate.  They may use pseudonyms but 
i would not accept communication with a collective entity behind which 
an arbitrary number of people might hide.

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