[OSM-talk] Paid mapping

[john whelan]

The ones that stood out were highways that connected settlements to other
settlements on the map.  These had been changed from highway unclassified
surface unpaved to highway=track by a mapper with Apple connections.

They seemed to have retagged a fair number and I don't honestly recall
exactly where they where.  I seem to recall sending an email to the mapper
concerned pointing towards the Africian highway Wiki and assumed that was
the end of the tale.

Today I was looking at a very remote hamlet and was surprised to see it was
connected by a highway=tertiary that terminated in the hamlet.  I'm not
saying it was incorrectly labelled but being curious I had a look at the
history.  If it has been mapped by someone who only mapped twice on a HOT
project that's one thing but this highway had been tagged unclassified then
retagged to tertiary by a mapper who maps for Apple according to his OSM
page and had some 6,000 edits to their name.  It actually says on the
highway from Bing not local knowledge.

When I see two different Apple mappers whom I assume are paid mappers
essentially retagging things rather than mapping new things it raises the
question in my mind are they doing this to improve the map in some way or
are they measured by how many highways have their tag on them?

If it is the latter then a different metric for paid mappers might get more
useful results in the map.

A conventional OSM mapper normally maps to add detail or correct glaring
errors in the map.  A paid mapper might not have the same point of view.

I know I'm cynical and I'm not even sure there is much that can be done
about it.

Cheerio John

On Mon, Jun 22, 2020, 16:12 Joseph Eisenberg <joseph.eisenberg at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Please clarify: are the Apple mappers 1) changing the ways to
> highway=track, or 2) changing ways that are currently highway=track to
> something else?
>
> I would support #2 in any case where the way connects settlements, since
> we have always defined highway=track as a way that is used for agriculture,
> forestry etc., not for travel between settlements.
>
> – Joseph Eisenberg
>
> On Mon, Jun 22, 2020 at 11:17 AM John Whelan <jwhelan0112 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> I've noticed a number of highways being changed in Africa from
>> unclassified to track and from unclassified to tertiary.    The ones I've
>> noticed are Apple mappers usually with the comment of from Bing and often
>> the highways connect settlements so should be a minimum of unclassified or
>> path but not track.
>>
>> African highway wiki  says it is difficult to classify highways without
>> local knowledge above unclassified.  Track is fairly easy it doesn't
>> connect settlements according to the wiki.
>>
>> Do I get the impression we are talking targets here?  The paid mappers
>> have to do so many edits to meet their targets and changing the
>> classification using Bing is easier than adding to the map?
>>
>> Do we care?  Is it is just something to be aware of.
>>
>> Thoughts?
>>
>> Thanks
>>
>> Cheerio John
>> --
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>
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