[OSM-talk] Metrics

[Mateusz Konieczny]

Similarly I suspect that some were paid by/measured by reduction
of problems no longer detected by validators.

Note that "problem is fixed" and "problem is no longer detected by validator"
is not the same.

Overall, in cases like this there is no chance that simple metrics will work.

See "When a measure becomes a metric, it ceases to be a good measure.", or
in an original form
"Any observed statistical regularity will tend to collapse once pressure is placed
upon it for control purposes."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law

And that is why quality of paid editing is usually problematic - if someone is not
caring about map quality, they just want to get paid you will get various bad
effects.

Similarly to people caring more about changeset count than actual
improvement. Or when they want their map to have purple color
in a given area and are not interested about anything else.

It may be better if people involved actually care about map quality,
not just about graph going up or KPI being large and green.

Oct 16, 2021, 02:21 by jwhelan0112 at gmail.com:

> At the moment I've noticed what I think is a "commercial" or paid mapper converting highway=residential to highway=path on a number of African villages.  There is nothing especially wrong with this but previously I noticed another paid mapper retagging highways which has got me thinking.
>
> Do I get the impression that companies are measuring the work of their employees by the length of highways they have touched?
>
> Is there a way to say this mapper has added xyz kilometres of highway?  If there was it might prevent the temptation to game the system by changing a few tags.
>
> The mapper changed tags on a highway that was next to two clusters of buildings, houses?  My personal opinion is their time would have been better spent adding the hamlets or villages and adding connecting highways to them.
>
> The country concerned is missing a thousand or so settlements at a conservative guess and many settlements have no highways connecting them hence the thought that they could be more productively employed if we had better metrics.
>
> Thoughts?
>
> Thanks John
>

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