[OSM-talk] Metrics

[Andy Townsend]

On 16/10/2021 01:21, john whelan wrote:
> 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.
>
Have you tried asking them about it, perhaps via a changset discussion 
comment?

If there's an active local community I'd also raise it there. You 
haven't said where in the continent it is, but if you can't find 
anywhere else you'll certainly find people at https://t.me/OSMAfrica . 
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk-africa/ also exists, but 
doesn't seem to be used much.

> Do I get the impression that companies are measuring the work of their 
> employees by the length of highways they have touched?

Obviously I can't know what metrics your mapper is working to, since you 
have told us neither the country nor the company involved.

Some companies (e.g. Mapbox) are fairly up-front with the metrics that 
they choose to present to the community as to what they have done in 
OSM, others less so - for example it's pretty obvious that Amazon 
mappers are being asked to map data for "last mile" delivery, but 
exactly how that is measured I don't know.

However, the measurement of some indicator is widely used by many OSM 
mappers to help show what needs mapping - the various QA sites all 
measure something and mappers of all stripes use them to show what needs 
to be done.

Best Regards,

Andy