[OSM-talk] Metrics

[Andy Townsend]

On 17/10/2021 11:01, Andy Mabbett wrote:
> On Sat, 16 Oct 2021 at 06:20, Mateusz Konieczny via talk
> <talk at openstreetmap.org <mailto:talk at openstreetmap.org>> wrote:
>
> > that is why quality of paid editing is usually problematic
>
> Is it? Or do we only see low-quality paid editing brought here for 
> discussion (or to the Data Working Group for reversion), while good 
> quality paid editing goes unremarked?
>
>
I'm not convinced that paid editing is "usually problematic", but I 
think that it is fair to say that it is "usually of a lower quality than 
editing by a non-paid mapper of similar experience". I don't think that 
is surprising - if I buy a table from someone whose hobby is woodwork 
it's likely to be better made than if I get a flatpack from a big 
"Tables R Us" or similar on the outskirts of town.

 From a "quality of OSM" point of view, sometimes it'd be nice if paid 
mappers had the time when fixing "obviously broken" things to 
investigate what else is wrong.  One example I remember was where a 
couple of mappers had (in good faith, but with unfortunately little 
experience of OSM) merged lots of road segments together, creating lots 
of "ref=A1;A2;A3" and "lanes=1;2;3;4".  The paid mappers who fixed some 
of the errors tended to fix one tag but not the other, and tended not to 
use overpass to go back in time to see the previous situation before the 
merges (why would they? It's time consuming and not well documented).

However, looking at it from the other side, and going back to John's 
original question, if I was paying mappers to map roads so that my 
delivery company can deliver things I'd be pretty annoyed if instead of 
mapping roads they mapped schools or hospitals instead, despite that 
being "more helpful" to the map in $country.  If I take my car into the 
garage and ask them to fix the exhaust, and one of the lights needs 
fixing I don't expect them to fix that as well for free; I also don't 
want them to do it without asking and bill me for it.

Best Regards,

Andy



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