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Openstreetmap is having a moment

joemorrison.medium.com

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Re: Openstreetmap is having a moment

#2

Post by rathel »

Regarding corporate contributions:

Often the corporations take the route of least resistance - employing dispensable workers who don't live in countries they're mapping [1], and aren't given proper training. It seems that southeast Asia (e.g. Thailand) is the major place for such dubious mapping efforts. [2]

There's also a minor conflict of authority: paid mappers (like all mappers) should defer to the community, but they have a manager who they answer to.

In my opinion not everyone has the skills to contribute, and at least if they're volunteers you can tell them (politely) to fuck off and be more likely to succeed with it (and not be outnumbered by the army of corporate drones).

On-the-ground knowledge is the OSM's gold standard. With megacorps in question routinely spending billions on frivolous stuff, they should have instead equipped the local OSM communities with gear to take 360 photos and GPS loggers to enable those on the ground to survey their local areas.

[1] https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Armchair_mapping

[2] https://forum.openstreetmap.org/viewforum.php?id=46 (AFAIR many of people posting here are Western immigrants to Thailand, so take correction for that).

Re: Openstreetmap is having a moment

#3

Post by juliansimioni »

rathel wrote: post #2

Regarding corporate contributions: Often the corporations take the route of least resistance - employing dispensable workers who don't live in countries they're mapping [1], and aren't given proper training. It seems that southeast Asia (e.g. Thailand) is the major place for such dubious mapping efforts. [2] There's also a minor conflict of authority: paid mappers (like all mappers) should defer to the community, but…

Isn't it potentially the opposite? If an independent, volunteer mapper contributes a poor edit, someone from the community has to reach out to them individually. This is hard since there's no prior relationship, and no expectation that the person will even take any advice on editing.

Contrast that to a major corporate contributor: the people leading these corporate mapping teams are all talking. Both to each other, and to leaders in the community like prominent volunteers, OpenStreetMap Foundation board members, etc. If a corporate contributor makes a bad edit, one of those _existing relationships_ can be used to help put processes in place that might prevent not just that one individual, but any other contributor paid by that company from making the same error again.

IMO at least, that process scales a lot better. And as OSM continues to grow that will be even more valuable than it already is today.

Re: Openstreetmap is having a moment

#5

Post by kazinator »

rubinlinux wrote: post #4

> OSM is to Wikipedia as an atlas is to an encyclopedia. LOL? OSM is to an atlas as Wikipedia is to an encyclopedia. Surely?

That makes no difference:

     OSM     Wikipedia

      ^                 ^
      |                 |
      |                 |
      v                 v

     Atlas   Encyclopedia
It's just which parallels of the commutativity diagram do you focus on. The map-versus-text operator (left to right), or the digital-versus-dead-tree operator (top down).

Re: Openstreetmap is having a moment

#6

Post by 1-6 »

rathel wrote: post #2

Regarding corporate contributions: Often the corporations take the route of least resistance - employing dispensable workers who don't live in countries they're mapping [1], and aren't given proper training. It seems that southeast Asia (e.g. Thailand) is the major place for such dubious mapping efforts. [2] There's also a minor conflict of authority: paid mappers (like all mappers) should defer to the community, but…

Data has a way of self-cleansing but somewhat agreed. Garbage in, garbage out.

Re: Openstreetmap is having a moment

#8

Post by campchase »

kazinator wrote: post #5
rubinlinux wrote: post #4

> OSM is to Wikipedia as an atlas is to an encyclopedia. LOL? OSM is to an atlas as Wikipedia is to an encyclopedia. Surely?

That makes no difference: OSM Wikipedia ^ ^ | | | | v v Atlas Encyclopedia It's just which parallels of the commutativity diagram do you focus on. The map-versus-text operator (left to right), or the digital-versus-dead-tree operator (top down).

Do you think the other version is clearer, though? I think he’s right. I will probably update it.

Re: Openstreetmap is having a moment

#9

Post by Freak_NL »

juliansimioni wrote: post #3
rathel wrote: post #2

Regarding corporate contributions: Often the corporations take the route of least resistance - employing dispensable workers who don't live in countries they're mapping [1], and aren't given proper training. It seems that southeast Asia (e.g. Thailand) is the major place for such dubious mapping efforts. [2] There's also a minor conflict of authority: paid mappers (like all mappers) should defer to the community, but…

Isn't it potentially the opposite? If an independent, volunteer mapper contributes a poor edit, someone from the community has to reach out to them individually. This is hard since there's no prior relationship, and no expectation that the person will even take any advice on editing. Contrast that to a major corporate contributor: the people leading these corporate mapping teams are all talking. Both to each other, a…

The energy you put in helping a new volunteer mapper along rewards the project in the long run for those who become long-term (semi) frequent contributors. With a corporate mapper you either hit a wall of misunderstanding due to limited English and, excepting English, no map-local language skills, and any time you invest in that mapper is limited in effect, because retention at such jobs seems low.

Some companies do listen when you provide feedback, and others just have some community manager¹ who doesn't really know anything at a deeper technical level handling all the communication with OSM's volunteer corps of mappers.

There is a company in Minsk that is doing edits worldwide based on the output of a set of slightly outdated linters, and it's disappointing to see that they could get much better feedback and linter input by listening to the remarks made by us volunteers, but that would require the attention of one of the few employees with in-depth knowledge, which they haven't planned for.

1: Another gem of inappropriateness was trying to communicate with the Dutch OSM community via Google Translate mangled Dutch. (The vast majority of us can manage English quite well, thank you.)

Re: Openstreetmap is having a moment

#10

Post by smegcicle »

kazinator wrote: post #5
rubinlinux wrote: post #4

> OSM is to Wikipedia as an atlas is to an encyclopedia. LOL? OSM is to an atlas as Wikipedia is to an encyclopedia. Surely?

That makes no difference: OSM Wikipedia ^ ^ | | | | v v Atlas Encyclopedia It's just which parallels of the commutativity diagram do you focus on. The map-versus-text operator (left to right), or the digital-versus-dead-tree operator (top down).

It's logically equivalent, but it seems much easier to parse that OSM [is digital version of] an atlas vs OSM [is a map instead of text like] Wikipedia
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