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The inconsistency of OSM coverage from one place to another can be a bit baffling. While cycling around South Africa four years ago, I added quite a lot of deta

The inconsistency of OSM coverage from one place to another can be a bit baffling. While cycling around South Africa four years ago, I added quite a lot of detail to areas on the Garden Route. It’s a bit disappointing to look at the map and see that almost nothing has been done with these particular locations since then, even though it’s a heavily touristed area and a developed country where you’d think at least some locals would be interested in mapping. And yet, at the same time there are some rural areas around the world that seem out of the way, but they show continual improvements by successive visitors.

Semaphor 10y ago
I'm living in the suburbs of Pretoria, OSM showed a Woolworth store that according to the security guy hasn't been there in 3+ years :D
- andygates 10y ago
  It's a wiki. You are invited to edit it! :)
  - Mediterraneo10 10y ago
    I’m reluctant to encourage people to edit OSM just like that. OSM isn’t any more a wiki than Wikipedia is nowadays; that is, while it can be edited by the community, there are an enormous amount of rules and caveats that contributors should be aware of before they start editing, and it may well be that their edits will be reverted if they aren’t clued up to how things are done. In my own neck of the woods, there’s an OSM group with frequent meetups to guide newbies through editing. I think the best way for interested people to get involved is by learning in the company of experienced mappers, not just all by themselves at home. If such a stringent perspective scares some people away, at least the contributions of those who do stick around will be much higher-quality.
    - maxerickson 10y ago
      If people are reverting reasonably accurate contributions, that's the problem to fix. There are well mapped areas where just barging in and changing things will cause some issues, but for most of the planet the bar for improving things is quite low.
      - Mediterraneo10 10y ago
        I strongly disagree that the bar is low. It’s not at all unusual for people who quickly sign up for OSM to remove a defunct POI, to accidentally remove other nodes along with it because they don’t really understand yet how editing is done. It’s also common for newbies to trace from wildly unaligned aerial imagery, or to use the wrong tags because they don’t know to consult the wiki any time they use a new tag. OSM is years past the point where any additions are welcome, and like with Wikipedia, no edits at all are often preferable to low-quality ones.
        maxerickson 10y ago
        The response should be to encourage them to slow down a little bit not to chase them away entirely.
    - Doctor_Fegg 10y ago
      > there are an enormous amount of rules and caveats There really aren't. OSM is very freeform, almost anarchistic, compared to Wikipedia; very few edits are reverted and very few editors are banned. I'd say there are probably five rules: 1. Don't copy from other maps 2. Edits should be 'verifiable' and 'on the ground' - i.e. no subjective information 3. Be liberal in what you add, conservative in what you delete - someone else is interested in it even if you're not 4. There's a special process for imports and automated edits 5. Be prepared to engage with other contributors
  - Semaphor 10y ago
    It's why I welcomed the app, it lowers the barrier of entry :)
- Firefishy 10y ago
  Pretoria was mostly mapped by a single mapper very early in the project. There wasn't high quality aerial imagery available when he literally cycled every street in Pretoria. Because the map "looks complete" Pretoria hasn't really attracted many mappers since his departure. Cape Town has a much more vibrant community of mappers. I've also been able to get crazy high resolution aerial imagery for CT from the municipality which helps: http://coct.aerial.openstreetmap.org.za/ http://coct.aerial.openstreetmap.org.za/
dagw 10y ago
And yet, at the same time there are some rural areas around the world that seem out of the way, but they show continual improvements by successive visitors. Those rural areas probably don't have any other source of good mapping data so there is more incentive of people to map them. Popular areas with lots of tourists probably already have good maps from other sources so people don't feel the same need to create new maps over them. At least that seems a plausible theory. I know that several NGOs and humanitarian aid groups use and maintain OSM as their primary source of maps for some of the remote areas they operate in.

Semaphor 10y ago

I'm living in the suburbs of Pretoria, OSM showed a Woolworth store that according to the security guy hasn't been there in 3+ years :D

andygates 10y ago
It's a wiki. You are invited to edit it! :)
- Mediterraneo10 10y ago
  I’m reluctant to encourage people to edit OSM just like that. OSM isn’t any more a wiki than Wikipedia is nowadays; that is, while it can be edited by the community, there are an enormous amount of rules and caveats that contributors should be aware of before they start editing, and it may well be that their edits will be reverted if they aren’t clued up to how things are done. In my own neck of the woods, there’s an OSM group with frequent meetups to guide newbies through editing. I think the best way for interested people to get involved is by learning in the company of experienced mappers, not just all by themselves at home. If such a stringent perspective scares some people away, at least the contributions of those who do stick around will be much higher-quality.
  - maxerickson 10y ago
    If people are reverting reasonably accurate contributions, that's the problem to fix. There are well mapped areas where just barging in and changing things will cause some issues, but for most of the planet the bar for improving things is quite low.
    - Mediterraneo10 10y ago
      I strongly disagree that the bar is low. It’s not at all unusual for people who quickly sign up for OSM to remove a defunct POI, to accidentally remove other nodes along with it because they don’t really understand yet how editing is done. It’s also common for newbies to trace from wildly unaligned aerial imagery, or to use the wrong tags because they don’t know to consult the wiki any time they use a new tag. OSM is years past the point where any additions are welcome, and like with Wikipedia, no edits at all are often preferable to low-quality ones.
      - maxerickson 10y ago
        The response should be to encourage them to slow down a little bit not to chase them away entirely.
  - Doctor_Fegg 10y ago
    > there are an enormous amount of rules and caveats There really aren't. OSM is very freeform, almost anarchistic, compared to Wikipedia; very few edits are reverted and very few editors are banned. I'd say there are probably five rules: 1. Don't copy from other maps 2. Edits should be 'verifiable' and 'on the ground' - i.e. no subjective information 3. Be liberal in what you add, conservative in what you delete - someone else is interested in it even if you're not 4. There's a special process for imports and automated edits 5. Be prepared to engage with other contributors
- Semaphor 10y ago
  It's why I welcomed the app, it lowers the barrier of entry :)
Firefishy 10y ago
Pretoria was mostly mapped by a single mapper very early in the project. There wasn't high quality aerial imagery available when he literally cycled every street in Pretoria. Because the map "looks complete" Pretoria hasn't really attracted many mappers since his departure. Cape Town has a much more vibrant community of mappers. I've also been able to get crazy high resolution aerial imagery for CT from the municipality which helps: http://coct.aerial.openstreetmap.org.za/ http://coct.aerial.openstreetmap.org.za/

dagw 10y ago

And yet, at the same time there are some rural areas around the world that seem out of the way, but they show continual improvements by successive visitors. Those rural areas probably don't have any other source of good mapping data so there is more incentive of people to map them. Popular areas with lots of tourists probably already have good maps from other sources so people don't feel the same need to create new maps over them. At least that seems a plausible theory. I know that several NGOs and humanitarian aid groups use and maintain OSM as their primary source of maps for some of the remote areas they operate in.