Currently, when new things are created, nobody has (even read) access except the creator and the administrator until explicitly set otherwise. This seems a bit paranoid and prone to reduce sharing and usefulness via laziness. On the other hand, important sensitive data can never be in a state where unauthorized individuals can gain access to it, even for a moment.
It seems to me that eventually specifying some permission levels should to be baked into the creation of maps and uploading of data if we want to avoid both of these. Perhaps a friendly default setting that allows sharing, with the option of explicitly setting paranoid permission levels. Which of these do we care about most in the short term? Have a friendlier default? Leave it paranoid? - Luke
