Hi John,
I think what you write makes a lot of sense.
And as the person who wrote you says, this is also a very common feeling
new mappers have, not being sure if they should mark a task done.
I think currently people who do create projects in the tasking manager
try and keep what to map in mind as it relates to a few variables:
difficulty of objects to map in general, mapper experience, imagery
available, time and urgency among other things.
There is some room for experimentation as well. For example using the
exact same area you could sequence the projects: 1st project just roads,
next project just residential areas, next project building footprints,
last project everything else. Or maybe building footprints could be last.
Which is very similar to your suggestion below about experience level of
mappers and trying to tailor projects to meet that.
Or maybe that just increases the work load for mapping and validation
having to go over the same area multiple times and some of it could be
combined.
Thank you for the discussion, I know there are places we can improve and
we just have to work some of them out.
On a related note: As James mentioned, I think "incomplete" is what I
was coming to as well instead of invalid. Or as Charlotte suggested, we
don't have to be bound to 1 word phrases :)
As soon as things quite down a little bit after a busy spring for HOT
hopefully we can make some small adjustments around the edges and see if
they help.
cheers,
blake
On 3/27/2015 1:09 PM, john whelan wrote:
> Hello, I read your message about validating, I am new, I have
digitized a lot of buildings for Malawi, and the Vanatu. I thought I
should just jump in, work as completely as possible and then leave it to
be validated. I don't feel confident enough to say its done. Is that the
wrong way to go about, I don't want to generate a backlog for anyone.
Thanks Keith
I'll reply in the general message area because it maybe of interest to
others.
First any mapping you do will be of use and will be used.
There are a couple of issues, first is OSM has many different opinions
and these are just mine.
HOT is more structured than OSM so we have a process where an area is
defined, a tile and only one mapper works there at a time. Ideally the
tiles are the right size so one experienced mapper who knows what they
are doing can complete a tile and mark it done in a session. Then
someone validates it. Sometimes this is done in a maperthon where
experienced mappers are available to assist. Sometimes its done by
people working by themselves.
Reality at the moment is we have a lot of inexperienced mappers and even
with the experienced ones they have different ideas about what should be
tagged and how they should be tagged. Some work is being done about
getting guidelines drawn up with examples to assist. Ideally with new
mappers you want to validate and give feedback fairly quickly. It
reduces the number of errors in future and giving some sort of feedback
is generally motivating but we do have tiles that haven't been validated
in three years.
On Project 917 I aim to validate within one day and often within a few
hours. I am not the project manager for 917 by the way. If you look
you'll see quite a few tiles that haven't been validated. I marked them
done so by convention someone else needs to validate them.
Generally speaking if you break a complex task down then you can divide
it up between less experienced people and leave the complex bits to
others. This is normal production line work flow. We are dealing with
volunteers so the more boring jobs just don't get done and we have a lot
of boring jobs to do.
For urgent tasks we can swamp them with mappers. For less urgent tasks
it becomes more complex how do we deliver as much as we can that is
usable to the client, in this case the NGOs, given the very limited
resources we have. Mapping buildings is nice for the NGOs but given the
choice between one village complete with all the buildings and twenty or
thirty mapped in outlines complete with connecting roads which would you
prefer and that's part of the reason many newer projects do not ask for
buildings. The other part is ones that do often don't get completed.
Projects 684-689 are ones that ask for buildings. Ebola related but its
been some time since any mapping was done. If you don't mind doing a
few buildings by the way 684 has plenty.
It takes time to go over a tile so if more than one mapper works there
we are burning up resources as each one scans the tile. If we simplify
the tasks so that one less experienced mapper can go in and map the
settlements and connecting roads then mark it done this is good.
Validate it quickly and move on.
When we add complications such as mines, schools, farmland, and ask
mappers to tag the road according to the width then the less experienced
mappers feel less confident about marking something done. "If you can
drive a 4X4 down it its a track", well yes but you'd be amazed where I
can drive a 4X4 and some hazards for a 4X4 are not visible from a
satellite image. At that point we are probably spending more people
time going over the same tile than we could be and the tasks are still
not being marked done. On 917 by the way I typically add in anything
missing when validating so that can be a dozen settlements etc so just
mark it done when you think its more or less complete and I'll sort it
out but you need to know the validators on your project before you can
tackle tiles this way. Oh you'll probably get a message saying the
little round things in clusters are huts in settlements by the way.
So my comments on validation are aimed not so much at the urgent tasks
where we can pull a rabbit out of a hat but more at how can we get more
maps for the clients out the existing mappers and how do we keep the
mappers we do have motivated?
Does that make sense?
Thanks John
On 27 March 2015 at 02:34, Esther Zurcher <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Hello, I read your message about validating, I am new, I have
digitized a lot of buildings for Malawi, and the Vanatu. I thought I
should just jump in, work as completely as possible and then leave
it to be validated. I don't feel confident enough to say its done.
Is that the wrong way to go about, I don't want to generate a
backlog for anyone. Thanks Keith
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