Well said John, I agree very strongly with all your comments, thanks for giving your valuable input.
-Denis On Jan 5, 2016 9:26 AM, "john whelan" <[email protected]> wrote: > HOT is evolving, we started off with mainly experienced OSM mappers > mapping in response to short term emergencies. Now do do a wider range of > tasks with a wider range of mappers. > > We're seeing organisations such as MSF and the Red Cross guiding people > who want to help them to mapping with HOT, so our mappers are changing. It > helps engage volunteers. > > We're starting to see more GIS and mapping being organised locally but > still not as much as I'd like to see. The locals are better at reading > street names than people mapping from imagery. > > Currently http://tasks.hotosm.org/ is our splash page if you like. At > the moment we see two or three high priority projects followed by medium > priority projects in date order, the most recent last. So the medium > priority projects get their five minutes of glory then drift down into the > mass of medium projects. > > We end up with a large number of projects that get 25% done, 5% validated > and drift on for years. > > I suggest we have ten slots set at high priority, that way we stand a > chance of getting a few projects completed. > > Of these I suggest that MSF, American Red Cross get given two permanent > high priority slots. That would concentrate their minds on which of their > projects are most urgent. At the moment I suspect mappers are seen as a no > cost resource and some projects that are still around where the ground > workers have finished their tasks but we're still mapping. > > Of the others, I'd give three to other organisations for a period of say > three months. For example Cameroon has a mapping department, Bangladesh > has an active community, Nepal again has an active community and there are > others. Let them decide which projects will do them most good. They may > make some mistakes but I hope it will develop a sense of ownership. > > The other five I'd let the board decide. > > Then we have the dead wood projects that clutter up the medium priority, > these are projects where no one has mapped or validated for more than a > month. It maybe the imagery is poor, the instructions too complex, or > whatever. I'd downgrade these to low priority, that way the active > projects would stand out more and again stand more chance of completion. > > It might even be worthwhile having a weighting attached to each project, > the more active projects or highly validated projects move up the list the > less active ones move down. It just needs a tag for the task list to > order. The actual computation can be done off line say once a day and > someone else can sort out the algorithm. > > Can we get more out of our mappers? > > I think we can. On project 1390 I validated as people mapped. New > mappers got feedback, the advantage is they get a bit more involved and > feel engaged. So we got more tiles out of them. We got 6 or more tiles > out of a number of new mappers or ones who had mapped less than six tiles > before, typically I'd expect one or two tiles from them. On the data > quality side I think it was up. By correcting problems early on the new > mappers made less mistakes that need intervention later on from the > validation side. However it takes effort, the faster the feedback the > better the results. > > Validation is a tricky. HOT isn't traditional OSM where individuals like > to map park benches or waste bins. There is a service level to be met, and > if the building is five feet out, well that's probably good enough although > we should strive for accuracy. It's a bit lets get something useful done > with the resources we have. Normal good management technique is catch them > doing something right. So invalidating a tile is the last thing you want > to do. I normally correct then leave a note, such as added fourteen > settlements. Where possible third party it JOSM validation picked up the > following: African wiki suggests higway=living street in an African small > village may not be appropriate and I must confess I normally delete any > zebra pedestrian crossing I come across in Africa. There is another issue > with experienced OSM mappers HOT has its own conventions, such as > everything that looks like a building is mapped as an area and tagged > building=yes. Some OSM mappers use a node tagged building=hut etc. Giving > feedback is delicate because in the OSM world what they are doing is > acceptable. > > The worst validation is by someone who has mapped two tiles. I recently > double checked one and JOSM validation picked up a dozen problems and > visually there were a few more. This is a data quality issue and it > becomes a matter of are any of the validated tiles to be trusted. In Nepal > this was a major issue. > > We don't have enough good tactful validators. > > 1390 was also interesting in that I came across an MSF volunteer, new > mapper who mapped accurately, did a fair number of tiles but when it was > complete wanted to know which MSF project to map next. So project managers > need to have something in the pipeline. > > Project managers need to understand the mappers. We have more > inexperienced mappers than experienced ones. Projects that demand only > buildings and have documentation on how to map them work well. Projects > that ask for landuse=residential and connecting highways to be tagged > unclassified work well. Ones that ask for forests, and everything else > don't work as well. New mappers get confused and give up and take up > basket weaving instead which is not what we'd like. > > Mapping should be fun. > > Anyway there is enough to mull over. > > Cheerio John > > > > _______________________________________________ > HOT mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/hot > >
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