Hello HOTties, I'm pretty new here, having joined the group during my first MSF/Doctors without borders field assignment a few months ago.
I started mapping the area where I was working, in the south of Madagascar, and started wondering how to get external help in a coordinated way (this was right after the Haruna cyclone, when we were looking for water sources and that sort of stuff). This is when I found out about the HOT task manager. I really liked the idea, but I kept wondering if it couldn't be improved, here's my thinking: First time I gave it a try, it took me about an hour to figure out how to get everything in place to help mapping some part of DRC (downloading the osm file, setting up imagery in JOSM, etc...). Then I took up a random task, which I figured would take at least 2-3h for me to complete in JOSM. Despite loving the idea, I quickly gave up. Wouldn't it be possible to make that whole process more seamless, and therefore get a much wider group of online mappers to help? If the task manager auto-assigned me a very limited task, say trace roads in a square 50x50m, using iD or a simplified version of it, we'd be bordering on microtasking. I would imagine the person requesting the mapping could define their needs (e.g. roads and buildings, or water streams, or collapsed buildings), set the log message for all edits done through the UI. All edits are then done through the web/iD so that micromappers only have to login and trace. If given a job like "trace all buildings in this square", they don't even need to tag anything, because the requester already defined the tags they need. Basically, the essence of the idea is to take everything the computer can take care of off the user's plate. Since the job would take about a minute, it would become a lot easier and less technical for a wider crowd to join and help. And let's dream a bit, with a bit of social media magic, maybe maps could be drawn in a few hours! I'm sure somebody must have thought of similar stuff before, and maybe the idea's been killed, but I couldn't find any trace of it. If there's anything blatently stupid, please let me know :) Cheers! Laurent _______________________________________________ HOT mailing list HOT@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/hot