Re: [OSM-talk] [HOT] Quality (was: The point on the OSM Response to the DR Congo Nord Kivu Ebola outbreak)

[Pierre Béland]

Yes, Quality should be be integrated at all levels, from Documentation, Editing 
tools, Projects monitoring particularly in the context of Mapathons to catch 
problems rapidly and correct. And  yes validation is the last step, the last 
barrier to catch Quality problems and correct. 

After the experience with Mapathons in the last few years, we are surely at 
this point where we need to revise our global process and suggest where 
improvements would contribute to this Quality Quest.
Bjoern, in a HOT discussion about the Ebola Response  in Butembo, gave us a 
link to some Documentation used in the context of Mapathons.  It is  important 
to propose such documentation specific to 
Mapathons.https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/hot/2018-December/014667.html
Documentation easily accessible in iD with the ? shortcut is also a good point. 
Such easy access to documentatin should be part of the various OSM editors. But 
it should also focus on specific skills like Trace a building, Correct 
irregular geometry, Adjust the offset of imagery, Classify roads. Links to 
short videos would also greatly help the beginners.
There are projects more complex with aspects such as the density of urban 
areas, imagery quality and offset and it is important to restrict access based 
on OSM experience for more complex projects and this is now possible for the 
various Tasking Manager projects. Taking this step for the Butembo Ebola 
response this week dramatically improved the quality of the data produced. But 
still, I often observed that some occasionnal contributors to Mapathons 
continue to produce some Fantasy buildings more then a year after they started 
editing.
This is indication of how it is important not only to provide good 
documentation and tools to beginners, to restrict more complex jobs, but also 
to better accompany and motivate the OSM beginners. Let's be a community. Let's 
go back to our roots! We should stop to have thousand of one day contributors 
that produce inadequate data that often is not corrected afterward.

Irregular geometries in the OSM database are probably more then 90% of the time 
an indication of incorrect mapping. Highlighting Irregular geometries and 
overlaps in editors such as iD and JOSM would faciliate revision by beginners.  
It could be integrated in the JOSM validation process.  iD could also have such 
a validation process.   

Monitoring of Quality and OSM edits need tools to quickly identify such 
problems. The Overpass and JOSM could provide the possibility to query for 
irregular geometries and overlaps.  Such addition in Overpass would offer to 
the Mapathons the possibility to visually monitor Quality of editing with the 
participants using for example a list of OSM user id's.  This could also be 
used for edition in JOSM.  And imagine the Mapathon participants that view the 
progress on a «Live Quality Map» plus «Quality statistics». This would be both 
motivating and pedagogic.

There were some regression with the Tasking Manager updates for the possibility 
to monitor the users. For example, the Activity and Stats section do not let 
see on the map the squares mapped by a particular contributor. It is then 
uneasy to revise the edits of a specific contributor that do not map 
appropriately. On the other hand, it is now possible to restrict the access to 
Validation.
.
 
regard
 
Pierre 
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Re: [OSM-talk] [Osmf-talk] Candidate's views? Re: Board decision on Crimea complaint

[Martin Koppenhoefer]

sent from a phone

> On 13. Dec 2018, at 13:53, Andy Townsend  wrote:
> 
> Given that there will be effectively a "new board" after Saturday I think 
> that it's only fair to let them get their feet under the table first, but 
> there clearly will be pressure from the community once they have done that to 
> release the more comprehensive statement that was promised in 
> https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk/2018-December/081781.html .


given that the decision was taken by the current board it seems logical that 
the current board explains the reasoning behind it. What would the „new“ board 
know about it (ok, most of the new board will be the old board anyway).


Cheers, Martin 





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Re: [OSM-talk] [Osmf-talk] Candidate's views? Re: Board decision on Crimea complaint

[Andy Townsend]

On 11/12/2018 13:45, Manfred A. Reiter wrote:


[...]

The decision of the DWG was absolutely correct according to the rules 
that OSM imposed on itself.


I think the board here is opening Pandora's box. It will certainly be 
interesting to see how all the controversial areas will be judged from 
now on.




Given that there will be effectively a "new board" after Saturday I 
think that it's only fair to let them get their feet under the table 
first, but there clearly will be pressure from the community once they 
have done that to release the more comprehensive statement that was 
promised in 
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk/2018-December/081781.html .


Without knowing on what basis this board decision to create an exception 
to the OSM norm was reached it's difficult to generalise from it and 
understand how it might apply in other edge cases.


Best Regards,

Andy (a member of the DWG, but sending this in a personal capacity)


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Re: [OSM-talk] [HOT] Quality (was: The point on the OSM Response to the DR Congo Nord Kivu Ebola outbreak)

[Nate Smith]

This is a good discussion. Chiming in here to share some additional
thoughts and work we’ve been doing on the Tasking Manager this fall.

I agree with what people have said. Quality isn’t just a “let’s improve how
we validate” problem. This also isn’t only an editor problem — through many
of the mapathons, the Tasking Manager is an entry point for new mappers and
can be a source of both the problems and the solution. It’s a
multi-factored problem and we're trying to work on the Tasking Manager side
to help out here. TM developers are definitely aware of the fact that many
new mapathon mappers start using an OSM editor through the TM and so there
is a chance to greatly support quality improvements here.

As Steve mentioned at the HOT Summit we started to dig into some of these
problems through a couple workshops.  Notes from the two workshop sessions
are here if anyone is interested:
  - Data quality improvements workshop:
https://github.com/hotosm/hot-summit-2018/wiki/Design-Workshop-:-Data-Quality-Validation-Improvements-with-TM-iD-Editor
  - AI & ML workshop:
https://github.com/hotosm/hot-summit-2018/wiki/Design-Workshop-:-AI-&-Machine-Learning---Integrating-into-HOT-Tools

As we’ve been working on Tasking Manager this fall and preparing for some
additional development this spring, we’ve been digging into a couple items
related to quality:

  1. Onboarding. Onboarding not only starts with good training at mapathons
but can happen in app as well. We’ve only just started to dig into many
ideas on ways that we can improve the training aspect of what people need
to know before they start mapping. Some notes from a recent design convo we
had:
https://github.com/hotosm/tasking-manager/wiki/Onboarding-Idea-Generation-Session-Notes

  2. New mapper mapping experience. In relation to onboarding and training,
the type of mapping or the way data is exposed to new mappers is vastly
different from a well-trained, experienced mapper. The Tasking Manager
workflow currently tries to meet both mapper needs in the middle - which
might be part of the problem at the moment. In January we’re going to be
taking a look at the entire experience to dig into where and how things
should change to improve on this front.

  3. Testing ML as a quality support tool. Machine learning outputs can be
a huge support here and that hasn’t been well tested. As we’ve been working
on the first part of the ML strategy HOT outlined this fall, giving
real-time feedback to a mapper will be extremely helpful in improving the
data quality:
https://www.hotosm.org/updates/integrating-machine-learning-into-the-tasking-manager/.
What the exactly looks like is yet to be determined, but we’re hoping to
have a prototype in January about how ML can be used to integrate a
complexity measure into a task grid square and ultimately can help set
mapping expectations.

Along with volunteering opportunities to work on technology projects with
HOT, we do have a job opening that will include working on the Tasking
Manager: https://www.hotosm.org/jobs/technical-project-manager/.



On Thu, Dec 13, 2018 at 7:50 AM Stephen Penson 
wrote:

> To build on Jean- Marc's point, one thing I raised at the HOT Summit and
> also recently to the London Missing Maps team is the need to tackle the
> errors at the source. Having validators is vital, but I believe we can
> improve the initial mapping through a few tweaks in the way new mappers are
> trained.
>
> Personally, what I believe would be really powerful is the creation of a
> way for new mappers to understand the importance of high quality mapping.
>
> For instance, if it were possible within ID Editor to not only highlight
> overlapping buildings but ALSO explain why overlapping buildings have an
> impact, then people would be able to relate and therefore change their
> behaviours.
>
> For example, the tool could highlight that overlapping buildings can
> result in inaccurate population density calculations which can have an
> impact on humanitarian response (see previous messages from Pierre
> Belland's HOT mailing list post on the DRC as a case study). If we can
> explain this to people in a compelling way, I believe the quality of the
> mapping would improve.
>
> If something could be built within the current tool set (e.g. embedded
> text/video within ID validation) this should hopefully ensure consistency.
>
> Combining such tweaks with real-time monitoring tools, such as Bjoern
> suggests, should improve quality at mapathons.
>
> Essentially, people attend Missing Maps mapathons to contribute to a
> worthy cause. People wish to map the best they can, so if more (and
> consistent) support is offered, the quality will improve.
>
> Thanks
>
> Steve
> --
> *From:* Jean-Marc Liotier 
> *Sent:* 12 December 2018 22:30
> *To:* talk@openstreetmap.org; h...@openstreetmap.org
> *Subject:* Re: [HOT] Quality (was: The point on the OSM Response to the
> DR Congo Nord Kivu Ebola outbreak)
>
> On 12/12/18

Re: [OSM-talk] [HOT] Quality (was: The point on the OSM Response to the DR Congo Nord Kivu Ebola outbreak)

[Stephen Penson]

To build on Jean- Marc's point, one thing I raised at the HOT Summit and also 
recently to the London Missing Maps team is the need to tackle the errors at 
the source. Having validators is vital, but I believe we can improve the 
initial mapping through a few tweaks in the way new mappers are trained.

Personally, what I believe would be really powerful is the creation of a way 
for new mappers to understand the importance of high quality mapping.

For instance, if it were possible within ID Editor to not only highlight 
overlapping buildings but ALSO explain why overlapping buildings have an 
impact, then people would be able to relate and therefore change their 
behaviours.

For example, the tool could highlight that overlapping buildings can result in 
inaccurate population density calculations which can have an impact on 
humanitarian response (see previous messages from Pierre Belland's HOT mailing 
list post on the DRC as a case study). If we can explain this to people in a 
compelling way, I believe the quality of the mapping would improve.

If something could be built within the current tool set (e.g. embedded 
text/video within ID validation) this should hopefully ensure consistency.

Combining such tweaks with real-time monitoring tools, such as Bjoern suggests, 
should improve quality at mapathons.

Essentially, people attend Missing Maps mapathons to contribute to a worthy 
cause. People wish to map the best they can, so if more (and consistent) 
support is offered, the quality will improve.

Thanks

Steve

From: Jean-Marc Liotier 
Sent: 12 December 2018 22:30
To: talk@openstreetmap.org; h...@openstreetmap.org
Subject: Re: [HOT] Quality (was: The point on the OSM Response to the DR Congo 
Nord Kivu Ebola outbreak)

On 12/12/18 2:16 AM, Ralph Aytoun wrote:

I am also concerned about the quality of the mapping that is tying up projects 
because it takes up so much validation time. [..]

This perception is (don't take it personally - I answer your message but I'm 
not singling you out) a symptom of a widespread problem: quality perceived as a 
separate activity, an extra cost tacked on the actual productive work.

Considering the quality assurance process as a distinct set of activities has 
the very unfortunate effect of creating an unnecessary conflict with production.

So:
- Start with a clearly defined objective quality goal, just adequate for the 
planned purpose of the data
- Teach contributors that not meeting this goal is worse than doing nothing: 
negative value
- Monitor contributions in real time, to catch deviations before they 
snowball... I love Bjoern's idea, though OSMCHA works for me
- Reiterate !

Quality is the essence of the whole activity, not a distinct step.

Yes, it spoils the fun for new contributors thrilled to start mapping away and 
see their gamified metrics take off spectacularly in a rain of digital 
achievement awards. But it also helps them make sense of what they are doing 
instead of launching them on an open ended trip with a hazy purpose - and what 
is better than to find meaning in a task ?

Normative leadership may feel incompatible with a flat collaborative forum such 
as Openstreetmap, but it makes sense within a directed project with a declared 
purpose, to which contributors voluntarily participate. If they trust the 
project leadership enough to join as contributors, they may expect the 
normative guidance and even be disappointed not to feel it from the leadership.
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[OSM-talk] Academic Track at State of the Map 2019 - Call for applications for the Leading Team

[Marco Minghini]

 Dear colleagues,

Following the successful initiation of the *Academic Track* at State of the
Map 2018 in Milan [1], this Track will be included again in the program of
State of the Map 2019, to be held in Heidelberg on September 21-23, 2019.
The main purpose of the Academic Track is to bring together and foster
interactions between the OpenStreetMap community at large (contributors,
developers, users, etc.) and the academic/scientific community of
researchers from all over the world.

A designated Leading Team would be in charge on the organization of the
Academic Track, co-chaired by Marco Minghini (on behalf of the OSMF State
of the Map Working Group) and Yair Grinberger (on behalf of the Heidelberg
local team). We hereby issue a call for applications, inviting all
interested individuals to apply to join the Leading Team. This team will be
in charge of:

   - writing and publishing the call for abstracts/papers for State of the
   Map 2019
   - designing and managing the review process of the submitted abstracts,
   deciding which ones to accept for oral presentation or poster presentation
   - defining the Academic Track schedule at State of the Map 2019, by
   working in close contact with the Programme Selection Committee
   - planning and managing possible publication outputs, e.g. conference
   proceedings or a Special Issue in a scientific journal

In agreement with the OSMF State of the Map Working Group and the local
team, it was decided that the Academic Track Leading Team will be composed
by Marco and Yair plus 3 additional people that would be selected through
this open call.

Thus, we invite applications for *researchers or academics* to be part of
the Academic Track Leading Team. The call is open to everyone
interested. *Applications
shall be made exclusively by sending an e-mail to the OSM science mailing
list scie...@openstreetmap.org * (this requires
registering for the list at https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/science
),
and filling the following template:

*Name and Surname*
*Please enter your name and surname.*

*Affiliation*
*Please enter your (current) full affiliation.*

*Academic experience, in particular on OpenStreetMap*
*Please enter a short description of your main academic interests and
contributions, especially related to OpenStreetMap. A full list of
OpenStreetMap-related publications (or a link to it) is appreciated.*

*Editorial experience*
*Please enter a short description of your editorial experience, e.g. as a
Member of the Editorial Board of scientific journals, Guest-Editors of
Special Issues, reviewer for scientific journals. Place the focus on
OpenStreetMap, when relevant.*

*Participation in State of the Map 2019*
*Despite it is not required that you are attending State of the Map 2019,
please inform us whether you plan to attend (if selected as a member of the
Academic Track Leading Team).*

Only applications submitted according to this procedure and only
self-nominations will be considered.

The deadline for applications is *January 3, 2019*.

Applications will be assessed by the OSMF State of the Map Working Group
and the Heidelberg local team. The three available seats of the Academic
Track Leading Team will be assigned based on the candidate’s personal merit
and according to the overall goal of forming a diverse and
interdisciplinary Team. In absence of candidates who are meeting the
expectations, the OSMF State of the Map Working Group and the Heidelberg
local team reserve the right to select less than three people, or nominate
additional persons by invitation.

Best regards,

Yair and Marco - on behalf of the OSMF State of the Map Working Group and
the State of the Map 2019 Heidelberg local team


[1] See the call for abstracts for 2018 (
https://2018.stateofthemap.org/academictrack) and the program of the
Academic Track on Sunday, 29 July, room S1.3 (
https://2018.stateofthemap.org/program)
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Re: [OSM-talk] [Osmf-talk] Board decision on Crimea complaint

[Manfred A. Reiter]

"When in doubt, also consider the "on the ground rule": map the world as it
can be observed by someone physically there."

source: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/How_We_Map

- no further comment -

## Manfred Reiter - mobile -
## please excuse typos and brevity


Am Mo., 10. Dez. 2018, 11:58 hat Martijn van Exel  geschrieben:

> Hi all,
>
> On November 17, the OSMF Board of Directors received a request to review
> the Nov 14, 2018 Data Working Group decision regarding Crimea.
>
> The Board decided that this decision is to be reversed and the previous
> situation, as laid out in the May 5, 2014 Data Working Group minutes, is to
> further remain in effect.
>
> The board highly values the Data Working Group’s work and appreciates the
> difficulty and complexity of the cases they are asked to review on an
> ongoing basis.
>
> A more comprehensive statement will follow in the next weeks.
>
> Best regards,
> Martijn van Exel
> Secretary, OpenStreetMap Foundation
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Re: [OSM-talk] [Osmf-talk] Candidate's views? Re: Board decision on Crimea complaint

[Manfred A. Reiter]

Am Di., 11. Dez. 2018 um 11:52 Uhr schrieb Guillaume Rischard <
openstreet...@stereo.lu>:

> Hi Rory and fellow members,
>
> I am a candidate in the board election, and have underlined in my
> manifesto how important it is that decisions like this are taken
> transparently. The detailed reasoning behind this decision must be
> published without delay.
>

+1

[...]


> However, the on-the-ground rule is one of the very core values that we
> have built OSM and the OSMF on.
>

+1


> https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Mission_Statement says that OSM
> favours objective ‘Ground Truth’ over all other sources. The ‘Scope of the
> OSMF’ section says that it does not decide what to map or how to map.


[...]

The decision of the DWG was absolutely correct according to the rules that
OSM imposed on itself.

I think the board here is opening Pandora's box. It will certainly be
interesting to see how all the controversial areas will be judged from now
on.

cheers
-- 
## Manfred Reiter
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Re: [OSM-talk] [Osmf-talk] Candidate's views? Re: Board decision on Crimea complaint

[Jaak Laineste]

Hi,

There are map services (TomTom I believe) which have a parameter, something 
like "politics" with possible values China, India and Pakistan, and of course 
google does same for end-users. As far as I can think of more or less every 
single country has some details what they feel to be mapped differently from 
some others, probably all the neighbours of the same country connected with 
Crimea have this challenge. Nothing new here, that's reality and implementing 
"international map politics" that would be an obvious minimal feature of any 
international map app. So far only the biggest ones do it, but none of 
OSM-based AFAIK. OSM itself is a database, not app, so we can only enable it 
with tagging, and maybe in the 'preview' web tiles. 

Jaak

> On 11 Dec 2018, at 17:39, Eugene Alvin Villar  wrote:
> 
> On Tue, Dec 11, 2018 at 10:02 PM Imre Samu  > wrote:
> TLDR:  We need focusing for the customizable vector tiles for the next year!  
>   (  Less community fighting - more working on the real problems!  )
> 
> Vector tiles and customizable styling is not enough. AFAIK, we never use 
> 3rd-party data (except for the public domain Natural Earth data for the lower 
> zoom levels, IIRC) when rendering the default tile layer on the OSM. So we 
> still need to represent the various viewpoints on disputed borders and 
> territories within the OSM database itself if you want that level of 
> flexibility on the default tile layer(s). There are already a couple or so 
> threads on the Tagging mailing list discussing various tagging solutions for 
> representing these viewpoints and disputes.
> 
> ~Eugene
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Re: [OSM-talk] Ground truth for non-physical objects

[Martin Koppenhoefer]

sent from a phone

> On 13. Dec 2018, at 11:40, Tomas Straupis  wrote:
> 
> 
>  I was never for indiscriminate, automated imports without manual
> checks. Accepting documents as source does not necessary mean allowing
> such imports. When doing manual checks you can find (and we DO find)
> errors in official documents. Then OpenStreetMap gets correct data,
> not official version.
> 
>  I'm also not saying to remove the ground truth rule as such. I'm
> only saying that the term "ground truth" in the context of
> non-physical objects must be clarified because currently it is being
> interpreted in a lot of different ways.


I would not exclude documents as source for mapping, e.g. you could copy 
information from a company website, but I would value ground truth higher if 
there are contradictions. You shouldn’t probably change some existing 
information based solely on remote research. We even have established specific 
tags for these, e.g. „official_name“ for a legal name vs. name for the most 
suitable/common name.


Recently we have been discussing an import of housenumbers in Italy and some 
people were advocating the removal of housenumbers that the city has suspended, 
while I was advocating to do this only after a ground survey and having 
confirmed that the sign has been physically removed (=almost never). Imagine 
someone standing in front of a housenumber telling her position on the phone, 
it doesn’t matter if the city thinks it is a valid address, it still serves its 
purpose, and the person seeing the number will not be able to see whether that 
number is „valid“ or not.

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Re: [OSM-talk] Ground truth for non-physical objects

[Tomas Straupis]

2018-12-12, tr, 15:47 Andy Townsend rašė:
> If you're looking for a project that essentially mirrors "official" data
> without actually checking that its valid then OpenStreetMap might not be
> the project for you.

  I was never for indiscriminate, automated imports without manual
checks. Accepting documents as source does not necessary mean allowing
such imports. When doing manual checks you can find (and we DO find)
errors in official documents. Then OpenStreetMap gets correct data,
not official version.

  I'm also not saying to remove the ground truth rule as such. I'm
only saying that the term "ground truth" in the context of
non-physical objects must be clarified because currently it is being
interpreted in a lot of different ways.

  What is "ground" in this term for non physical objects:
  1. Physical place which could have some traces of an actual object.
  2. Ground where non-physical objects actually live - documents.

> the general view, which I think we can see from the balance of the posts
> in this thread, is that most people back the "on the ground" principle -
> if there's a housename that looks like looks like a house name, it's a
> house name, even if it's not in an "official" list.

  Balance of posts could mean one of these:
  1. You're right and majority is against usage of documents as
sources for non-physical objects.
  2. People just do not see it possible to change your interpretation
or do not see the point in this discussion at all and simply continue
doing what they have been doing.

  But even if we would be able to vote, count, elect here in talk
mailing list, what authority would that have? In my opinion - close to
none. As in most open source/data projects people "vote" with their
actions. In this case by creating data in the OpenStreetMap database.
And most non-physical data today does not come from physical
observation.

-- 
Tomas

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Re: [OSM-talk] Ground truth for non-physical objects

[Martin Koppenhoefer]

Am Mi., 12. Dez. 2018 um 16:36 Uhr schrieb Florian Lohoff :

>  I know that because i have caused ~100 residents to
> get new id cards because they all had a wrong street name in their ID.



This would merit a diary entry ;-)

Cheers,
Martin
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