[OSM-talk] The real face of MAPS.ME edits and notes - a short analysis
Much has been said about MAPS.ME note and edit functionality on this
list and elsewhere. I tried to get a real picture of how good/bad they
are. I went to mmwatch.osmz.ru and assessed 73 edits/notes made
between June 6th and 10th in Poland. Then I made a spreadsheet
(percentages at the bottom):
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1LsSEOUnt0Yekv9aHPMW54M3BpPUpAwvZ1bVp9kaXTKw/edit?usp=sharing
Redundant name:xx: 18%
Address problem: 10%
Mistagging / name problem: 22%
Duplicate: 22%
Garbage: 8%
Personal bookmarks / data disclosure: 8%
No issues: 26% (only!)
It should be noted that many of these issues (at least the first two)
could be easily prevented in software. It's high time they get fixed.
I have a feeling that the only force preventing a catastrophe are
power users monitoring edits. Many address problems were fixed by
Zbigniew_Czernik ("daily address fixes after newbies"). He is a
prolific mapper since 2009. He recently told me that he's not keen on
devoting even more time to OSM, specifically because of noobs breaking
data (including addresses).
Given this, I'm actually interested in how things look in places
without any established local community. After all, MAPS.ME is popular
all around the world.
Michał
___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] The real face of MAPS.ME edits and notes - a short analysis
2017-06-11 6:29 GMT+03:00 Michał Brzozowski wrote: > Much has been said about MAPS.ME note and edit functionality on this > list and elsewhere. I tried to get a real picture of how good/bad they > are. I went to mmwatch.osmz.ru and assessed 73 edits/notes made > between June 6th and 10th in Poland. Then I made a spreadsheet > (percentages at the bottom): > <...> > No issues: 26% (only!) > <...> > Given this, I'm actually interested in how things look in places > without any established local community. After all, MAPS.ME is popular > all around the world. If there is no local community - nobody will be able to answer... But in general the only way is to check all c$@#.me edits and have reverting tools on hand. After some time you would even notice that there is no point in wasting even more time by writing to those "editors" and will revert without asking. Also helps to not promote/mention the name of the app and try to discourage people from using it by explaining the problems or at least giving bad rating in google play. And this is likely not going to change, because creators have an illusion that it is "very good" to have thousands of people crapping map data and wasting time of power-mappers if out of that one thousand one single person actually becomes a mapper mapping with proper tools (at least iD/Potlatch). It seems that quantity gets a huge priority against quality... -- Tomas ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] The real face of MAPS.ME edits and notes - a short analysis
Dear friends, I would like to commend maps.me for creating an easy-to-use mobile app that makes OpenStreetMap available to many more people. For example, there are many amazing uses of OpenStreetMap via maps.me in disconnected areas of our planet, that make people's lives better and often save lives. As a community, should we not be interested in more users and more diversity https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Diversity? Clearly quality can be an issue, but it's not just an issue on maps.me, it's an issue with any tool and any community. Of course, the more people use a tool, the more of an issue it becomes. I have two concrete suggestions: (1) Given that you have looked into the issues around maps.me, could you formulate a suggestion how some of the issues could be improved, in particular what sort of UI improvements in maps.me might stop people entering wrong/redundant data? (2) Would it be worth discussing strategies for quality assurance somewhere? There doesn't seem to be a mailing list dedicated to this - maybe there should be one? Many thanks for your contributions, Bjoern On 12 June 2017 at 09:39, Tomas Straupis wrote: > 2017-06-11 6:29 GMT+03:00 Michał Brzozowski wrote: > > Much has been said about MAPS.ME note and edit functionality on this > > list and elsewhere. I tried to get a real picture of how good/bad they > > are. I went to mmwatch.osmz.ru and assessed 73 edits/notes made > > between June 6th and 10th in Poland. Then I made a spreadsheet > > (percentages at the bottom): > > <...> > > No issues: 26% (only!) > > <...> > > Given this, I'm actually interested in how things look in places > > without any established local community. After all, MAPS.ME is popular > > all around the world. > > If there is no local community - nobody will be able to answer... > > But in general the only way is to check all c$@#.me edits and have > reverting tools on hand. After some time you would even notice that > there is no point in wasting even more time by writing to those > "editors" and will revert without asking. Also helps to not > promote/mention the name of the app and try to discourage people from > using it by explaining the problems or at least giving bad rating in > google play. > > And this is likely not going to change, because creators have an > illusion that it is "very good" to have thousands of people crapping > map data and wasting time of power-mappers if out of that one thousand > one single person actually becomes a mapper mapping with proper tools > (at least iD/Potlatch). > > It seems that quantity gets a huge priority against quality... > > -- > Tomas > > ___ > talk mailing list > talk@openstreetmap.org > https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk > ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] The real face of MAPS.ME edits and notes - a short analysis
> Clearly quality can be an issue, but it's not just an issue on maps.me, it's > an issue with any tool and any community. Of course, the more people use a > tool, the more of an issue it becomes. The problem is that percentage of very bad edits with @#$%.me is way too high. I do not remember ANY tool which would have such a high percentage of bad edits and at the same time so little value. I also do not remember ANY tool which would cause so much additional pointless work and work which would usually end in plain revert, meaning that edits are of not little, but NO value at all. (I am only talking about data edits, not the "usage" part of the app). > (1) Given that you have looked into the issues around maps.me, could you > formulate a suggestion how some of the issues could be improved, in > particular what sort of UI improvements in maps.me might stop people > entering wrong/redundant data? This has already been done numerous times. But had little effect probably because of the reasons I stated earlier. It seems that the main problem is that users do not clearly understand what they are doing, there is no "intro" or some other steps done to introduce the user to what "mapping" means and what they are actually editing. (I have actually no problem with notes from this app. Notes are fine because there is no rush to review them, and after you do, if they are meaningless - it is very easy to simply press "resolve/close") -- Tomas ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] The real face of MAPS.ME edits and notes - a short analysis
Hello everybody, first of all, I would like to thank Michał for the analysis. However, after cross-checking three random changesets, I come to a different conclusion. https://overpass-api.de/achavi/?changeset=49378841 Somebody has added a pharmacy here, plus its name. There are some extra tags, which may or may not be useful. But if the phamarcy is there then this is a useful piece of information. https://overpass-api.de/achavi/?changeset=49372507 We the community get from that edit a hint that a street is missing. Thus we now know that this place is worth visiting to improve the map. https://overpass-api.de/achavi/?changeset=49385468 This is indeed at best a very vague indication that there is something notable. Thus, in total we got meaningful observations from surveyors that were there. Hence, it would be outright vandalism to revert them. As often told: OpenStreetMap values local contributions over mechanical data conversions, regardless whether these are imports or linting. You can have an opposite mind, we do not harass you on that. Please take a copy of the database and do whatever processing you like on that database. As this has been told again and again, I would like to explain it this time a more explicit way: The price to reproduce all the on-the-ground mappers' contributions we have is likely to be somewhere between 4 million and 150 million euros: to reliably tell where all the pharmacies and all the buldings are, and what names the streets have, we would have to traverse all the roads in the world. Germany has a density of 5 km street per 1000 inhabitants, plus pedestrian-only and cycling ways, which could double the figures. Most other countries are less dense populated, thus are likely to have more street length per inhabitant. Even if we conservatively assume that streets only exist in the developed world then there should be 10 million to 100 million kilometers of streets, pathes and roads in the world, and it could be more. Driving by car costs about 25 cent for the car and 15 cent for the time spent. Walking will be more expensive, because it is much slower, but apparently inevitable on half of the way grid in the world. Hence, walking-and-mapping the world would cost somewhere between 4 million and 150 million euros. By contrast, to find and fix all places with "name" equals "name:pl" in a neighbourhood is just a click away: https://overpass-turbo.eu/s/pGL A competent freelancer would build for your within a day or less a script to drop all such tags from your copy of the database, at 1000 to 2000 euros. Keeping up a server with that scrubbed data may cost another 500 euros per year. Even if you plan to keep your copy online for 20 years then it has a total value of at most 12000 euros. So, dear bot editors, you are jeopardizing 150 million euros to save some thousand euros at best. This is why we, the community, ask you to be extremely cautious or not doing it at all. Note: even if only 1 in 1000 bots or remote mappers damages only 10 percent of the global data (or 1 in 10 only 0.1 perecent of the data) then it would be already more economical to force all bots onto a separated database copy (regardless of their other merits) than to accept the edits. > (2) Would it be worth discussing strategies for quality assurance > somewhere? There doesn't seem to be a mailing list dedicated to this - > maybe there should be one? It is everywhere and nowhere. There is no such thing as general quality assurance. If you think that "name:XX" tags that are equal to "name" tags are a problem then start discussing this with the community. I do remeber a lot of tagging rule discussions but nobody ever complained about that specific observation yet. People will spend attention to you on this mailing list, the tagging mailing list, and the forum. In addition, special topics have their own mailing lists, see https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo Before you start a discussion, you should sift through the wiki and find all supporting or contradicting statements or places where the information should also go and enumerate them in the discussion. In a similar way, watch out for tools that may need to be adjusted for that assertion and ask them to join the discussion. Once a consent has been settled, it should be written down in the wiki and contradicting information in the wiki should be removed. Other issues about taggging should go through the same process. If you think that this is a painful process then you are right. But as we are a community about geodata. Hence, the burden about rules is on those that what to change rules. Best regards, Roland ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] The real face of MAPS.ME edits and notes - a short analysis
On Mon, Jun 12, 2017 at 1:32 PM, Roland Olbricht wrote: > Hello everybody, > > first of all, I would like to thank Michał for the analysis. However, after > cross-checking three random changesets, I come to a different conclusion. > (...) > Thus, in total we got meaningful observations from surveyors that were > there. Hence, it would be outright vandalism to revert them. Well, I have to admit leaning too much on the formal side (however funny that sounds in a folksonomy tagging system :P). However, I don't advocate reverting maps.me edits on sight if they simply contain errors. I don't think Tomas meant it either. See how 8% was garbage? For a big country that can easily be a few per day. I've seen people add embassies in absurd places (because "Ambasada" is first alphabetically). The issue that I wanted to point out is that many of these errors would be preventable if MAPS.ME did things right and did due diligence. Regarding Tomas' frustration, I can somehow relate. MAPS.ME-only mappers almost never reply to any changeset comments, however nice you talk to them. Even though MAPS.ME has been contacted about it, the issue remains unresolved This is so frustrating to many of us, because communication is a pillar of efficient community. iD beats it by a quite a margin, there got to be a dozen or more of iD noobs that besides responding to my comments even apologized for their mistakes. > As often told: OpenStreetMap values local contributions over mechanical data > conversions, regardless whether these are imports or linting. You can have > an opposite mind, we do not harass you on that. Please take a copy of the > database and do whatever processing you like on that database. > > As this has been told again and again, I would like to explain it this time > a more explicit way: > > The price to reproduce all the on-the-ground mappers' contributions we have > is likely to be somewhere between 4 million and 150 million euros: to > reliably tell where all the pharmacies and all the buldings are, and what > names the streets have, we would have to traverse all the roads in the > world. > > (...) > > Hence, walking-and-mapping the world would cost somewhere between 4 million > and 150 million euros. > > By contrast, to find and fix all places with "name" equals "name:pl" in a > neighbourhood is just a click away: > https://overpass-turbo.eu/s/pGL > A competent freelancer would build for your within a day or less a script to > drop all such tags from your copy of the database, at 1000 to 2000 euros. > Keeping up a server with that scrubbed data may cost another 500 euros per > year. Even if you plan to keep your copy online for 20 years then it has a > total value of at most 12000 euros. > (...) > So, dear bot editors, you are jeopardizing 150 million euros to save some > thousand euros at best. This is why we, the community, ask you to be > extremely cautious or not doing it at all. I don't quite get it. The monetary argument is quite far-fetched and non-sequitur. The fact that idiots did and do bad imports / mechanical edits doesn't automatically validate just _any_ edit made on local knowledge. With knowledge, there should also come skill, which MAPS.ME editors won't get because they don't respond to changeset comments! Don't get me wrong, I would be happy to teach someone how to become a good mapper, even if that would require a level of patience, but because of no contact, I can't. The problem with name:pl and the likes is akin to DB denormalization. Should a name change, I bet there's quite a non-zero chance someone will desync name from name:pl Similarly, with addresses I can see geocoders freak out on malformed ones. On a side note, as I and Zbigniew_Czernik say, "bad data introduces more bad data". People learn by imitation. That's why we should hold data to at least a modest standard. The takeaway is that many of these issues would be preventable if MAPS.ME only devoted resources to fix them. But case after case, they don't see a problem. Based on my analysis and general experience with fixing MAPS.ME edits, I would recommend this: * Discourage entering name:xx if xx is spoken in that country. * Add support for addr:place (display and editing). * Ensure that we have addr:housenumber and (addr:street or addr:place) and that addr:postcode can only be entered on such correct addresses. * Explain to users that they should not add things if they don't fit any of the available categories. * Add more POI categories so that wouldn't be the case so often. * Try at least heuristically detect duplicate POI to be added and ask the user if it's not a mistake. * Notify users of changeset comments and allow discussion in-app using OSM API. * Be more strict about using old versions to edit, like StreetComplete blacklist (a mere warning would be OK actually). * Try to cooperate with the community so that *all* MAPS.ME edits are at least formally (armchair) verified - by extending mmwatch.osmz.ru with means of m
Re: [OSM-talk] The real face of MAPS.ME edits and notes - a short analysis
Hi everyone, Thanks Michał for your analysis of maps.me edits, and thanks Roland for explaining the value of local knowledge. I don't agree with everything on the list of possible improvements suggested by Michał. For example, I consider name:xx equally, if not more, important to name tags, since not always you can detect a local language. But the most items are definitely valid. We at maps.me are aware of some issues with our editor, though we have been busy with other tasks lately. Among many other things, we have improved time prediction and voice navigation for the routing, and added intermediate points support for the next release. As per our roadmap we are starting work on incremental map updates, which would give our users and map editors the freshest map possible. We also have experimented with public transport routing: check out the results (definitely not ready for production) in https://youtu.be/GSFY-yxEkj0 . Alas, some parts of the editor are deteriorating because lack of support from the OSM community. Like, mappers can no longer sign in to OpenStreetMap using a Google account, since Google stopped supporting webview-based OAuth. The pull request for fixing this on the OSM website is still not merged, waiting there for five month, despite us answering every question and following every reasonable suggestion. We'd like to make the website more friendly to mobile users, starting with the authentication. The good news is, we are compiling the list of issues with the editor, combining Michał's suggestions with reports from the Russian forum and from b...@maps.me. Then we will discuss the list internally and turn in into a roadmap for the maps.me editor. In a month or so we plan to share it with the community, and you will see positive changes later this year. You should know we care about the map as much as you do, since only because of the open data we were able to create our application. If the data gets worse, our app gets worse, so we are committed to improving the map, and the quality of the map. Ilya ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] The real face of MAPS.ME edits and notes - a short analysis
Thanks for the update Ilya, it’s very interesting. Despite the occasional hiccups I think MAPS.ME is great and I’m excited to hear you all are working hard to make it even better. Best of luck and do keep sharing here. On Mon, Jul 10, 2017 at 8:42 PM Ilya Zverev wrote: > Hi everyone, > > Thanks Michał for your analysis of maps.me edits, and thanks Roland for > explaining the value of local knowledge. I don't agree with everything on > the list of possible improvements suggested by Michał. For example, I > consider name:xx equally, if not more, important to name tags, since not > always you can detect a local language. But the most items are definitely > valid. > > We at maps.me are aware of some issues with our editor, though we have > been busy with other tasks lately. Among many other things, we have > improved time prediction and voice navigation for the routing, and added > intermediate points support for the next release. As per our roadmap we are > starting work on incremental map updates, which would give our users and > map editors the freshest map possible. We also have experimented with > public transport routing: check out the results (definitely not ready for > production) in https://youtu.be/GSFY-yxEkj0 . > > Alas, some parts of the editor are deteriorating because lack of support > from the OSM community. Like, mappers can no longer sign in to > OpenStreetMap using a Google account, since Google stopped supporting > webview-based OAuth. The pull request for fixing this on the OSM website is > still not merged, waiting there for five month, despite us answering every > question and following every reasonable suggestion. We'd like to make the > website more friendly to mobile users, starting with the authentication. > > The good news is, we are compiling the list of issues with the editor, > combining Michał's suggestions with reports from the Russian forum and from > b...@maps.me. Then we will discuss the list internally and turn in into a > roadmap for the maps.me editor. In a month or so we plan to share it with > the community, and you will see positive changes later this year. You > should know we care about the map as much as you do, since only because of > the open data we were able to create our application. If the data gets > worse, our app gets worse, so we are committed to improving the map, and > the quality of the map. > > Ilya > ___ > talk mailing list > talk@openstreetmap.org > https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk > ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] The real face of MAPS.ME edits and notes - a short analysis
Note: I'm replying to an old mail. If you don't have it. You can find it here: https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk/2017-June/078181.html "The real face of MAPS.ME edits and notes - a short analysis" >The price to reproduce all the on-the-ground mappers' > contributions we have is > likely to be somewhere between 4 million and 150 million euros: Hello, These monetary considerations could be valid so long as the MAPS.ME bad edits do not exceed a certain threshold. Past that threshold, maintainers can no longer keep up with the noise and the value of the map essentially drops to zero. Take a look at the Middle East, the map was filled with POIs such as "my house", "my uncle's house". For a map consumer, it would be a poor choice to use OpenStreetMap in these regions, because it's junk. They'd prefer Google Maps or Bing Maps. And so, OpenStreetMap becomes valueless, regardless of much money would have been invested in surveying, etc. I've deleted thousands of personal bookmarks in that area but I can no longer keep up and have no desire to continue doing so. The "my house" style tags will probably re-accumulate with time, reducing the value of the map. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
