I wonder how we can attract new mappers with mapping parties. I understand that a Missing Maps party like the one in Antwerp can work. I understand how people can be motivated by the promise that they will help organisations like the Red Cross or Doctors without Borders.
Even a topic like "Map wheelchair access in your town" or "Find the missing bicycle paths" are attractive. Bonus is that when you just leave the door of the room where the party is held, you find plenty of things you can add. Drawback is that properly mapping bicycle path is pretty hard. For good wheelchair mapping you should actually visit each shop & restaurant (not only from the outside), another difficulty. Easier stuff then, simple POIs like shops, restaurants, B&Bs. Are they an attractive topic ? Don't know And some towns, e.g. Namur are already pretty well mapped regarding POIs in the center. House numbers ? Boring to most I think. Playground ? Schools ? more interesting, but are there enough of them near the venue ? Reading the past mappers of the month interviews, I see that they ask to focus on the "core". Streets and house numbers. Basic street information (geometry & names) is pretty well covered, but the additional attributes are still missing: max speed, height, weight, parking lanes, the width of the streets. But how can you show people that adding this data makes a difference. All routers use a default collection of max speeds for routing. There is one router (website) that takes max weight & height into account, so that might work. The width of the street is hard to measure. (and no, measuring in JOSM does not work) The idea of OpenData ? Don't know whether any Google user or iPhoner is interested in that. I hope someone can let me know how a classic mapping party can attract new mappers. What do we need as topic ? How do you think that it should be organised ? regards m
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