OpenStreetMap
The Mapbox data team visualizes our mapping team activity with the OSM Edit Report. We’ve just launched an improved front-end, designed by @geohacker and myself, using a punchcard-style visualisation to display the edits of the team. This makes it easier for us to spot activity, and dig deeper when additional mapping context is needed.
The new Edit Report provides a count of the total edits for a given time duration, and makes it easy to spot active editors (>100 edits per day) through the sorted listing. This helps us analyse the average number of edits we are making to OpenStreetMap, identify patterns in editing, and spot anomalies. For example, weekdays have more edits than weekends and holidays.
We’re all ears for any suggestions you have to improve the tool. The code is in the open, and we’d love for you to use the edit report in your project. Do get in touch if you need help setting up!
Discussion
Comment from imagico on 14 December 2015 at 12:59
I wonder if this is your primary method to evaluate the work of your mappers and if not what your primary method is and what role this tool plays in your data team controlling.
The shown numbers in the order of 10k-20k changes per day are only achievable with fairly mechanical tracing work - in this case mostly buildings. If you do the math 15k changes in an 8 hour day gives an average of 2 seconds per change or 10 seconds for a simple rectangular building. This might not seem too bad but it essentially contains very little room for mapping any more complex semantic information or doing higher level verification work (like cross checking with different image sources).
In principle i think this kind of mapping work is somewhat questionable in its overall value. The primary data that would be required to automatically acquire this kind of information (high resolution orthoimagery or LIDAR data) might not be readily available right now and existing building outlines for the area might not be available as open data but having this building data in the OSM database - even if valuable for practical applications right now - has relatively little lasting value in the long term compared to classical on-the-ground mapping.
So to get back to the starting point - from the perspective of the OSM community it would be important to evaluate your data team mapping work w.r.t. the long term sustained value of the data for the project. It is perfectly understandable and legitimate if Mapbox also has short term data needs and tasks its mappers to fulfill these but you should always keep in mind that 10k features mapped in that context are of a different inherent value than 10k features mapped by a local mapper walking the streets and mapping addresses, trash bins, fire hydrants, addresses and all kinds of other stuff in addition to the plain building outlines.
Comment from DaCor on 14 December 2015 at 21:57
That volume of edits is easy to do if you are doing something like realigning / enhancing previously mapped content.
Comment from Arunasank on 15 December 2015 at 05:04
Totally. The tool right now is completely agnostic to what types of changes it tracks.
Our premise is that high quality data following best practices collaboratively created with community where possible is welcome. Take a look here for instance how we recently worked on realigning highways in Japan https://github.com/mapbox/mapping/issues/120
Additionally, we have noticed that aligning over satellite imagery is a good first step, and allows mappers on the field to add details more easily. http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/jinalfoflia/diary/36706 http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/Arunasank/diary/36332
Comment from PlaneMad on 16 December 2015 at 04:28
This is a great question. The most valuable way to evaluate the output of an OSM mapping team is community validation of the work. Tools like these helps the community review our work and close the feedback loop with the team.
The team is skilled to be able to contribute both in quality and volume, and this allows us to make large scale map improvements in a relatively short time period like the recent review of sidewalks. Each quality edit improves the map positively and that is what is important. It would great to hear your suggestions on how and what we could be doing better.
Comment from imagico on 16 December 2015 at 14:54
Thanks for the replies.
I am aware that the work of the Mapbox data team is quite diverse and also consists of lower volume activities like fixing errors etc. The tool you introduced here however does not reflect this and showing the edit volume without differentiation could give the impression this is what counts most.
The only specific suggestion i would have regarding your data team work is to put weight on local knowledge, that means preferably let mappers work on areas they are familiar with and have them familiarize themselves sufficiently with areas that are less known to them.
One very basic thing Mapbox could do to better support community mapping is to provide capture date metadata with your satellite imagery. This has already been requested several times i think and would enormously improve ability of mappers to properly assess their image sources.
Comment from mikelmaron on 17 December 2015 at 04:31
Thanks for the suggestions @imagico. Both of these improvements have been discussed, and are both complicated for different reasons. Looking forward to share more, when the knotty problems get sorted out.